For as much light as The Actor is bathed in, it’s equally shrouded in darkness. Duke Johnson’s solo directorial debut is a film of bleary sun and swallowing night and almost nothing in-between. It wouldn’t make sense to depict the in-between. That would be realistic, and The Actor is anything but real. 

Jubilant strings swell over vintage opening credits as we peer at the peaks of skyscrapers in a still, top-of-the-cityscape shot not too dissimilar from the angle we get on Saffron City in the original Super Smash Bros. The twinkling black-and-white image has a glowy 1950s TV-hour charm, the text surrounded by mid-century atomic sparkle logos (see: poster). It transitions neatly into the doomy film noir scene we open on––the inciting incident. 

In a motel room, mid-womanizing, our pitiable protagonist (a terrific André Holland) gets his comeuppance: a chair to the face. As it so happens, this particular woman was married and her husband didn’t take kindly to the idea of another man. The camera cuts out like a light until we’re suddenly in first-person, blinded by bright, canary-yellow beams, seeing through the eyes of our confused lead, Paul Cole. He can’t remember who he is but knows that home is New York City.

The simpleton townies tell him he’s an actor who works in a traveling troupe that has already left town, before telling him he better follow if he doesn’t want any more trouble (they have strong feelings about adultery). But, as we’ll soon realize, the people talking to Paul in this town are the same people talking to Paul in the next town, only playing different characters. They seem to be the troupe in question. This is Johnson’s first mind trick, one he used via Tom Noonan(s) in Anomalisa.

That stop-motion animation is Johnson’s only prior feature-directing credit to date, and he shared it with Charlie Kaufman. It was written by Kaufman, and we’ve yet to find a filmmaker who can operate with Kaufman’s mental and visual acuity while holding a complex story together, even if (by one golden thread) that you have to squint to see. With his history as an animation filmmaker, Johnson was integral in bringing Kaufman’s vision to life. But Anomalisa had that rare Kaufman brilliance, that existential grandeur, that gnawing sense of mystery––hidden elements that magnetize even when you have no clue what’s going on.

Much like Paul, we often don’t know what’s happening, or who is who, or why, or where. But eventually the sheer exhaustion of never knowing begins to evaporate. Paul meets the beautiful Edna (a quirky, charming Gemma Chan) in Jefforts, Ohio, finds love, and decides not to return to New York altogether. What does he care? He can’t even remember what’s there. But everything changes when he’s assaulted by random flashes of memory. Now he’s in a pickle: will he leave Edna to go home and rediscover his life? Or settle down in small-town Jefforts with his new love and try to forget his past? Or… something in-between? 

There’s an ever-flooding sense of surreality throughout the film, bolstered by gorgeous miniature sets, dreamy transitions, and an empyrean score (thanks to composer Richard Reed Parry and ex-indie-music-darling Owen Pallett, who’s credited for the arrangements) overflowing with harps and angelic choirs. The music acts like clouds of sound carrying us from set to set in the pitch black of Johnson’s phantasmagorical, stage-like transitions.

When Paul goes from one building (or town) to another, Johnson doesn’t cut away, but he doesn’t depict it happening either. Johnson instead dons a Dogville-esque approach, spotlighting Paul (and whoever is with him) as if on a stage while cutting the light on everything else, leaving Paul in a vacuous, eternal dark that he walks through aimlessly, the lights eventually coming up around him in a new location. It’s one of the many magic transitions Johnson executes with Tarsem-tier bravado. 

That’s thanks in large part to the innovative editing from Garrett Elkins, who can string seemingly un-stringable sequences together, and the deft camerawork from DP Joe Passarelli, whose cinematography is among the year’s best so far. He uses light like a master painter, creating hardlined prisms that cut across rooms like lasers, gauzy atmospheric glows that define the film’s mood, and shadows that reveal an inner world more than they hide the outer. The ethereal hallation of the imagery is delightfully profuse, the colors delicate and emotional.

In an unexplained, reality-splitting moment, Paul watches his date with Edna on TV (a Kaufman move, per Synecdoche). In another Kaufman-inspired move (Kaufman was an executive producer on the project, so his influence tracks on multiple levels), Johnson writes doting meta-conversations about living, acting, and discerning what’s real versus what’s scripted, prompting viewers to wonder how aware the troupe members are of their own identity as such or if they’re aware of it at all. Or something else entirely. 

Is the troupe part of the story or merely a tool of Johnson’s outside the story? Is Paul actually on a stage at any point, or is that Johson’s preferred style of production design? Or, in the other direction, is Paul ever off the stage? Ever in the real world? Is this all just one long production on the same huge stage? Is Paul acting for us or does he truly not remember who he is? As the opening lines of the film inform us, Paul’s world is “a world in which everyone knows their lines and the only real thing is home.” But… what is home? And what makes it real?

The Actor is certainly indebted to some of modern cinema’s momentous mindfucks––Synecdoche, New York, Birdman, Beau Is Afraid, and I’m Thinking of Ending Things chief among them––but Johnson avoids the capital crime of imitation, delivering a fresh-yet-recognizable take on the microgenre. It’s a trip in its own right, even if it’s missing Kaufman’s trademark sense of existential grandeur.

It requires less headwork than a Kaufman film, which some will certainly appreciate. But at its most abstract, the winding story beats and hazy visuals house less mystery (and, toward the end, tend to drag). They seem more motivated by creating a unique atmosphere and style than unfolding an endlessly complicated origami story. And that’s fine. 

The movie looks amazing, it’s often intriguing, the style is evocative, and it should be distinct from Kaufman’s work. But in the ways that it’s similar, there’s less to be discovered––the ghost of revelation where it feels revelation could be. A relative newcomer to writing, directing, and producing features, perhaps it’s only a matter of time before Johnson finds the revelatory voice teetering on the edge of The Actor, waiting to dive in.

The Actor opens in theaters on Friday, March 14.

A film with a few solid laughs and crowd-pleasing moments, Death of a Unicorn never quite pushes the envelope as far as it could or should. Landing somewhere between a traditional horror comedy and a Succession-lite satire, Alex Scharfman’s debut feature is a reimagining of the unicorn maiden mythology that finds father-daughter duo Elliot (Paul Rudd) and Ridley (Jenna Ortega) in the middle of a peculiar situation. En route to visit Elliot’s mogul boss on a remote nature preserve, they unexpectedly run over a unicorn. Ridley experiences a hypnotic trip gazing into the eyes of the mythical creature, causing Elliot to beat it to a purple bloody pulp and stow it in the trunk.

Elliot is a fixer hoping to elevate himself to full power of attorney over the eccentric pharma billionaire Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant). The patriarch of a wealthy family that embodies so many cliches, Odell lives with wife Belinda (Tea Leoni) and son Sheppard (Will Poulter), an aspiring thought-leader and disrupter without an original idea in his head. Ortega’s Ridley is naturally the smartest one in the room, the pure maiden (an angle that could have been further exploited for some bigger laughs) who combs through research from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s archives, discovering that things are about to get bloody.

Steve Park and Sunita Mani play doctors on call at the mansion who stand by to synthesize the unicorn’s horns into an injectable serum that mysteriously cures Odell, who was suffering from cancer. The film gets about as scientific as Jurassic Park as the family debates what to do next. Naturally, Sheppard calls his bros and tries selling an eight-ball of horn powder to the highest bidder.

While there are glimmers of the promise of satire and Poulter delivers comic gold, the script by Scharfman gives him too little to work with––it never quite commits to a track. Unicorn instead reverts to the least-interesting path of a straight horror comedy, with the kind of unicorn horn-impaling that you might expect. Comedies such as this are delicate balancing acts; despite the value add of Rudd playing a guy who is willing to become unlikable to set himself and his daughter up for a future, the affair is mostly predictably straightforward. Ortega again plays to type as a notch above the IQ of the rest of the ensemble, giving away what’s to come as she tries to give due warning.

While, individually, the actors give it their all, Death of a Unicorn never quite finds its collective footing or place, a watered-down compromise of a picture more than a confident piece of storytelling. This feels almost like a throwback to the old days at Miramax, where Harvey Weinstein test-screened every film to death with the goal of manufacturing a hit. Sometimes you get smart feedback; usually, when you try to predict what everyone might like, you end up with a film that’s lost the script. Death of a Unicorn isn’t quite that, but it does feel like a thematic and genre compromise that doesn’t do as much with its high concept as it could.

Death of a Unicorn premiered at SXSW 2025 and opens in theaters on March 28.

Falling somewhere between a horror film and dark comedy about wellness crazes, The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick is, like director Pete Ohs’ previous Jethica, a film that suggests watching a play within a movie. Both features are difficult to discuss without spoilers––they seem to operate on a wavelength beyond genre boxes.

It might help to know the creative process going in. Tick was made collaboratively by its main cast: as Ohs explained during the SXSW premiere, they isolated on location at a country home where they would write three scenes at a time, film and analyze said scenes, and then move forward. The result is a kind of mumblecore version of an Ingmar Bergman film that feels both loose and heavily controlled. But if you’re not on the film’s wavelength it may feel like a disjointed mess. Like the wellness cures offered by AJ (James Cusati-Moyer), the resident chef in the group, they require buy-in and faith. Framed by Baz Luhrmann’s quote that “a life lived in fear is a life half-lived,” it was simply this film’s title that was enough to get frequent Ohs collaborators on board.

Camile (Callie Hernandez) invites old college friend Yvonne (Zoë Chao) to her upstate house to stay in the wake of a personal tragedy, a detox and an escape from the city. Greeted by Camile’s realtor Issac (Jeremy O. Harris) and his partner AJ, they encounter all kinds of supernatural forces in an old home that features holes in the floor ostensibly to spread out the heat, but really serve as voyeuristic portals.

The ultimate DIY filmmaker, Ohs shot and edited this picture as he had with Jethica, a kind of deconstructed Thelma & Louise with supernatural and Shakespearean undertones. As one might imagine, The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick operates with a similar approach, ratcheting up the tension in creepily effective passages proving it might only be a matter of time before Blumhouse comes calling.

Restraint is the order of the day: Ohs’ film grapples with themes of motherhood, friendship, health, wellness, and fantasy, creating a hypnotic biological narrative that is difficult to describe without spoiling details. The aforementioned tick tips the film into a light body horror category as it continues to get worse for Yvonne, who plots her escape but is ultimately captive to the quasi-family into which she’s been indoctrinated. The film veers into the spiritual territory of Being John Malkovich as the group thinks about life cycles and the next generation.

Your mileage may vary when approaching The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick, but it is a film that quite effectively melds joy, beauty, and horror elements that defy characterization. Yet it somehow sticks the landing with a sharp tone and an ensemble that has come together to make a film almost by workshop. In that way, this is a movie about the making of a movie, and independent film is largely a family affair as well. The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick is the creative process that flows from that initial idea, an obvious metaphor that doesn’t dawn on the viewer until one gleans more about its process.

The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick premiered at SXSW 2025.

A return to form for Jay Duplass, who’s also making his solo-directing debut, The Baltimorons is a charming throwback to the low-budget indies he directed with his brother Mark. Written and starring burly stand-up comedian Michael Strassner, the Baltimore-set film follows the mis-adventures of an unlikely romantic duo: Strassner’s Cliff, a stand-up comedian six months sober, and his older workaholic dentist Didi (Liz Larsen). Cliff is bantering with his fiancée Brittany (Olivia Luccardi) when he falls and chips a tooth, sending him frantically searching for a dentist who will take him on Christmas Eve. Didi is the only one who takes his call, agreeing to meet him in her empty office for surgery.

Cliff is a silly teddy bear who aims to please even when he frequently oversteps the line into offending. He’s generously curious, often living life to acquire new material for stand-up. Like the personal lives of some filmmakers who often seem to be gathering material more than enjoying existence, Cliff always appears to be testing the waters. In this case, he’s perhaps playing a long game of “yes and” improv. The Baltimorons follows a similar structure, amping up both the embarrassment and sincerity.

Gathering new material isn’t exactly a bad thing, except for the fact he’s promised fiancée Brittany no more stand-up and, of course, no drinking. Yet, after the oral surgery, there’s plenty of material for a routine when Cliff’s car is towed to an impound lot and Didi agrees to drive him. Stalling his family dinner, Cliff takes it as a sign when Brittany gives him a free pass to get something to eat on his own once it starts getting late. He and Didi ultimately spend the day and night together when they try to find a restaurant with an open table in a hot neighborhood.

The film itself does not overstay its welcome, building sympathy for our lead character while fully using winter in Baltimore to create a portrait of characters down on their luck but ultimately happier together. Didi, divorced and newly a grandmother, doesn’t want her time wasted but is ultimately terrified at the prospect of spending the holidays alone and slowly becoming irrelevant to her daughter. When she brings Cliff to crash a holiday party, he performs masterfully on his feet in front of her ex-husband, the crabber Conway (Brian Mendes), and his more emotionally available new wife Patty (Mary Catherine Garrison). Despite the obvious pain of being present in the same room with family she’s distant from, the others can clearly see how Cliff and Didi make a compatible pairing.

Like The Puffy Chair and Cyrus, The Baltimorons is a charming and endearing throwback to mumblecore’s heyday, as well as the influential, gritty character studies of the 1970s. Even with his flaws, Cliff is ultimately a tender man who wants to do right by Brittany and Didi, at times trying too hard to be perfect. Inspired by Strassner’s own struggles, The Baltimorons holds awkwardness in a kind of perfect harmony. While the film may embrace a low-budget, drab-naturalistic aesthetic, it’s far from dull. Duplass, Strassner, and Larsen brilliantly execute one of the year’s finest romantic comedies.

The Baltimorons premiered at SXSW 2025.

We’ve had Looney Tunes for nearly a century. Leon Schlesinger produced their first short Sinkin’ in the Bathtub alongside animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising in 1930. Almost 100 years later, the only Looney Tunes feature films (outside of theatrically released compilations) have been two Space Jams, 2003’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action, the tragically unreleased Coyote vs. Acme, and now the latest offering: The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.

Directed by Peter Browngardt, this is a charming affair. Modeled after sci-fi B-movies of the 1950s and starring Looney Tunes legends Porky Pig and Daffy Duck (both voiced by Eric Bauza), The Day the Earth Blew Up starts with a UFO landing. The spacecraft takes off on the roof of Porky and Daffy’s broken-down house (bequeathed to them by surrogate father Farmer Jim) just before crashing. It goes on to infect a local scientist (Fred Tatasciore) with a zombifying goo not long after. Soon enough, the goo is in the mix at the gum factory, where Porky and Daffy have taken jobs in a last-ditch effort to save their beloved home from being demolished.

As the entire town––and quickly the entire world!––becomes gum-zombies, matters are further complicated when Porky becomes smitten with factory co-worker Petunia Pig (Candi Milo), fracturing his lifelong friendship with Daffy. Meanwhile, The Invader (Peter MacNicol, doing great voice work here) cackles from his spaceship as his apparent plan for world domination takes shape. The funniest bits in the film come from The Invader’s reactions to ineptitude.

It all moves at a breakneck pace, pausing only for well-timed needle drops (R.E.M. and Bryan Adams are stand-outs) and brief, welcome flashbacks. There’s an extended sequence in the middle of the picture, wherein Porky and Petunia are fighting the zombies before a Daffy mistake forces them to run away, that is breathless and impressive. Browngardt has a deep love for these characters (he’s currently the executive producer and creative director behind Max’s Looney Tunes Cartoons) and does well to develop (and resolve) real conflict in the narrative. For all of the slapstick, meta-commentary, and bathroom humor, there are stakes to the plot and an investment in what happens to our friends Porky and Daffy. It certainly helps that many viewers will have grown up with an inherent fondness for these characters, if through nothing else but cultural osmosis.

While obviously geared towards children of all ages, there is an edge to this film that’s also present in the aforementioned Looney Tunes Cartoons (and frankly existent in most of the Looney Tunes oeuvre) that makes everything a little scary and more exciting than expected. And while the ending loses a bit of its punch and moves almost too fast for its own good, it’s no matter––The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie is an enjoyable exercise in updated nostalgia. Its success begs the question: why do we not have ten Looney Tunes theatrically released feature films by now? Let’s hope this is the first of many.

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie opens in theaters on Friday, March 14.

Back at New Directors/New Films in 2019, I was struck by Philippe Lesage’s deeply moving, boldly structured coming-of-age tale Genesis, ultimately naming it one of my top 10 films of its respective year. Half-a-decade later the Quebecois filmmaker has finally returned with a worthy follow-up, expanding on his knack for expertly conceived characters with a wider ensemble. Who by Fire is a lush, intimate, psychologically riveting drama following two families on a secluded getaway in a remote cabin as they contend with career and romantic jealousies. 

I spoke with Lesage while he was in town for the film’s 62nd New York Film Festival premiere last fall, and now sharing the conversation ahead of Friday’s opening at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center and next week’s opening at LA’s Laemmle Theatres. We spoke about expanding his scope, his approach to cinematography, what television will never have compared to cinema, his music-centered sequences, and his forthcoming spiritual sequel to Genesis.

The Film Stage: After Berlinale, did you make any changes to the film? I noticed the runtime was slightly shorter.

Philippe Lesage: There’s five minutes less than that version.

Ah, just decided to trim a little?

Yes, I did the exercise just for the sake of it. And then I was very resistant. It was just about the distribution in France. But I mean, come on: it doesn’t make a lot of difference, two hours and 25 minutes or 41 minutes. But while playing with it, I started to remove scenes after I saw it so many times and I saw it also with an audience in Berlin. And also moments where I felt, “Oh, it’s a little bit long here. It’s a little bit lingering too much.” I really love the new version actually; I think it’s better. I don’t know if you noticed the difference.

I actually only saw the new version.

Okay. Yeah, I simplified a bit the dreams, but I prefer it because, in the last dream, you don’t know if it’s Aliocha or Jeff that’s dreaming. I really like that. Noah [Parker, who plays Jeff] saw it last night, that new one, and he preferred this version, and then also my cinematographer who saw it in Paris. So I think I made a good choice. It’s interesting to play with the film, but I feel like a painter who goes into the gallery when the painting is already there. He’s changing a bit, the colors.

Just starting more at the beginning, your previous two films focus mostly on adolescence. Obviously here you have that too, but  I would say two of the primary characters are adults. What made you want to explore adult characters a bit more?

It’s not like I’m trying to do films about teenagers or stuff. It’s more like the first two films were very autobiographical. That’s the reason why I did the films, and it was revisiting my youth––so there’s that––and then for this one, I thought it was interesting to switch the kind of point of view. Because in the first films, the adults were almost absent. In Genesis, they’re almost like in Charlie Brown. [Laughs] They are out-of-frame. Of course there are teachers at the school, but then I thought it was interesting to really put myself in the shoes of the young people around the table there and perceive the adults through their eyes, even though I’m also telling their stories. That’s the point of view of the film, I think.

Of course, I’m being a bit critical with adults and with masculinity, more questioning––maybe symbolically––patriarchy in general, but really the films never come with an idea. It’s not an idea. It’s characters. It’s a story I want to tell. You can find things in Genesis and this film, also, that are echoing. I also tend to treat subjects… I go where it hurts. I don’t spare myself. I don’t spare others. And I disagree that these are all despicable characters; I think they’re humans with their flaws. I’m interested in showing their flaws. It’s much more interesting for me in films, and even in comedy, to have characters with flaws. That’s what makes a character like Albert also very funny. So yes: it was just a kind of transition towards this perception of still-young people but on the adults.

I really love the cinematography in your films. There’s a controlled warmth to it that really invites one in, where it feels as a viewer you are also hanging out in the cabin with them. Because of that, you’re more taken into the characters, so when perhaps darker flaws are exposed, you’re invested. How do you come up with the color palette you are going to use and these beautiful crosssfades? 

For me, film is really about atmosphere and mood. It’s what I recall when I think about the films that I loved when I was young. Even though the story can be violent or difficult, there’s some aspect to it that you want to live in the film. So I think there’s a little bit of that, that I tried to create: that atmosphere, that house, the woods around, the color, the choice of lenses. We worked with Panavision from the ’70s. There was probably big classics shot with exactly the same camera lens we used for the film. So there was a notion of getting a texture.

I cannot afford to shoot on film because we had a decent budget for this one, obviously my biggest budget so far, but the way I direct the films, I cannot afford film because I’m doing 20 takes on average for each shot––so it’s impossible. Then there’s work in trying to find a texture, anyway, so it doesn’t look like digital. So with Balthazar Lab, the cinematographer on this one––who is different from my previous films, Nicolas Canniccioni––the recipe came very early in the process. And of course the texture is not only about the lenses you’re using or the light you’re using; it’s really also about finding the right locations.

We shot the house in this very old cabin from the 1800s, or the beginning of the century, where it was a fishing club for very rich people that were coming to Quebec in airplanes and then fishing around the region or hunting bears and stuff like that. So that house was completely intact. It was preserved––owners now are actually fantastic––and I had the luxury to go back there and to spend a couple holidays, because they’re very nice and we became friends. [Laughs]

It’s true, though: it’s not about being realistic in it. I’m being very naturalistic in terms of the acting. I really want people to speak in the films like they speak in real life; it’s really the tone that I’m looking for. I want to remove the theater out of [it]. It has to be, for me, very cinematic and like if you’re witnessing these real people having an argument or living something. That’s really the tone that I’m looking for and I’m obsessed with the tone of the film. There’s something a bit impressionistic, I think, in all my films, that I’m trying to create this kind of universe where it’s actually warm in a way and, maybe, yes, it does compensate with the fact that I’m sometimes dealing with very harsh subjects––like, of course, in Genesis and also a bit in this one, even though nobody gets killed. It’s kind of letting the light also be in there. I also believe there’s light in all the characters. Even though sometimes it’s a bit difficult to see in some of the characters, I admit.

Another way your characters exude joy is in the music sequences you have in almost all of your films. I’m sure you get asked this a lot, but how do those come about with the songs you are selecting and how much direction do you give for dance sequences? I’m thinking of the B-52s scene.

It’s a mix of freedom and creating this… that scene is very important because it’s after the wine-gate scene, so there’s a lot of tension around the table, but it’s also very comical; it’s the comedy of life. When you take a step back, there’s many things that are horribly comical. The dancing scene is a moment of relief, and of course all my films are built around music. It’s the starting point of it for me because I start choosing music very early in the process––not “Rock Lobster,” though––and then the music is like guiding me to do my own direction in the writing.

Then one of my greatest joys in life is when you are sitting in the editing suite three years after you wrote the script and then you are putting the music on and you see that it’s working. And sometimes you need to mourn because the song is too expensive and you need to find another solution. But sometimes the plan B is more interesting. I’m very resilient about the little deceptions you can encounter, because every time I had to change an actor at the last minute, I lost somebody, we lost a location––it was always for the best. I pray to the gods of cinema.

It worked out.

Yeah, exactly. I want that to continue.

Noah Parker, Philippe Lesage, Aurélia Arandi-Longpré at Berlinale 2024.

There’s so much about the long conversations that I loved, but there’s one quote, where a character says, “TV is the reason for the moral and intellectual decline of of our age.” I don’t think your movies would play as well on TV since they are so cinematic. I’m curious if you share the belief of your character.

I was a film teacher once, so I put that element that Albert used to be a teacher. Maybe Albert is just slightly a bit older than Blake, but more or less they’re the same age. My other colleagues, they were talking more about the industry, which I found too disgusting to think about, talking about the industry when you are in film school, because if you’re not experimenting there without compromise at film school, then you will never be… I mean, what’s going to happen to you? It’s not a place to make compromises. I was telling my students the importance of getting very personal stories and digging in their own [life], finding that interesting topic that moves them. Scratching where it hurts, in some ways.

It was 2008, 2009 when I was a teacher and TV was a bit shit. And I’m not a huge fan of TV, but I can see that it’s stealing so much now from cinema. But there’s one thing that TV doesn’t steal from cinema and that’s what makes cinema still a relevant art form: it’s not stealing the flaws of films, the “unnecessary” scenes. For instance, you wouldn’t have a five-minute scene of dancing to “Rock Lobster.” Because they would say, “Okay, we got it.” So I like to take risks, and I don’t really care if my films are not perfect because I’m not looking for [it], even though if I think that I did the best that I could do. I like my films, but I don’t have the pretension that they are perfect. And I don’t think I’ve done my masterpiece yet, to be honest. [Laughs]

But that imperfection is also exploring, and it’s taking a risk. Like the end of Genesis, for instance: half of the comments on Letterboxd say they don’t fucking understand anything about the ending, but I think this is the best thing in the film. 

Yeah, I love it. 

So I don’t really care. Filmmakers who are taking the risk, playing with the structure, they’re the ones who are making cinema still relevant. Because otherwise we are being screwed up by TV. TV is a compressor. You can have amazing acting in TV now. You can have good directing when you have money. But it doesn’t really… it’s still a kind of consumption thing. And it’s made to get you hooked on things. While cinema has the possibility to bore you, but then you get a little fantastic reward after the wait. [Laughs] Then you go home and you feel like you’re richer. I’m not a big consumer of TV shows––life is too short––but I don’t really get anything that stays with me for a long time. 

Yes, everything is so resolved.

Yeah, even the best; even if the acting is good. I recently discovered Robert Bresson’s Four Nights of a Dreamer, which I never saw and it was a shock. Then I think about that film all the time, and there’s a spirit there of that film that stays in me and it’s beautiful and it’s beauty. Where are the contemplative moments in TV? So yes: I’m more like Blake in that sense. I believe we need to be fighting the good fight and no compromise. I hope I will not do “Rock Lobster,” the comic series. 

[Laughs] Well, I agree with all of that. You were last here for New Directors/New Films with Genesis, so what was the process and your reaction like when you knew it would be at the New York Film Festival? I know it’s been a long journey since Berlinale.

Well, it’s great. I’ve been wanting to come here for a long time. The thing is––I don’t know if I’m allowed to say––but they wanted [Who by Fire] for a long, long, long time here. They were the first to discover the film. I got an invitation from New York Festival before the film was in Berlin. So they wanted the film for almost two years. They saw many, many films and they still wanted it, which is fantastic. I really like Dennis [Lim] and Florence [Almozini]. I know the film is there because obviously I have no power in the industry and I’m more or less unknown, so it’s not because they need to put my film there because they want to please some entity. [Laughs] So it’s very nice and the film is having a great life. I’m traveling the world right now; I’m going to go on a tour of the world and it’s great. 

What I find also funny is: I’m also going to new festivals. But there’s also festivals that usually love my films and they didn’t invite me this time. But then I’m invited to somewhere else and ––

You make new friends. 

Yes, a new place. It’s also funny because there’s people who are like, “I really love Genesis,” and then they don’t really like this one. Or the opposite. Or they said, “I really loved The Demons and then everything you’ve been doing after that, it’s, you know…” 

It’s a lot of opinions. 

Some people are talking about my old documentaries. “Oh. Is this your best film? The one you did in 2009?”

I was going to ask for your other documentaries. How can you access them? Because I watched The Demons this weekend. 

You can find The Demons, no?

Yes, I watched it this weekend. It was streaming on Prime Video. 

Had you seen it before?

No, I hadn’t.

Did you like it?

Yes, I liked it. It’s interesting to see it as a stepping stone to Genesis, because they are twins a little bit.

It’s a bold film, especially nowadays, dealing with the sexuality of children. It’s a bold subject.

And the documentaries are not as available, right?

Depends. You would need to ask the director for a link. They are difficult to find.

What did you learn the most from the documentaries that you carried through to narrative filmmaking?

It changed my whole perception of what it is to make cinema. I think I had a concept that it was very fiction––very, in a way, American kind of storytelling––and then I tried changing my approach in terms of acting and looking for surprises and accidents on a film set, and not being attached to a preconceived idea of how you are going to make a scene, how you are going to shoot. But in the moment, you’re there and you think, “Oh my God, this is great.” And because the more you prepare, the more you can leave a space for what is unexpected. And I’m looking for the unexpected. So the documentaries, you need patience.

My breakthrough documentary in Quebec––the film didn’t really travel outside of Quebec, sadly enough––was shot in the hospital and it was a spectacle of life and a comedy of life as well, both tragic and funny and human. So there was not a moment where I was not doing something truthful. Because when you go to see the doctor, you don’t care about the guy who is filming. They agreed or not, then once I’m there they were completely like the best actors on earth because they were forgetting I was there. I’m looking for that moment where the actors are forgetting that they are even playing in the film. There’s a very beautiful quote from a Taoist code that says, “The best swimmer is the one that forgets that he’s in the water.” This is great because this is how I see work. Because when you can forget that you’re even doing a film, it’s like, wow. 

It’s like magic. 

Those moments happen. That’s all coming from my documentary background.

To wrap up, you mentioned, for your next project, hoping to have a follow-up to Genesis with some of the same characters. Is that still happening?

Yes, I’m applying for financing now. It’s going to be with Théodore Pellerin and a French-Quebec actor Niels Schneider. He’s a famous actor in France, but he’s from Montreal originally. Of course you don’t need to have seen Genesis to see this. It’s really like…

A spiritual sequel.

Yes, it’s just a name. But basically it’s Guillaume [Pellerin’s character] ten years after. He’s a grown-up and he’s full of passion for a lot of things, but the world doesn’t send him back the echo of his passions so he is struggling, and it’s tough. Like it could be when you’re back in your 20s. I hated my 20s. They informed me, but it was difficult––especially when you carry a flame and you really know what you want to do––and I was really struggling. I wanted to make films and I was uncompromising. I really want to write in a free way as well. It will be the first time I will put my parents in a film. I think they are a little too old because they will be playing 20 years younger, but they’ll have a part. [Laughs]

Who by Fire opens on March 14 at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center, on March 21 at LA’s Laemmle Theaters, and will expand.

While it’s been very difficult of late to figure out what Martin Scorsese will follow Killers of the Flower Moon (already a couple years out from its Cannes premiere), today brings some of the closest confirmation of where he’ll head next. Surprise: Leonardo DiCaprio is coming with.

Per Publisher’s Weekly, Apple Original Films have obtained rights to Marilynne Robinson’s four Gilead novels, the second of which, Home, Scorsese has discussed since 2023. DiCaprio will lead the film, produced by Todd Field, who’s co-written Home with Scorsese and Kent Jones while said to be handling the first entry, Gilead, though the article notes an ambiguity around “plans to adapt the remaining books in the series.”

The news suggests DiCaprio would play Jack Boughton, a wayward alcholic who returns to his hometown of Gilead to take care of a dying father alongside his sister Glory. These roles recur in Robinson’s other books, suggesting notable commitments from DiCaprio and whoever is cast therein––a major prospect all its own. Whatever transpires, it’s wonderful knowing Scorsese is nearing a project for which he’s expressed such passion.

A big swing and nearly a miss, Chad Hartigan’s The Threesome is not without its charms even as it can overstay its welcome. A rom-com that offers a more serious tone for characters either in a state of arrested development or a new kind of adulthood that defies labels, it has much in common with Hartigan’s previous films, which live and breathe as hangout movies. His latest, written by Ethan Ogilby, starts to wane as characters continue bantering over the predicament they find themselves in time and again, leading to an awkward balancing act.

The fatal flaw is that lead Connor (Jonah Hauer-King) is too generic––a recording engineer living in Little Rock, Arkansas who appears to be an all-around good guy made for flirty banter. He’s always had a thing for hip waitress Olivia (the always-spirited Zoey Deutch). Olivia is either a free spirit or someone without a trajectory; it’s easy to see why Connor has a crush on her. One evening at the restaurant they pick up Jenny (Ruby Cruz), a stranger at the bar, and head back to Connor’s place. After the threesome takes place, Connor and Jenny exchange numbers in an awkward parting of ways moments before he asks Olivia out on a real date.

Olivia comes with her own baggage––their first date involves babysitting the rambunctious kids of Olivia’s sister––but eventually they fall hard in a montage of hanging out, going for long walks, and, of course, “Netflix and chill.” Soon they realize Olivia is pregnant and, as they deliberate the next steps, the other shoe drops: Jenny is also pregnant.

Connor is soon forced into making a good impression on Jenny’s religious family while also keeping his commitment to Olivia, who––a liberal in Little Rock conflicted about keeping her child––is full of her own contradictions with hilariously little filter, loudly telling it like it is in public. Meanwhile, Jenny is deeply religious and takes the pregnancy as a sign. She’s also a paradox, a sexually curious grad student who knows she’s not meant to be with Connor but desperately needs him to be present for her parents.

While Hartigan keeps the affair restrained and grounded with some flashes of humor, the momentum starts to drag: Connor is the least-flawed (and, by extension, least-interesting) leg of the triangle. Far more restrained than, say, a Will Gluck-directed studio rom-com, Hartigan’s picture could use a little more energy without resorting to tropes like Connor’s gay best friend (Jaboukie Young-White) who is brought in for comic relief and well-timed advice.

While uneven in character development, The Threesome is a rare rom-com that tackles serious issues around access to abortion care and what modern dating looks like, even in a politically divided city in a deep red state. While there’s a lot to admire and some big laughs courtesy of Deutch, the film will wear down audiences a bit, feeling both redundant and, as many romantic comedies do, ultimately predictable. 

The Threesome premiered at 2025 SXSW.

Directed by Rodney Ascher, best known for his horror-focused documentaries Room 237 and The Nightmare, Ghost Boy approaches its subject Martin Pistorius from, at times, the same perspective of his last feature A Glitch in the Matrix: locked in an infinite loop that suggests a simulation of life. In 1988, at age twelve, Pistorius became mysteriously ill with a sore throat. His condition rapidly deteriorated, leaving him unable to walk and feed himself. His family, initially supportive as they started slumber parties with him, became overwhelmed. A seemingly normal childhood in South Africa was upended overnight and he was ultimately sent to the Alfa and Omega Special Care Centre where he was abandoned, neglected, and abused by staff.

Like A Glitch in the Matrix and Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Ghost Boy explores existential questions about the nature of living when one is a ghost or spectator, unable to communicate despite feeling the need to scream. Like Bauby, however, Pistorius ultimately learns to communicate and, in 2011, went on to publish his best-selling book from which this film takes its title.

With an intimate, innovative structure, the bulk of Ghost Boy is dedicated to a long interview with Pistorius in which he interacts with the filmmaker through a computer-generated voice as he types. Speaking about his early childhood, the illness that wrecked his body, and the burden of his condition on his loving family and their ultimate decision to place him in a care facility, he recounts the feeling of death and floating through life. In his state he remains fully aware, even if unable to properly communicate at first––initially he loses part of his memory, which he pieces together from family scrapbooks and home movies. 

Life in the care home is cruel, staff treating their residents as subhuman. It’s only until a kind nurse, Virna, starts working at Alfa and Omega that Martin is given the tools to come out of his prison. Martin describes springing to life as Virna provides aromatherapy messages and simply talks to the residents, fostering a kind of human connection that the other practitioners did not provide. (As a teen, he was forced to watch kids’ shows, including an endless loop of Barney & Friends.) It is ultimately Virna that saves Martin as a new form of diagnosis emerges alongside new communication tools, exhibited when he’s taken in for an exam and proves he can identify symbols.

Through its recreations designed by David Offner and Jeanine Ringer, as well as extensive interviews with Martin, Ghost Boy probes philosophical questions about the nature of observing life without the tools to communicate. Ascher is a unique choice to direct the film; he does so with great sensitivity and attention to detail as Martin recounts the feeling of having all the time in the world before regaining the ability to communicate.

In the care home, Martin is alienated but observant, taking in the secrets of the staff and growing interested in what most teenage boys want: affection and intimacy from the opposite sex. Despite his limitations, he does get to experience that in spades, describing his sex ed via a computer tablet and the first time he went out on a limb and felt the most human of emotions: heartbreak.

Ghost Boy world premiered at the SXSW 2025.

After Sean Baker’s sex work dramedy Anora won top honors at the Oscars last week, a Japanese landmark feature from Roman Porno master director Noboru Tanaka exploring the profession has been restored and is getting a U.S. release. The Oldest Profession (aka Confidential Report: Sex Market or Secret Chronicle: She Beast Market), restored in 4K from the original 35mm master negative NIKKATSU Corporation at Cineric in New York and Lisbon, is an uncompromising depiction of the realities of sex work in 1970s Japan. Ahead of theatrical screenings at NYC’s Metrograph on March 28 and 30 and Film Movement’s digital release on April 4, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the new trailer.

Here’s the synopsis: “19-year-old Tome is a sex worker who draws in customers around the red-light district of Osaka. She lives with her mentally disabled younger brother, Saneo, and her mother, Yone, who is also still active as a sex worker despite being over 40 years old. One day, after receiving a request for a young girl, Tome goes to the designated inn. On arrival she encounters Yone, who is unable to find work. A few days later, Yone tells Tome that she is pregnant… 20 years have passed since the Prostitution Prevention Law was enacted, and the red-light district is now gone. Nonetheless, sex work as a profession persists. Noboru Tanaka’s controversial film (also known as ‘Lusty Beast Market’) portrays sorrowful but strong and resilient women who have no other choice but to earn a living by selling their bodies.”

See the trailer below for the film starring Meika Seri, Genshu Hanayagi, Shiro Yumemura, Moeko Ezawa, Junko Miyashita, and Sakumi Hagiwara.

A snapshot of the most exciting voices working in American and international cinema today––and with a strong focus on newcomers––the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look festival returns this week, taking place March 12-16. 

As always, the festival brings together a varied, eclectic lineup of cinema from all corners of the world––including a number of films still seeking distribution, making this series perhaps one of your only chances to see these works on the big screen. Check out our top picks below.

100,000,000,000,000 (Virgil Vernier)

Virgil Vernier’s third fiction feature sees him continuing his examination of characters floating through liminal spaces borne out of capital. He follows sex worker Afine (Zakaria Bouti) spending the Christmas holidays alone in Monaco, where he befriends a woman babysitting the daughter of wealthy parents until the new year. Shooting once again on 16mm, Vernier creates a transfixing mood through hazy imagery: Afine and his friend exist in a limbo state, inhabiting areas for the ultra-rich without ever truly being a part of them. What makes Vernier’s work so fascinating is how, with little plot, he conveys the malaise that grows from this hollow form of existence and develops into an apocalyptic dread. – C.J. P.

Bonjour Tristesse (Durga Chew-Bose)

There was slight trepidation going into Bonjour Tristesse. Justifying itself as another “adaptation” of Françoise Sagan’s text rather than remake of Otto Preminger’s masterpiece of mise-en-scène, there’s still some hesitation about the chutzpah that must go into thinking you can top that great craftsman at the height of his power. As directed by writer-turned-filmmaker Durga Chew-Bose with a great deal of formal assurance (you definitely won’t mistake this for something akin to, say, Maximum Overdrive in that career-switch category), this 2024 iteration is a highly respectable effort that’ll speak to countless people the original didn’t. One major difference being that Preminger made the film as a showcase for the muse he was having an affair with, Jean Seberg, casting some leering-male element onto the whole project. Chew-Bose’s project isn’t so much feminist as feminine––that a working-out of neurosis that doesn’t provide completely easy answers. – Ethan V. (full review)

The Fifth Shot of La Jetée (Dominique Cabrera)

While, a few years ago, Bianca Stigter explored a few minutes of footage across an entire documentary in Three Minutes: A Lengthening, Dominique Cabrera’s The Fifth Shot of La Jetée takes an even more narrow scope. As its title suggests, this documentary explores the filmmaker’s excavating of personal history as it relates to a shot from Chris Marker’s masterpiece. Structured as a mystery-of-sorts to put together the many pieces if, indeed, it was Cabrera’s family featured in a “stolen photo,” it’s an inventive, playful work, ranging from complex math calculations of probability if they were there the day of filming to more emotional revelations about the past. While those expecting a more thorough analysis of Marker’s film may leave disappointed, it’s a compelling testament to how many life stories are contained in every frame of cinema. – Jordan R.

Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 (Göran Hugo Olsson)

Göran Hugo Olsson’s documentary provides an account of the conflict between Israel and Palestine through Sweden’s publi- television broadcaster across more than 30 years. A prologue provides context that the footage should be viewed in: not as any sort of objective take on the subject, but a glimpse into how it was presented to Swedish audiences. Told chronologically in a clinical fashion, with index cards introducing each news segment, the film inevitably serves as both a primer for the ongoing war between the two nations and a look at the evolution of its coverage by the media. Respectable in its disciplined, straightforward presentation that highlights media biases, Olsson correctly frames the film and subject matter for its intended audience, who have mainly engaged with it through screens and an often unquestioned trust in the authorities presenting it. As a title card states in the opening frames, archival material says more about how things are told than how they really happened. – C.J. P.

The Periphery of the Base (Zhou Tao)

Artist Zhou Tao sets his camera on workers in the Gobi desert surrounding an infrastructure project we never see. Zhou observes from afar, panning and zooming in on workers having lunch or making their way through the vast, barren landscape. The camera continues to roam at a deliberate yet restless pace until it enters the realm of abstraction. With a pan or zoom, a defined image of a workers’ camp can suddenly change into something unrecognizable, form into an entirely different image, and then reframe and redefine itself again, all within seconds in the same shot. It’s impossible to identify whether or not The Periphery of the Base achieves this effect in-camera or through some sort of manipulation, but the results are exhilarating. – C.J. P.

When the Phone Rang (Iva Radivojevic)

Premiering at the Locarno Film Festival last year (where it picked up a special mention prize), Iva Radivojevic’s sensitive, enigmatic second feature When the Phone Rang centers on a phone call received by the protagonist Lana informing her a grandparent has passed, the foundation of which evolves into a memory piece exploring the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Radivojevic’s editing background (on such features as King Coal, Ma, and this year’s John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office) is beautifully articulated here, fragments of tender loss for both family and identity pieced together in compellingly unconventional yet affecting ways. – Jordan R.

Zodiac Killer Project (Charlie Shackleton)

What would a feature-length director commentary look like when the film was never made? This is the slippery, fascinating conceit of Charlie Shackleton’s rather brilliant Zodiac Killer Project, which finds the director walking through his failed attempt to adapt Lyndon E. Lafferty’s book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge into the first major documentary on the unsolved case. What emerges, one could argue, is even more intellectually stimulating than the original intentions: a sui generis, often humorous stream-of-consciousness journey highlighting the ever-mounting mass of repeated cliches of various true-crime documentaries and series. Instead of a simple hit piece, however, Shackleton investigates why such familiarity often works on the viewer while ensuring you’ll never watch such a program the same way again. – Jordan R. (full review)

First Look 2025 takes place March 12-16 at the Museum of the Moving Image. Learn more here.

While this is, admittedly, Not A Movie, Hideo Kojima has perhaps come closest to bridging the video game-cinema divide, either through decades of indispensable work or the recent assistance of A24. It helps collecting onscreen talent that would make any producer blush: as revealed in trailers dating all the way back to 2022, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach returns Léa Seydoux, Norman Reedus, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Guillermo del Toro from its predecessor while adding to the fold George Miller, Fatih Akin, Elle Fanning, Luca Marinelli, and Shioli Kutsuna. With the announcement of a June 26 release comes the project’s new trailer, edited by Kojima himself.

Per his standards, Kojima hasn’t revealed too great a deal––little surprise from a man who’d craft games around characters seen across zero marketing––but there’s no mistaking its borderline-vérité visual sense, off-center comic sensibility, melodramatic pathos, or apocalyptic foreshadowing for anyone else.

Watch below: