Category Archives: Movies

Akimi Ota, a doctoral candidate at Manchester University in ethnology, made this intimate film when he lived in the Ecuadorean rain forest with the Shuar, a group of native people with their own unique language whose indigenous territory covers a … Continue reading →

In the past decade-plus, a handful of Romanian directors (Christian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, etc.) have created a body of dramatic work that is perhaps unmatched in its ability to come to grips with the way official actions (i.e., bureaucratic behavior) … Continue reading →

There seems to be a certain type of indie film that only premieres at the Sundance Film Festival. Ostensibly black comedies with quirky, often disagreeable protagonists, they usually take place in the US heartland, but what makes these movies distinctive … Continue reading →

Living in Japan, where the treatment of politics and history by popular culture is a fraught undertaking, I find South Korean cinema’s willingness to confront the less edifying aspects of its recent past and current social mores almost astounding. Mainstream … Continue reading →

Scathingly literal in the way it depicts the organizational failure of well-intentioned multi-national peace efforts, Jasmila Zbanic’s slightly fictionalized take on the disastrous UN intervention in the mid-90s Bosnian conflict evinces that nauseous feeling of inevitable doom you get with … Continue reading →