Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal in Ari Aster’s ‘Eddington’ now in theaters
In spreading his message of lives often lived in shades of grey — not just good vs. bad — the American filmmaker enlists a quartet of actors who are redefining cinema as we know it.
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The discovery of Farah Nabulsi’s stunning, honest and beautiful film ‘The Present’ I owe to Palestinian favorite actor Saleh Bakri. I mean, as soon as I saw his name on the Brooklyn Film Festival line-up page, I was hooked. But while his presence is undeniably a wonderful pull into the film, Nabulsi’s perfect oeuvre stands on its own.
The title ‘The Present’ could refer to a gift, the one Yusuf, Bakri’s character goes to buy for his wife on their wedding anniversary. But it also means, to me, the current state of affairs, the here and now, for the Palestinian people.
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Shince and Fernando in a still from ‘This Is Not Cricket’ by Jacopo de Bertoldi
I found my love for cricket within an Italian filmmaker’s documentary that has little to do with the game and much more with humanity’s place within it. Well, the film is called ‘This Is Not Cricket’ after all, and the filmmaker is wonderfully fresh voice in documentary, Jacopo de Bertoldi. A man with whom every conversation turns into an explanation of life.
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The title shot of Zeina Sfeir’s film
The five filmmakers featured in this omnibus of shorts, featuring life in the ghost town and home shelters of Beirut, are the brightest of the new wave of directors from Lebanon.
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