Feeling the Child’s Voice: Sobs, Sniffs and Snuffles in Anatomy of a Fall| www.sensesofcinema.com
At the release of Justine Triet’s acclaimed film Anatomy of a Fall (2023), child actor Milo Machado-Graner was praised for an exceptionally emotive performance as Daniel, the adolescent son of an accused murderer. His magnetism is largely credited to his ability to convincingly, movingly cry onscreen. But what makes the crying child onscreen so moving? […]| Senses of Cinema
When the urge to play overcomes an adult, this is not simply a regression to childhood. To be sure, play is always liberating. – Walter Benjamin1 When my ten-year-old son and I visited Francis Alÿs: Ricochets one early afternoon last Summer, we thought we had plenty of time. The show, at the Barbican Art Gallery […]| Senses of Cinema
I met Neo Sora on a sunny morning in March in Amsterdam. His first fiction feature film, Happyend, was the opening film of the 17th CinemAsia Film Festival, the event dedicated to introducing Asian films to local audiences, building community, and celebrating queer and hybrid identities. Although it premiered at the Venice Film Festival in […]| Senses of Cinema
Set in the sun-scorched interiors of rural Tamil Nadu, Pebbles (P.S. Vinothraj, 2021) explores the emotional and psychological toll of surviving in an environment that is both intimately known and becoming increasingly unliveable. It is a quiet but searing portrayal of solastalgia – the deep psychological distress caused by climate change, where one suffers not […]| Senses of Cinema
Film is a sequence of photographs. Any two individual cells in a reel may resemble each other. But when shown in rapid sequence, they reveal movement. This past Christmas, director Robert Eggers released a new telling of the now familiar vampire myth, Nosferatu (2024). It is an adaptation of an adaptation: a retelling of Fritz […]| Senses of Cinema
Directed by photographer Robert Frank – author of the book The Americans (1958) – and painter Alfred Leslie, Pull My Daisy (1959) gathers some of the most important artists of the Beat Generation and their companions: poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, painters Larry Rivers and Alice Neel, musician David Amram, art dealer […]| Senses of Cinema
A combustible medium is perfect for a combustible world. Nitrate celluloid was discontinued as the de facto base for film stock in the early 1950s because of its notoriously flammable quality. Massive splotches of film history are completely lost to ashes because of vault fires such as the one that ravaged Twentieth Century Fox in […]| Senses of Cinema
On the back wall of the Māoriland Hub, in the Toi Matarau Gallery on the main street of Ōtaki on the Kāpiti Coast of Te Ika-a-Māui (the North Island of New Zealand), hangs a map of the world. Hand painted on a large sheet of canvas, the black outlines of islands and continents lack national […]| Senses of Cinema
“Hi there, this is the open address of our venue for today’s screenings.” I scroll through the email. There’s a Google Maps link followed by more instructions: “The building entrance is right between the market and the furniture shop; just push the outer door and you’ll be in.” The invite comes with a plea not […]| Senses of Cinema
Unspooling every spring in Nyon, Visions du Réel is known as the largest documentary film festival in Switzerland, as well as one of Europe’s most renowned. But on the shores of the ever-picturesque Lake Geneva, documentary cinema takes on a different form. The festival very adamantly stretches the boundaries of what it considers to be […]| Senses of Cinema
Halina Reijn is the first Dutch filmmaker to have a breakthrough in Hollywood since Paul Verhoeven, who made six feature films in America between 1987 (RoboCop) and 2000 (Hollow Man).1 Instinct (2019), a Dutch-language film selected for Locarno, was Reijn’s debut feature as a director. She then went overseas and shot the entertaining Gen Z […]| Senses of Cinema
“To put it bluntly, Scotland is, on the filmmaking front, a third world country, but this is tragically misrecognised by those holding the purse strings north of the border” (p. 219). So offers Colin McArthur in one of his most trenchant and pertinent essays in this large collection of pieces gathered over many years. The […]| Senses of Cinema
Cinema has long served as a battleground for political resistance, particularly in the works of filmmakers who have faced persecution, censorship, and exile. Among them, Yılmaz Güney and Mohammad Rasoulof stand as emblematic figures whose films encapsulate the struggles of marginalised communities, political dissidents, and those living under authoritarian rule. Both directors, despite working in […]| Senses of Cinema
I. Portraits of Baldwin in Paris Two portraits of James Baldwin hang to face each other across Gallery 1 of Paris’ Centre Pompidou. Part of Paris Noir (the Centre’s final exhibition before a planned five-year closure), they are the work of Baldwin’s friend and mentor, the painter Beauford Delaney. Each portrait affectingly weds portraiture to […]| Senses of Cinema
b. 1 January 1923, Ziguinchor, Senegal d. 9 June 2007, Yoff, Dakar, Senegal Ousmane Sembène is primarily remembered for his milestone contribution to African film history. His early films represent a linguistic and cultural shift from telling the stories of Africans in colonial countries by colonial filmmakers or filmmakers who were descendants of colonials in […]| Senses of Cinema
“My belief is that people love to play”. It’s hard to find a neater quote summarising the essence of Péter Kerekes’ cinema than the one coming from the man himself. The Slovakian documentary filmmaker balances fact and fun in his works, constantly experimenting with axiomatic definitions of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’, as his method of filmmaking […]| Senses of Cinema
Portuguese writer/director Pedro Pinho’s extraordinary drama, I Only Rest in the Storm (2025), set in Guinea-Bissau, is hypnotising throughout its 217-minutes running time. The film introduces Sérgio (Sérgio Coragem), a Portuguese environmental engineer, as he drives to Guinea-Bissau to work on a project for an NGO. He initially struggles to find the rhythm of the […]| Senses of Cinema
Once a quiet town at the outskirts of Kyiv, Irpin became one of the first front lines of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In February 2022, visual artist and filmmaker Alina Maksimenko found herself there, with a broken leg and her camera. Her debut feature documentary, In Limbo (2024), captures the war’s first days through the […]| Senses of Cinema
In 2019, a middle-aged man from the Republic of Sakha sets out on foot from its capital, Yakutsk, to Moscow to exorcise a demon from the Kremlin: Vladimir Putin. Pushing a makeshift cart loaded with wooden poles for a tent and basic provisions, Alexander (or Sasha) Gabyshev, with his long hair, a toothy smile missing […]| Senses of Cinema
Berwick-upon-Tweed is a seaside town located on the border between England and Scotland. Such porous identity is reflected in the town’s only film festival, the Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, which every year draws an eclectic group of filmmakers, programmers, critics, scholars, and cinephiles for a three-day foray into the in-between spaces of cinema. | Senses of Cinema
Over a black screen, birds chirp in the near distance. The dulcet chords of a cello begin to sound, embellished by a woman’s voice moving joyfully through a sequence of notes before harmonizing with another voice. A piece of thread slips through the eye of a needle and the words “Bright Star” appear as if written carefully by hand. The needle plunges upward in surprising close-up, pushing its way through the weave of fabric, before being thrust again downward.| Senses of Cinema