Film Archives - Public Seminar

Film

Paolo Sorrentino on his new movie, La Grazia

An interview with the Italian film director on ordinariness, doubt, and jealousy at the heart of his new film

December 8, 2025 • by Mitchell Abidor and Paolo Sorrentino

Editorial note: This interview contains spoilers. Paolo Sorrentino’s films are grand affairs, with elaborate camerawork and stunning settings underscored by memorable music. The plots match the grandeur of the mise-en-scène. In his new film, La Grazia, the purely cinematic elements of the film remain grand—and at times knowingly bizarre, like the ...

Paolo Sorrentino on his new movie, <em>La Grazia</em>

Film

Good Versions of the Right Film

2025’s summer blockbusters are, like those before them, oversized ploys for maximum profit. They’re still not big enough for Hollywood.

November 5, 2025 • by Amelia Nonemacher

At any point this summer, you could take refuge from the heat in one of the nation’s chain movie theaters and enjoy a good old summer blockbuster. Whether you chose to watch the “most authentic” racing movie ever made (F1); a heroic tale of human kindness triumphing over tech moguls-turned-arms-dealers ...

Film

A Monk Without a Monastery

The paradigm shift of a single shot in Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days

December 2, 2024 • by Daniel Kopp and Nicholas Johnston

In the last shot of Perfect Days, this year’s Oscar-nominated masterpiece by Wim Wenders, a middle-aged Tokyoite named Hirayama drives through his city under a honey-colored sunrise. By this point in the film, we know it’s a habit for him to play a cassette in his ancient van’s tape deck ...

Film

La Chimera‘s Tomb Raiders Unearth the Intersections of Past and Present

Do the souls of the dead miss what we have taken and sold?

October 16, 2024 • by Taylor Stout

One setting in Alice Rohrwacher’s 2024 film, La Chimera, collapses two thousand years of Italian history: an Etruscan gravesite in the shadow of a power plant. Here, where polluted ocean water laps at ancient dirt, the film’s merry band of tomb raiders (tombaroli) discover an untouched tomb brimming with artifacts—most ...

<em>La Chimera</em>‘s Tomb Raiders Unearth the Intersections of Past and Present

Film

Enter the Glow

Hannah Burns explores identity, escapism, and queer belonging in I Saw the TV Glow

October 9, 2024 • by Hannah Burns

Sometimes the only place we can be ourselves is inside the media we consume. Sometimes that is where we see options, where we feel less “other.” Watching I Saw the TV Glow, I loved the thought that Jane Schoenbrun’s amazing new film will join a queer film canon in which a ...

Film

Notes on Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest

Mass dehumanization on the other side of the garden wall

September 25, 2024 • by Anonymous

When viewed against the backdrop of what Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the UN has called “the most thoroughly documented genocide in history,” Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s recent film about the genocide of the Jews, takes on a deeper meaning: “The reason I made this film,” Glazer said shortly after ...

Notes on Jonathan Glazer’s <em>Zone of Interest </em>

Film

A Love Affair Without Sex?

Slow, the latest film by director Marija Kavtaradzė, is a heartfelt portrait of a couple on terra incognita

May 2, 2024 • by Mitchell Abidor and Marija Kavtaradzė

Slow, the latest film by director Marija Kavtaradzė, is a heartfelt portrait of a couple on terra incognita...

Europe & Central Asia

War and Peace in Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest

How the banality of everyday life keeps us fenced off from evil

March 25, 2024 • by Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus

In a way, our memory culture both in Germany and in Israel is an exact reversal of the reality revealed by the film. Perhaps that's why the film seems to annoy many people in Germany, who complain that it shows the "perpetrator's perspective." But memory must also be a memory ...

War and Peace in Jonathan Glazer’s <em>Zone of Interest</em>

Feminism

The Barbie Curse

Can a girl’s first icon of can-do power ever be good enough?

August 30, 2023 • by Honor McConnell

Barbie is the most popular doll in the world, and the most hated....

Film

Nihilism for the Whole Family!

How Evelyn misinterpreted Waymond’s rebellion in Everything Everywhere All At Once

April 18, 2023 • by Ken Hu

Evelyn’s response to the multiverse reflects an existentialist resolution that builds upon a particular version of nihilism: if the universe is inherently meaningless, then we are at liberty to create our own meanings within it....

Film

Puerto Rican History Deserves More Than a Musical

West Side Story displaces the true story of the Young Lords Organization’s civil rights struggle

December 15, 2021 • by Jacqueline Lazú

For many, West Side Story is simply an iconic musical with catchy tunes. For me, however, it became a critical entryway into political consciousness about when and how Puerto Ricans matter in United States history, and why popular representations are instrumental to that....

Puerto Rican History Deserves More Than a Musical

Film

Who Should Tell Pauli Murray’s Story?

Why a white documentarian should have stepped aside and created space for a Black filmmaker

December 1, 2021 • by Benje Williams

My hand is trembling as I stick it into the dark air. I wasn’t planning on asking a question. Definitely not this question. But it needs to be asked, and I don’t see any other Black people in this theater in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. “I’m so glad My ...

Film

Paolo Sorrentino on his new movie, La Grazia

An interview with the Italian film director on ordinariness, doubt, and jealousy at the heart of his new film

Good Versions of the Right Film

2025’s summer blockbusters are, like those before them, oversized ploys for maximum profit. They’re still not big enough for Hollywood.

A Monk Without a Monastery

The paradigm shift of a single shot in Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days

La Chimera‘s Tomb Raiders Unearth the Intersections of Past and Present

Do the souls of the dead miss what we have taken and sold?

Enter the Glow

Hannah Burns explores identity, escapism, and queer belonging in I Saw the TV Glow

Notes on Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest

Mass dehumanization on the other side of the garden wall

A Love Affair Without Sex?

Slow, the latest film by director Marija Kavtaradzė, is a heartfelt portrait of a couple on terra incognita

War and Peace in Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest

How the banality of everyday life keeps us fenced off from evil

The Barbie Curse

Can a girl’s first icon of can-do power ever be good enough?

Nihilism for the Whole Family!

How Evelyn misinterpreted Waymond’s rebellion in Everything Everywhere All At Once

Puerto Rican History Deserves More Than a Musical

West Side Story displaces the true story of the Young Lords Organization’s civil rights struggle

Who Should Tell Pauli Murray’s Story?

Why a white documentarian should have stepped aside and created space for a Black filmmaker

Newsletter

Connect With Us