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Our decision to declare Miami Vice this century’s greatest action film some eight years ago was neither made lightly nor received unanimously, but fortune favors the bold. Part and parcel of its canonization, Michael Mann’s classic streams on Criterion this July as part of Miami Neonoir, a set boasting Larry Clark’s Bully, the recently departed George Armitage’s Miami Blues, Out of Sight, Body Heat, and John Bailey’s lesser-seen China Moon. Series-wise, films about David Lynch, Picasso, and Basquiat fill out Portraits of Artists, while Summer Romances arrives just in time for you to imagine a better life than watching movies on your laptop.

July is a retrospective-heavy month: the recently restored, totally essential films of Jacques Rozier, works directed and shot by D.A. Pennebaker, shorts by Suzan Pitt, and Lino Brocka, Moustapha Alassane, Michael Haneke, and Hou Hsiao-hsien programs are complemented by an exposition of the Rolling Stones on film.

Seven minutes from bucolic Molly Maguire Historical Park in Frackville, Pennsylvania is the State Correctional Institution at Mahanoy. Behind the dull-grey concrete walls and razor wire, in a situation he describes as “live from slow motion death row,” is Mumia Abu-Jamal, prisoner Am 8335. At one time an international cause, Abu-Jamal spent nearly three decades on Pennsylvania’s death row, maintaining his innocence and rousing millions to call for his release. Today, more than 40 years after he was convicted of murdering police officer Daniel Faulkner, he remains a third rail in Philadelphia politics.

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2024 NYFF coverage. The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire opens in theaters on June 6.

The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, the feature debut from artist and filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, aims to foreground its primary literary material and historical context, but instead directs more attention to its oneiric touches and environmental phenomena––the “wind in the trees,” so to speak. The title figure, together with her more widely known husband Aimé Césaire, were both at the forefront of the négritude movement, which sought to put Francophone literature by colonized peoples in greater dialogue with their African ancestry, and to depict this with a supple, surrealistic view of the world. Assembled from deep research, assistance from academic specialists, and consultations with the Césaire offspring, Hunt-Ehrlich’s bold formal schema still prevents us from fully absorbing these efforts: “feeling” does outpace our full understanding. The vibrant...

The Notebook Primer introduces vital figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Soleil Ô.Historian-Filmmaker, Filmmaker-HistorianMed Hondo’s debut feature, Soleil Ô (1970), concludes with a series of close-up and wide shots of a man screaming, each successive image accompanied by a prolonged, guttural groan. For Hondo, making the film was a form of therapy as he processed his own experiences of racial oppression and alienation as a young African immigrant living in Marseille. Like his contemporaries Ousmane Sembène, Sarah Maldoror, and Safi Faye, Hondo used cinema to interrogate the conditions of immigrant African labor in the metropole. In his expressionist rendering of this eruptive, cathartic scream, Hondo captures a moment of release from the psychological toll of colonization, a prospect Frantz Fanon described in his writings. Here, cinema works to awaken the consciousness of the colonized and plant the seeds of revolution for the liberation of the African continent and diaspora.

"Captain America: Brave New World" doesn't just stick a sequel tease in its end credits, it also includes a "special thanks" to a beloved actor. Is it star Anthony Mackie, or the "Brave New World" Mvp Harrison Ford? Nope, it's someone who doesn't even star in the film. Any guesses?

It's Octavia Spencer, who starred in "Captain America 4" director Julius Onah's previous film "Luce." Speaking to People magazine, Onah revealed why he thanked Spencer alongside his actual family and the Stan Lee Foundation. According to Onah, he may not have directed the movie if she hadn't helped him out. He explained:

"Octavia's the greatest. I'm such a fan of hers, and when the conversation was being had about this film, she put in some kind words for me with Kevin Feige and had spoken to [Anthony] Mackie as well. She's just a genuinely kind, incredibly talented human being, and...

Marrakech International Film Festival (Miff) is deploying a twofold tactic for its upcoming 21st edition to give a boost to its local theatrical distribution sector, and fuel wider global releases for Moroccan, Arab and Pan-African films.

“The idea is not to launch a market, but to create a platform whereby international distributors can discover films premiering in the festival’s selection and the projects at the Atlas Workshops,” the festival’s artistic director Remi Bonhomme tells Screen of the bespoke initiatives spanning both the festival(November 29 – December 7) and its parallel talent incubator the Atlas Workshops (December 1 – 5).

For the first time in its history,...

This sober but compelling study of the man who radically transformed treatment at an Algerian hospital explores the link between mental illness and imperialist violence

Having previously co-directed a documentary on revolutionary thinker and psychologist Frantz Fanon, Algerian film-maker Abdenour Zahzah channels this research into his sober fiction feature debut. Shot on location in black and white, the film charts Fanon’s time as the head doctor of a psychiatric ward in the Algerian city of Blida. After his arrival in 1953, he would soon revolutionise the racist and antiquated practices employed by the institution, which segregated its French Christian patients from their Algerian Muslim counterparts.

Fanon’s achievements during his tenure are recounted in an episodic, vignette-like fashion. From incorporating creative and athletic activities as a part of therapy to implementing more humane treatments for the Indigenous patients, he radically transformed the hospital. His successes, however, were met with disapproval...

The glory days of peak TV, of blank cheque commissioning, open-ended series orders and blockbuster budgets, are well and truly behind us. But even with buyers tightening their purse strings, there’s still a hunger, and with the every-expanding global streaming market, a continually-growing demand for top-notch drama.

Ahead of MIPCOM Cannes — the number one global television market which runs October 21-24 — the supply side of the scripted business is also looking strong. From big-budget period pieces to quirky indie gems, from glossy period pieces to gritty urban drama, the offerings this year are broad and deep.

Budget constraints mean there will be fewer moon-shot deals at this year’s MIPCOM — proceedurals, thrillers and star-driven projects will have an edge over riskier, niche-focused fare — but for producers who know how to crunch the numbers, there is business to be done.

Here is The Hollywood Reporter‘s hot list of the...

Polish director Olga Chajdas continues chasing different projects as she follows Netflix’s “1983,” HBO’s “The Border” and award-winning features “Nina” and “Imago” with the new six-episode historical drama “A World Divided.”

“A long time ago, I promised myself I wouldn’t repeat myself, ever,” she explained to Variety. “I lean towards fiction, so it seemed intriguing, but I wasn’t interested in making another documentary about World War II. We focus on real-life characters. Some are more famous than others, but we keep things subjective, trying to reflect what they were experiencing at that very time.”

She co-directed the show with Frank Devos.

“We decided to ‘split’ the characters. I ended up focusing on women, Frank focused on men, but only because these were our favorites. It was an interesting process because we work very differently. He’s read all the books and was concentrating on the factual layer.

Next year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and it’s no surprise networks and distributors are gathering the troops to commemorate. With war spreading in the Middle East and conflicts ongoing elsewhere around the world, the poignancy of programming in this area has been amplified this year.

What sets apart the noisiest of the new productions in this space that are heading for MIPCOM in Cannes, is that many of them aren’t using the global conflict as the actual setting for their stories. Instead, the war is a jumping-off point for wider, exploratory narratives, and themes different to those in traditional programs.

Among the most notable is the six-episode drama series A World Divided, which integrates archive footage with fictional drama. The series follows six people whose personal and political stories crystallized divisions and decisions that impacted the Second World War through to...

Understanding and appreciation of Claire Denis has long faced the vacancy of No Fear, No Die, her 1992 feature pitting Alex Descas and Isaach de Bankolé in the world of cockfighting. Whether you’ve watched the fuzzy DVD rip that’s satiated fans or have awaited better opportunities, a 4K restoration from The Film Desk and Pathé arrives as manna from heaven––watching it recently was like having a new Denis film altogether. With No Fear, No Die now playing at Bam, the Siskel Film Center, and Austin Film Society, there’s a fresh, Abdullah Ibrahim-scored trailer that we’re pleased to debut.

Here’s the synopsis: “Isaach de Bankolé and Alex Descas star in the under-seen second feature by celebrated director Claire Denis, an unflinching portrait of two Black immigrant men from Benin and French Antilles, scraping out a living through illegal cockfights in a restaurant basement on the outskirts of Paris.

S'en fout la mort.A sliver of an angular face appears in the dark front seat of a car. A hand leaves the steering wheel with a cigarette, emanating tendrils of smoke in its wake. A whispered voiceover: “I’m Black, and my friend is the same color. He’s from the West Indies and I’m from Benin. Waiting here, a single phrase keeps coming back to me: Human beings, all human beings, of whatever race or nationality or religious belief or ideology—will do anything and everything. I can’t remember who said it, but it doesn’t matter. My name is Dah.” Answering his dismissed question, the preceding title card had already attributed the quote to Chester Himes. Cited twice and half remembered, this epigraph introduces the claustrophobic nightscape of doublings and returns that is S’en fout la mort (1990)—retitled in English as No Fear, No...

Med Hondo’s 1979 musical extravaganza West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty is a satirical skewering of the legacy of French imperialism in the West Indies and beyond. From the outset, it defies categorization through its distinct sense of free association as it leaps from one colorful image to the next, often shunning context along the way. Throughout Hondo’s film, the xenophobic and racist rhetoric of haughty, predominately white French aristocrats, bureaucrats, and citizens is combatted, challenged, or lampooned by various African figures. Some are slaves, some are revolutionaries, while some are simply power hungry. The result is a deliriously iconoclastic anti-colonialist work that’s worthy of the finest films from roughly the same period by Ousmane Sembene and Dijbril Diop Mambéty.

Adapted by Hondo and Daniel Boukman from the latter’s novel Les Negriers, West Indies traces an epic history of colonial oppression and enslavement in the West Indies,...

A Different Man.The Berlinale have begun to announce the first few titles selected for the 74th edition of their festival, set to take place from February 15 through 21, 2024. This page will be updated as further sections are announced.COMPETITIONAnother End (Piero Messina)Architecton (Victor Kossakovsky)Black Tea (Abderrahmane Sissako)La Cocina (Alonso Ruiz Palacios) Dahomey (Mati Diop)A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)The Empire (Bruno Dumont)Gloria! (Margherita Vicario)Suspended Time (Olivier Assayas)From Hilde, With Love (Andreas Dresen)My Favourite CakeLangue Etrangère (Claire Berger)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)Who Do I Belong To (Meryam Joobeur)Pepe (Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias)Shambhala (Min Bahadur Bham)Sterben (Matthias Glasner)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)Sleep With Your Eyes Open. ENCOUNTERSArcadia (Yorgos Zois)Cidade; Campo (Juliana Rojas)Demba (Mamadou Dia)Direct ActionSleep With Your Eyes Open (Nele Wohlatz)The Fable (Raam Reddy...

“The Belgians cut off my hands in the Congo,” Langston Hughes wrote in his poem “Negro.” “They lynch me now in Texas.” The year was 1922, and racial segregation was the norm in the United States. Anti-Black racism in the South was such a millstone that the U.S. Senate failed to pass an NAACP-sponsored anti-lynching bill in January of that year, a list of simple protections that was prevented from coming to a vote due to filibusters.

Hughes’s poem is one piece of ephemera that comprises the massive tapestry that is Soundtrack to a Coup d’État. Director Johan Grimonprez’s documentary is primarily focused on the Democratic Republic of Congo and its struggle for independence from Belgian colonialism, during which time our government was using Black jazz musicians to, in its diplomatic tango with the Soviet Union, paint a portrait of American liberalism as benevolent.

The documentary focuses on...

Berlinale co-directors Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek are going out with a bang in their final year, with a lineup unveiled today featuring the latest works by Olivier Assayas, Bruno Dumont, Mati Diop, Hong Sang-soo, Abderrahmane Sissako, Jane Schoenbrun, Alonso Ruizpalacios, Matias Pineiro, Travis Wilkerson, Kazik Radwanski, Annie Baker, and more.

When the co-directors were asked by Screen Daily about their departure, Chatrian said, “It’s quite simple. Mariette and I had a mandate of five years. It is true that at the beginning I said that I was willing to go on because there was a shared will with the [German] Ministry [of Culture] to go on. But then the people who have the responsibility to see the future of the Berlinale thought this structure of two leaders was not the right one and I don’t consider myself able to run the festival alone. And that was the decision of the Ministry.

The Berlinale has completed the lineup for its Panorama, Generation, Forum and Forum expanded sections, with new films from Levan Akin and Andre Techine, plus the debut feature of US playwright Annie Baker.

Swedish filmmaker Akin, who scored an international hit in 2019 with And Then We Danced, will open the Panorama strand with Crossing, about two people travelling from Georgia to Istanbul in search of a young transgender woman.

Scroll down for the full list of Panorama, Generation and Forum features

Also among the 31 films in Panorama are My New Friends from French filmmaker Techine, starring Isabelle Hupert, Hafsia Herzi...

Argentinian director Lola Arias will world premiere her musical documentary Reas about trans people in prison.

The world premiere of Argentinian director Lola Arias’s musical documentary Reas is one of the first eight titles of the 2024 Berlinale Forum unveiled today.

Arias’ second feature explores cis and trans people living in a Buenos Aires prison through musical re-enactment. The filmmaker’s debut Prisoner Of War also premiered in Berlinale Forum where it picked up the Ciace award as well as screening at SXSW, London, Jerusalem and San Sebastian.

Also world premiering in Berlinale’s sidebar is Vinothraj Ps’s The...

The Berlinale Forum, the Berlin Film Festival’s avant-garde sidebar, has announced the first 8 films confirmed for its 2024 line-up.

The 8 films come from 8 different countries, reflecting the Forum’s global reach and a broader push towards greater diversity in it’s line-up. New Forum head Barbara Wurm, who took over running the Forum section in October, highlighted how her program selection team was “diverse with respect to age, ethnicity and cinematic focus.”

One focus of the selection is on cinema coming from regions outside the centers of the Western film industry. “We are looking for worldly films beyond self-referentiality – but those that get involved,” says Wurm. “By being open and resolute in dealing with cinematic forms, we want to bridge the gap between the real worlds we live in and a cinema aware of its public impact.”

The announced titles include the Indian drama The Adamant Girl from director Vinothraj Ps,...

Awards season is in full swing, and Davy Chou’s “Return to Seoul” was in the center of all the buzz. Chou’s film made it to the ten shortlisted films for Best International Feature – a coveted position that in previous years included winners like “Parasite” (2019) and “Drive My Car” (2021) — and this time represented, for the first time, Cambodia’s bid for the Oscars. As the title indicates, however, “Return to Seoul” is not about Cambodia at all. It instead tackles the slipperiness of national identity.

“Jiseok” is screening at Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema

Chou’s sophomore feature follows the coming-of-age revelations of the fictional Freddie Benoit (Park Ji-min), a Korean adoptee raised by French parents. By a stroke of luck (or is it fate?) she finds herself in Seoul for the first time since her birth, at age twenty-five. Over the course of eight years,...

Awards season is in full swing, and Davy Chou’s “Return to Seoul” was in the center of all the buzz. Chou’s film made it to the ten shortlisted films for Best International Feature – a coveted position that in previous years included winners like “Parasite” (2019) and “Drive My Car” (2021) — and this time represented, for the first time, Cambodia’s bid for the Oscars. As the title indicates, however, “Return to Seoul” is not about Cambodia at all. It instead tackles the slipperiness of national identity.

Return to Seoul plays in Sf Bay Area theaters on 24 February 2023.

Chou’s sophomore feature follows the coming-of-age revelations of the fictional Freddie Benoit (Park Ji-min), a Korean adoptee raised by French parents. By a stroke of luck (or is it fate?) she finds herself in Seoul for the first time since her birth, at age twenty-five. Over the course of eight years,...

It is fair to assume Criterion could plunder the world of licensed film to build an ultimate noir playlist; credit, then, for focusing sharp and nabbing deep cuts. The Criterion Channel’s November / Noirvember program will be headlined by “Fox Noir,” an eight-title program with Otto Preminger deep cut Fallen Angel, three by Henry Hathaway, Siodmak, Dassin, Kazan, and Robert Wise, and while retrospectives of Veronica Lake and John Garfield will bring some canon into the fold, I’m mostly thinking about that potential for discovery.

Following “Free Jazz,” Bob Hoskins, and Joyce Chopra programs, the other big series is a 30-year survey of Sony Pictures Classics: Sally Potter, Satoshi Kon, Panahi, Errol Morris, Almodóvar, Haneke, Mike Leigh, just a murderer’s row. Streaming premieres include 499 and A Night of Knowing Nothing, two recent epitomes of I Wish I Had Seen That; Criterion Editions comprise Cure, Brazil, Sullivan’s Travels,...

Venice’s industry head is predicting a return to pre-pandemic attendance levels.

Industry delegates will be back in Venice in significantly higher numbers than during the Covid-affected editions of 2020 and 2021.

“We have more distributors, more producers and, of course, far more immersive professionals,” Pascal Diot, head of Venice Production Bridge (Vpb), says of the 11th edition of the festival’s industry event (running September 1-6). He is predicting that around 2,700 accredited industry representatives will be on the Lido, roughly the same number as in 2019, the last event held pre-pandemic.

Diot also says many of these guests are intending to “stay...

One of the key character traits of snotty college duo Olivia (Sydney Sweeney) and Paula (Brittany O’Grady) on HBO’s “The White Lotus” is their choice of poolside reading material. They’re skimming through Nietzsche and Freud when not casting side eye and throwing withering commentary about the people around them.

Later, they also pick up Frantz Fanon, Camille Paglia and Aimé Césaire. But Sweeney, speaking Saturday at the Atx TV Festival in Austin, revealed something more about that character: She believes it’s all an act. “Oh, she was not actually reading any of these books,” Sweeney told moderator Danielle Turchiano.

Sweeney said that that at the very least she was excited to read those books on set — only to learn they were props. “They were blank!” she said. The overall series experience, especially the show’s heavy dose of humor, was a delight for the actor. ““Jennifer Coolidge...

Albert Dupontel’s “Bye Bye Morons” won seven prizes, including best film and director, at the 46th Cesar Awards which took place as an in-person, yet socially distanced event at the Olympia concert hall in Paris on March 12. The ceremony was held in the presence of nominees only.

“Bye Bye Morons” also won awards for best supporting actor for Nicolas Mairé, original screenplay, cinematography and set design, as well as a prize voted on by high school students. A dark comedy, “Bye Bye Morons” stars Virginie Efira as a seriously ill woman on a mission to reunite with her long-lost child with the help of a man who’s having a burnout. Efira,

Emmanuel Mouret’s “Love Affair(s),” which was nominated for 13 awards, picked up the best supporting actress nod for Emilie Dequenne.

The best actor nod went to Sami Bouajila for his performance in Mehdi M. Barsaoui’s Tunisian drama “A Son.

Fatimah Warner’s verified Twitter page is an endless sprawl of revolutionary reading material (she’s been studying Karl Marx), a bulletin of global atrocities (LGBTQ activists in Ghana are living in fear of violent persecution, don’t you know), and a celebration of advocates and activists (Nina Simone and communist writer Claudia Jones, recently). With only four songs released since her last album as the rapper Noname, 2018’s triumphant Room 25, Warner has been engaging fans, detractors, and spectators in her radical education. On the internet, she behaves more like a peer (a comrade,...

“I must be some great feeler,” Katie Gavin sings with a wink on Muna’s latest record. “I must be really deep.” On Saves the World, Muna’s second effort, the L.A. trio builds upon the thoughtful electro-pop-rock they began sculpting on their 2017 debut, navigating weighty topics like addiction, alienation and romantic abjection with spry sing-alongs and crisp choruses that can mask the heaviness of the material at hand.

Comprising lead vocalist Katie Gavin, guitarist Josette Maskin and multi-instrumentalist Naomi McPherson, Muna establishes its mastery of pop songcraft on this follow-up collection,...

Enough with Summertime frivolity, time to get serious. Really, here’s a real thought-provoking, and debate-provoking, drama featuring some award-winning actors and a fresh new actor who could be up for several of those with this work. Though set in the world of high school, this film focuses on the parents and teachers as much as the students. Yes, it is a drama, but it’s also a mystery, as loyalties change and evolve, and unlikely alliances are formed. Throw in explorations of class and race and you’ve got a compelling tale that swirls all around the title high school student, the young man named Luce.

The story opens at the start of his senior year as Luce Edgar (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) delivers a speech to a most appreciative audience of fellow students, faculty, and parents including his folks, Amy (Naomi Watts) and Peter (Tim Roth). Ten years ago...

In the smart psychological thriller “Luce,” Kelvin Harrison Jr., plays a reluctant poster boy for the new American Dream. The film finds white liberal couple Amy and Peter Edgar (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth), reconsidering their impressions of their adopted black son after they discover he has written a disturbing essay for a history class at school. In the process of exploring the teenager’s mindset, writer-director Julius Onah envisioned the young character’s identity crisis with some very precise reference points.

“There were two models I gave Kelvin for the character while we rehearsed — Barack Obama and Will Smith,” Onah said. “I see them as the epitome of a cool, non-threatening black masculinity. They have power, they’re charismatic and are greatly influential, and, particularly with Obama, are highly intelligent.”

Those names never come up in the movie, but much of the depth in “Luce” comes from everything that’s left unsaid.

In the middle of a summer of dumb fun and comic-book escapism, it’s some kind of miracle to find a film as seriously ambitious, scrappy and suspenseful as Luce. A provocation about race, privilege and the expectations that come with both, the movie follows the title character, played by star-in-the-making Kelvin Harrison Jr. He’s an African-American student and academic all-star at the Arlington, Virginia high school he attends. His white parents, a doctor named Amy (Naomi Watts) and a financier named Peter (Tim Roth), couldn’t be prouder...

When we first meet Luce, he seems to be the product of a successful adoption that took him from his native Africa and allowed him to flourish with a doting (and white) American family. He’s a smart kid, a talented athlete, and he’s got a very bright future ahead of him. But what’s really going on?

In Sundance sensation “Luce,” Julius Onah’s big screen adaptation of J.C. Lee’s 2013 play of the same name, that question lingers throughout a drama that also functions as a mystery. When Luce turns in an incendiary essay about African writer Frantz Fanon, praising the controversial Pan-Africanist’s support of violence to combat colonization, his teacher Harriet (Octavia Spencer) is unsettled enough to go snooping deeper into his life.

She doesn’t like what she finds, and Luce isn’t excited about what unfolds either, and as the film winds on,...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Metrograph

Three by Ringo Lam are still playing.

Love is Colder Than Death and Ghost in the Shell have late-night showings, while Some Like It Hot screens through the weekend.

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask can be seen on Sunday.

Bam

Banned by Nyff for being “too controversial” and “likely to incite racial tension,...

At the root of “Luce” is a fascinating mystery, but its solution is beside the point. This smart and sophisticated inquiry into race and class does little to alter the underlying appeal of J.C. Lee’s 2013 play. As questions swirl around whether black Virginia teen Luce, an accomplished football player and debate-team team captain, harbors revolutionary beliefs and violent tendencies, the movie allows the audience to see it both ways.

His adoptive white parents, Amy (Naomi Watts) and Peter (Tim Roth), don’t know whether to defend their son from the accusations of Luce’s stern teacher Harriet (Octavia Spencer) or take them at face value. That oscillating perspective allows this grounded drama to develop a remarkable degree of moment-to-moment suspense, and it remains an actors’ showcase even as the premise risks turning into a gimmick.

The third feature from director Julias Onah (and a significant comeback following his disappointing...

Exclusive: U.S. arthouse buyer Film Movement has picked up North American rights to seven movies for its classics label, including John Woo’s first contemporary action film Heroes Shed No Tears (1984) and Viggo Mortensen starrer The Reflecting Skin (1990) by Philip Ridley (U.S. rights only).

Also new to the label are King Hu’s martial arts film The Fate Of Lee Khan (1973); Stanley Kwan’s Hong Kong New Wave drama Center Stage (1991), starring Maggie Cheung; biopic Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (1995) about the charismatic and influential anti-colonial writer and theorist; Véra Belmont’s baroque dramedy Marquise (1997), featuring Sophie Marceau in one of her first starring roles; and Gérard Corbiau’s Oscar-nominated lavish costume drama, Farinelli (1994).

Shed No Tears, Center Stage and The Fate Of Lee Khan were licensed from Fortune Star Media. Farinelli and Marquise came from Screenbound Pictures while The Reflecting Skin was picked up from...

The past is a home country in Corsica-born French director Thierry de Peretti’s second feature, A Violent Life. A crime saga chronicling Corsica’s gruesome 1990s nationalist feuds via the rise and fall of the lost generation who took part in them, it captures a topic seldom shown on the big screen, but a few scattered hints of old and recent mafia classics aside (from Coppola’s Godfather trilogy to Francesco Munzi’s 2014 Black Souls), the end result never quite feels like the gripping thriller it could have been.

The entry point in the island’s troubled decade is Stéphane (played here by newcomer Jean Michelangeli, in an assured debut). A bespectacled and tame-looking Paris-based Corsican, his cushy life in the capital takes a U-turn after an old time friend is murdered in the island by local thugs. Shaken but seemingly not surprised by the assassination, he ignores his...

Long before “Galang” and “Paper Planes,” and prior to her Oscar nomination and universal fame, there was a time M.I.A. was Mathangi Arulpragasam, the daughter of Tamil refugees who fled conflict-stricken Sri Lanka to settle in 1980s England. More an account of her origins than a stylized tour documentary, Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. draws from over 700 hours of footage M.I.A. personally recorded at different stages of her career to offer an intimate pre- and-post-stardom bio-doc that feels just as magnetic as the artist it brings and dissects on screen.

Chronological and linear as it may be in its structure–Matangi, Maya, and M.I.A.; alluding to the different stages in the singer’s life before and under the spotlight–Stephen Loveridge’s debut feature and insider look conjures up an artist whose creative path and inspiration have drawn from several overlapping personas. M.I.A. the artist,...

Norman Jean Roy for Rolling Stone

Two years ago, Chadwick Boseman was in a movie called Gods of Egypt. It was not a very good movie. But in addition to its not-goodness, it also became infamous for whitewashing – casting, as ancient African deities, a white guy from Scotland, a white guy from Denmark and at least seven white people from Australia. Boseman, the sole black lead, played Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom and inventor of mathematics. Before the movie came out, an interviewer asked him about the criticism, and...

Raoul Peck dramatises the author’s memoir of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr and Medgar Evers, in this vivid and vital documentary

Raoul Peck’s outstanding, Oscar-nominated documentary is about the African American activist and author James Baldwin, author of Go Tell It on the Mountain and The Fire Next Time. Peck dramatises Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House, his personal memoir of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr and civil rights activist Medgar Evers, murdered by a segregationist in 1963. Baldwin re-emerges as a devastatingly eloquent speaker and public intellectual; a figure who deserves his place alongside Edward Said, Frantz Fanon or Gore Vidal.

Related: The 'I Am Not Your Negro' episode - Token podcast

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The arrival of the cell phone camera may be the single greatest advancement in the fight for racial justice, allowing witnesses to hold police accountable and turning the average citizen into a chance documentarian. Grainy footage of police shooting 12-year-old Tamir Rice for playing with a Bb gun, or the shaky handheld live stream of Philando Castile’s last breaths are etched indelibly into the national memory, recalled in fragments with each fresh report of an unarmed black person gunned down by police violence.

For the black residents of Ferguson, Mo, the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown Jr. in 2014 was neither the first nor the last in a long line of police shootings, but it was the final straw. In the wake of Brown’s murder, what began as communal mourning swelled into an unstoppable movement that, as one subject of the electrifying new documentary “Whose Streets?” puts it: “Ain...

Now Streaming on Netflix - 'Concerning Violence' Visualizes Frantz Fanon’s 'Wretched of the Earth' Continue Reading →...

Mubi is showing William Klein's The Pan-African Festival of Algiers (1969) in many countries around the world from October 25 - November 23, 2016.The colonised is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards. —Frantz Fanon Mubi's William Klein retrospective presents a rare opportunity to watch one of his lesser known films, 1969's Le festival Panafricain d'Alger. Filmed on the occasion of the first edition of the eponymous festival in the Algerian capital which had recently been the set of an historic victory of the anti-colonialist movement, this legendary documentary was produced by the Office national pour le commerce et l'industrie cinématographiques (Oncic). The festival celebrated African culture in its emancipatory passage from passive receptacle of Orientalist projections into a proactive agent of self-representation. Much more than an anti-colonialist Woodstock, Klein's film is an ethnographic piece of internationalist agit-prop that traces the significance of the...

Louisa Mellor Sep 30, 2016

Out now, Woody Allen’s new six-part half-hour comedy for Amazon is familiar, mild, unadventurous but serves its purpose…

In the world of chichi parties and exclusive product launches, there’s a buoyant market in celebrity personal appearances. A host will pay a star roughly the annual salary of your average Latin American dictator to turn up at their event and lend it the patina of glamour. It doesn’t matter what said celebrity does while they’re at the party, the key thing is that they’re seen to be there. So what if Beyoncé spends the entire contracted time checking her phone? They got Beyoncé.

That’s the sense coming from Woody Allen’s Amazon deal. As Allen tells it, the multinational giant “badgered and badgered [him] for two years, sweetening the pot until [he] could not afford to turn it down”. Sign the deal and he...

Kino Lorber has announced the DVD release of "Concerning Violence," the critically acclaimed, award-winning documentary by Göran Hugo Olsson ("The Black Power Mixtape") and narrated by Lauryn Hill, which examines the Pan-African struggle against colonialism by juxtaposing archival footage depicting key African liberation movements with text from Frantz Fanon's book, "The Wretched of the Earth." On May 5, 2015, "Concerning Violence" will become available on DVD, with bonus features including the full preface by Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (11 minutes) and the trailer.  In recent times there have been...

“And it is clear that in the colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization a simply a question of relative strength.” ― Frantz Fanon, "The Wretched of the Earth" When psychiatrist and writer Frantz Fanon published "The Wretched Of The Earth" in 1961, it was immediately banned in France, and given the provocative nature of the text, perhaps it's not a surprise. The quote of above is just one of many viewpoints Fanon presents in his book without compromise, with the author taking the position that an oppressed and/or occupied people will eventually push back against their oppressors/occupiers, and that this isn't so much a decision as it is a (justifiable) inevitability.

Whew, where do I begin.... Concerning Violence, a new stock footage documentary from Goran Hugo Olsson (Black Power Mixtape) is an extremely sharp indictment on the colonization and its aftermath of the African continent. The matter of fact headiness of Olsson's style may turn off some viewers in its college thesis paper dryness, but one can not deny its power of arresting images and portent words.Borrowing the text of Frantz Fanon, a Martinique born controversial Afro-French thinker and revolutionary, from his book The Wretched of Earth and powerfully narrated by musician Lauryn Hill as the large white texts appear on screen, the film explains how Europe's five hundred years of exploitation and violent oppression led dehumanization of the whole continent.Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a Columbia professor,...

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Göran Hugo Olsson's profound essay doc aspires to upset in the truest sense. As its vintage footage of the cruelties of colonial life shocks and disgusts, its narration — excerpts from Frantz Fanon's thundering 1961 text The Wretched of the Earth — demands that Western viewers fundamentally upset their conceptions of everything. A commanding indictment of the exploitative nature of geopolitics, and of Europe's and the U.S.'s abuse of native peoples around the world, Concerning Violence pairs up hard truths from Fanon — Lauryn Hill reads his words, each blunt and burning like a cigarette she's putting out in your ear — with damnable scenes shot in colonized countries in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s: In Rhodesia, Ghana, Liberia, Guinea, we meet loca...

After attempting to contextualize the Black Power Movement, in a format more accessible to a new generation - what we call a "mixtape" hence the title, "The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975" - Swedish director Goran Hugo Olsson continues on that same path, in a similar style, with his next film, which made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this year. Titled "Concerning Violence," and produced by Annika Rogell and Tobias Janson for Story Ab, the project incorporates the words from Frantz Fanon’s "The Wretched of the Earth," using newly-discovered archive...

Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January, 2014 has been nothing but a string of acclaim for the documentary "Concerning Violence." Picking up the Cinema Fairbindet Prize in Berlin, and screening at festivals around the world, the powerful film is now headed to cinemas, and today we have the exclusive trailer. Directed by Göran Hugo Olsson, ("The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975") and narrated by Ms. Lauryn Hill, the film is based on Frantz Fanon’s seminal anticolonial text "The Wretched of the Earth," and is an exploration of the forces of repression and colonialism in Africa. As we wrote in our review, the documentary provides "a searing look at Europe's painful involvement in participating, encouraging and backing regimes of oppression." It's light fare, but a necessary, and important film. "Concerning Violence" opens on December 5th at the IFC Center, with Olsson on hand for a Q&A following...

After attempting to contextualize the Black Power Movement, in a format more accessible to a new generation - what we call a "mixtape" hence the title, "The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975" - Swedish director Goran Hugo Olsson continues on that same path, in a similar style, with his next film, which made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this year. Titled "Concerning Violence," and produced by Annika Rogell and Tobias Janson for Story Ab, the project incorporates the words from Frantz Fanon’s "The Wretched of the Earth," using newly-discovered archive...

★★★★☆In answer to what he would do to follow 2011's multi-layered collage The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, Göran Hugo Olsson has settled on the fight against Colonists in Africa by its indigenous people by again raiding the archives of Swedish Television for Concerning Violence (2014). This time he is using as the contextual device the words of Frantz Fanon spoken by Lauryn Hill, from Fanon’s book The Wretched Of The Earth. With a filmed introduction by postcolonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the film is split into nine chapters that delve into different perspectives on the African uprising that sprung up all over the continent from 1975 onwards.