Reflections on the film Chappaquiddick (released in Europe as The Last Son), the island of Chappaquiddick, the films made there and the Kennedys.

Musical comedies, formal experiments, religion and the state of Portugal.

As the 2018 World Cup kicks off today in Russia, it’s time to consider Porumboiu’s latest cinematic look at the sport.

Bala, that pillar of Tamil New Wave, makes stunning, hardhitting, in your face films that leave you breathless. A modern day Sam Fuller?

Charlie and Hannah’s Grand Night Out opens the Belgian Film Festival in the Netherlands this weekend.

Exploring the fantastic worlds of the Czech George Méliès.

Hiroshi Shimizu’s Mr. Thank You is a lovely roadmovie by one of the great Japanese directors, though he’s not yet always recognized as such.

Dutch documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens and film historian Georges Sadoul both shared a love for Paris and the Seine, resulting in La Seine a Rencontré Paris / The Seine Meets Paris (1957). This documentary short paints a poetic, playful, and profound portrait of the Seine, Paris and its many inhabitants.

How Icarian Aviators Deal With Mortality in Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

Europe was still reeling from the massive death and destruction from World War II, when in 1946 the very first edition of the Cannes Film Festival was held. The Palme d’Or, that most prestigious of film prizes, didn’t exist yet. Its predecessor, the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film, was the highest prize of […]

Jessica Gorter’s fascinating documentary explores the new rise in popularity of Stalin in modern-day Russia, to the horror of those who remember his terror.

The Train (1964) John Frankenheimer was a cinematic craftsman who could work on different genres with varying results but always with a professional attitude. Much like Sydney Lumet, Richard Donner, and Franklin J. Schaffner he was a prolific filmmaker who started out in television. TV wasn’t a bad place to start in the fifties as […]

An otherwordly childhood presented in old age, in Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s surreal second film.

Frameland celebrates black female filmmakers and the great, powerful cinema they’ve created throughout several decades, despite so often being ignored and marginalized.



The Lost Arcade is that rarest of documentaries. An evocative film about a urban subculture but also a chronicle about a unique place and the changing fabric of the city.

Vetrimaaran skilfully combines commercial thrills with social realism in his films about men who get in trouble by following the rules of their society.

Margarita with a Straw and Resurrection present two different, interesting perspectives on the subject.

From Chinese characters to the Dao, every detail matters in Edward Yang’s masterpiece.

In Winterbottom’s dystopian Code 46, life is divided between affluent society in futuristic city-states and poverty outside of the cities.

Featuring teenage rebellion from Thailand and China, South Korea reckoning with its past and many Indonesian films.

Del Toro’s monsters are vastly different. Instead of representing fears or anxieties, they are outsiders seeking to find their place. In Del Toro’s world, monsters are endearingly human in their hopes, longings, and faults.

The Frameland Team takes a closer look at the oeuvre of Ida Lupino as female director in classic Hollywood, consisting of only 7 films.

How November is inspired by Marketa Lazarová, a marvel of dark, craggy faces against white skies and landscapes (and vice versa), splitting castles in half and charging across meaningless borders.

Tamil masculinity and social critique in the commercial cinema of Ram

How Truffaut used modernist architecture as metaphor for totalitarianism.

Michael Haneke’s use of circular structure in his films uniquely pulls the viewer in and involves them in the moral issues of the film.

The struggle to break through abstraction is ultimately what Hong Sangsoo’s cinema has been about, from the “digging deep” of Our Sunhi to the rejection of the words we use to describe reality as illusory in The Day After, in favor of actual, truthful experience.

A journey from repression in black-and-white to freedom in colour.

Lisa van der Waal launches our new feature Framing the City, a montly recurring feature in which we take a closer look at representations of cities on film, with an examination of the 1927 and 2002 versions of Berlin: Symphony of a Great City.

Between March 1996 and March 1997, Steven Soderbergh kept a diary and flew to the UK to interview director Richard Lester at length to fulfill a book contract with Faber & Faber. This hidden gem is an incredibly insightful account of the young director’s most trying times.

The Frameland team looks back on 2017 and picks out their favorite underseen and unloved films in international cinema.

Growing old together, meeting the in-laws, flying ships that express romance, a chance connection on a beach between two strangers and much more: Frameland’s favorite cinematic moments of 2017 deal with all kinds of human connections, expressed in a multitude of ways.

Few directors dare to deal with the supernatural within the context of a realistic drama. What are the pitfalls and how can the supernatural be handled successfully?

Claudi Moll discusses how the themes and Jesus narrative in the anime, Serial Experiments Lain are more relevant than ever before.

Exploring and analysing the visions of death of Hong Kong director Chang Cheh over his long cinematic career.

Hey, gunner man, that’s quicksand, that’s quicksand that ain’t mud: America’s soldiers get lost in the flood in possibly Walter Hill’s best.

This is why the films of Clouzot are still relevant today. His way of considering the patriarchy in his films is decidedly modern, and unfortunately – still more than ever appropriate.

At the close of Noirvember, Frameland recommends five film noirs from outside of the United States, from the classical period and beyond.

Broadcast in 2005, Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris’ sardonic series Nathan Barley was prescient in an uncanny way.

Highlights of and interesting takes on the cinematic incarnation of Sherlock Holmes, the world’s most famous detective.

While Thor: Ragnarok gets released worldwide, Kaj looks at an Icelandic trilogy about the religious struggles of those who used to believe in the god Thor. While they kill eachother with axes.

Two or Three Things I Know About Her: Godard’s attempt to capture contemporary life through a day in the life of a Parisian woman.

Why Wes Anderson and other male directors don’t have female leads in their films.

Alternately elegant, gorgeous and crudely, agreeably psychedelic, Eyes of Fire is what happens when talent and imagination can’t be stymied by production circumstances.

Claudi Moll questions modern day Cinema Etiquette.

As Blade Runner 2049 is released worldwide this week, the Frameland writers recommend six cyberpunk films you might not have seen.

Bridge of Spies might not have been Spielberg’s best, but it is one that stuck out in a year of aggressively mediocre films. Bram looks at the visual storytelling of this cold war thriller as the director prepares for another wave of releases.

Poltergeist’s unfinished swimming pool is rife with symbolism. A metaphor for the American Dream, and the unattainability thereof.

Bram Ruiter meanders about what makes film different from other forms of media and links Cameraperson to the early Lumière films.

Romero loved and respected his crew and his actors, and this movie is explicitly about that love, which ultimately matters more than the symbolic quest Billy is on.

Logan Lucky marks the end of Soderbergh’s feature film-making hiatus. What has changed between his State of Cinema address in 2013 and now?

From cherry pies to purple seas, the Frameland team recall their favourite thing from Twin Peaks: The Return.

In this age of terrorism and radicalism, Taxi Driver proves to be a relevant and thorough study on the causes of radicalization.

A good film shouldn’t need nudity or sex unless it really serves the story or message it wants to. In other words, it should be functional. But can there be a line drawn on this topic?

With the recent passing of Tobe Hooper, Claudi Moll brings homage to his legacy.

Despite the film’s eight international awards, this film greatly divided South African audiences, the country from where it came. Claudi Moll explores this divide.

How did spies fare in 1960s cinema from behind the Iron Curtain?

In our second article that deals with the Cold War, we look at the follow up to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In Smiley’s People Alec Guinness returns as the eponymous spymaster who travels through Europe to track down the elusive Karla.

With his latest opening soon in Hong Kong, we celebrate 50 years of Sammo Hung.

In light of Atomic Blonde’s return to the Cold War, a look back at one of
the BBC’s greatest achievements, the miniseries Tinker Tailor Soldier
Spy. Based on John le Carré’s classic novel, it still persuasively shows that
a secret service reveals a nation’s true character.

On the clumsy hero and his animal friend in Donkeyote, Pop Aye and La Vache.

The femme fatale has gone through quite a transformation over the years. She evolved together with technology and is still very present in modern cinema.

A retrospective of of Mikio Naruse’s films offers a great chance to see the development of Japanese society and Japanese film history through his cinematic perspective.

A question prompted by two documentaries, Plasticine Family and THE BEKSINSKIS.

In Shinji Sômai’s films, characters interact and engage with the natural world.

Last week George A. Romero, the godfather of the zombie genre, passed away at age 77. Bram dives deep into the rise of the zombie film since 2002, and what true impact Romero left on cinema.

As Christopher Nolan’s war film Dunkirk is released worldwide, Frameland recommends watching one or up to all seven of Sam Fuller’s war films.

A documentary on a strange pulp genre reveals the strong lure of the dark aesthetics of fascism, and the complexity of dealing with the holocaust in fiction and popular culture.

How does this allegory of the Bush-era hold up in the times of Trump?

Sapir’s black-and-white film is full of references to both early cinema and Nazi propaganda.

Every image of Dawson City is so full and rich you could see whole movies springing up around them.

Soviet propaganda turns into philosophical meditations by Dovzhenko, thereby planting the seed for the wave of poetic films decades later.

On the representation of White Western Women in India’s New Independent Cinema.

Bollywood of the 21st century recognised that Western women are not only suitable for the role of prostitute or vamp. It showed that Western women are not necessarily the opposite of moral Indian women.

Florence Welch and Vincent Haycock, however, have succeeded to combine all these elements together so seamlessly to create a new modern myth. One that deserves to be recognized and studied for its own merit.

How were western women portrayed in Bollywood cinema of half a century ago? Not great, Bob.

Knowing that McQueen places a strong emphasis on visual story telling in his films, it can be no accident that he places a heavy emphasis on stills shot from nature.

Five Frameland authors share their favorite memories of Twin Peaks, just before the new season starts.

Twin Peaks has influenced many movies and TV shows, but Twin Peaks in turn has been influenced by many films and TV shows that came before it.

The characters and their views seem like small islands in a sea, hard to be abridged. It is therefore appropriate that the members seldom connect. Dreyer uses several methods to visualize this isolation.

Vanishing Waves is a film that sucks you under its spell, pinions you to your seat, rewires your senses and then spits you out. Watching it is like being dragged through someone else’s dreams.

How the state sacrifices the lives of its people for political gain, in 21st century French thrillers.

Un Homme Qui Dort is grounded in a lethargic state realizing that the world can not be changed. But his stagnation and wish to dissolve feels all the more contemporary in a time where reality seems to have tightened its grip.

Kubrick adds with his visual clues to the feeling of claustrophobia and disorientation to the descent of madness that Jack Torrance undergoes.

Jim Jarmusch somehow captured our collective crisis of what it is to be human in the modern day and how to go about with our planet and with others, by portraying superhuman creatures.

Crowds of people have already gathered. A lot of grey hair, worn out jeans, and stubbly beards: the typical crowd for a rock concert by an established musician. But this is a movie theatre. The ‘concert’ is a screening of One More Time With Feeling, a documentary about the making of Nick Cave’s last album.

Kara Hui is an action hero once again in Mrs. K, subverting gender conventions of action cinema by having her as star and be the protector of a happy family and a husband whom she taught how to handle himself.

“Don’t worry: the poster may make it look like a girl movie, but it’s really quite good!”

On time travel films and their meanings.

Bertolucci’s underrated Besieged is all about appearances, spaces and surfaces: that what is shown. The true meaning lies in that was is not said, omitted and hidden from view.

From Adorno to Zola, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Things To Come is filled with names and quotes, a frequent trope of French cinema. But what do they really add to the film, and French cinema in general?

In a time when so many seem to retreat in their bastions of identity Monsieur Klein shows the power of empathy in placing the viewer in a position of shifting identities.

The much maligned A View to Kill gains energy from exploring new ways to develop the James Bond formula.

The entire style of The Apprentice, from framing to camera movement to staging to editing, serves to convey the inner workings of the eponymous apprentice’s mind, who neurotically tries to navigate a modern world of conflicting information and impulses.

There is power in hair, as 2007 Britney Spears can readily attest to.

Arrival is not the first film by Denis Villeneuve in which characters and viewers learn to perceive each other’s differing point of view by their relation to tactile objects. Theodoor explains.

Verhoeven may have more to offer than meets the eye. Are some of his films biblical? Or more specifically: why does he seem to refer to Jesus all the time in his works?

Imamura challenges the viewer to suspend his rational view of life and to be immersed in communities that are founded on a basis of irrationality.

Space – Above and Beyond conclusively proved, even in its short-lived existence, that SF-television really can (and indeed, should) address mature themes for a mature audience.