Dirty work: Alice Rohrwacher’s La chimera unearths the contradictions at the heart of a brittle society where culture is yet another arena in which the wealthy exploit the poor
Wellness check: Nicolas Philibert’s new documentary On the Adamant is the latest in a long line of film portraits of hospitals, including films by Frederick Wiseman, Claire Simon, and others
By Adam NaymanSmackdown: Doug Liman’s Road House and Dev Patel’s Monkey Man, two exemplars of the Action Movie, balance style and substance to different effect
The Film Comment Podcast: Christine Smallwood on Chantal Akerman’s La Captive
Oceanic feeling: the writer discusses her fascinating new book on Chantal Akerman’s Proust adaptation
By Racquel GatesRaindrops keep falling: Charles Burnett’s long unavailable The Annihilation of Fish is an interracial love story that does not make race and age “problems” to be solved, but treats them as mere facts of existence
Together and apart: the two directors discuss the making of their award-winning documentary, their transition from journalism to cinema, and finding the right balance between images of incontrovertible violence with those of resilience and life
Smile through it: a trilogy of early features by Dutch filmmaker Marleen Gorris explore the misogyny constraining women’s everyday lives—and their acts of disobedience and rebellion—through complex, provocative narratives
Great expectations: the Romanian filmmaker discusses his madcap latest, an unpredictable, funny, crass, and erudite that speaks to a wide variety of concerns—totalitarianism, neoliberalism, and the corrosive role of media—with extraordinary verve