Avoiding consensus for our top 2023 picks, Journey Into Cinema focuses on both the best festival films and the finest hidden gems.
Best Festival Films and Hidden Festival Gems 2023
Category: Festivals
Reviews and dispatches exploring the best new cinema premiering around the world.
IDFA 2023: Fact, Fiction, Fabrication
As IDFA as an institution failed to find the correct response to pro-Palestinian activism, the films themselves had an equally knotty relationship to facts.
Kennedy Takes Us On a Deadly Cinematic Rollercoaster
Anurag Kashyap returns with another blood-splattered revenge thriller, re-affirming the auteur as one of the most vital voices in Indian cinema.
The Enduring Appeal of Bugis Street
A new restoration of Bugis Street underscores the queer and transgressive Singaporean film’s timeless message nearly 30 years after its release.
Death and Transfiguration: Godard, Wang, Costa
A triple header of new short and mid-length work by Godard, Wang and Costa offers ruminations on national identity and holding onto the traumas of the past.
Nowhere Near. Diaristic Digressions Through Family and History.
Miko Revereza brings his trademark diaristic style of digital filmmaking to a polyphonous exploration of family and history in Nowhere Near — playing at NYFF.
The Night Visitors. Moths in the Frame.
The Night Visitors sees avant-garde filmmaker Michael Gitlin use moths as a metaphor for knowledge, asking the viewer to regard the world anew.
Life, Assembled. Architecture (Re)-Imagined
Life, Assembled takes you deep into the architectural process, wondering if the progressive Belgian ideals of the 70s are still worth pursuing today.
Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project. As Enjoyable (and as Evasive) as its Subject.
Going To Mars: The NIkki Giovanni Project is a fascinating documentary, but hides a more fascinating character study behind hagiography.
Nam June Paik: Moon Is The Oldest TV. Art Revolution, Televised.
The revolutionary art of the “Godfather of video art” is given a dutiful biopic treatment in Name June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV.