5 min read
by Rebecca Martin
September 25, 2026
This is a preview piece ahead of the Music Box Theatre screening of “Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency” on Tuesday, September 29; the full feature interview will follow closer
12 min read
by Megan Henderson
September 24, 2026
Barbara Hammer made over 80 films in her life time, and yet many don’t know her name. She helped shape experimental and queer cinema, and yet most audience members haven’t
16 min read
by Rebecca Martin
June 16, 2026
Years ago, while working at Chicago Filmmakers, I came across a large pile of magazines from the organization’s archive that were destined for the trash. To some, they may have
12 min read
by Rebecca Martin
May 5, 2026
This month’s lineup leans heavily into documentaries, with “The Invite” as the lone outlier. Watching these films, I kept circling back to my own life—each one opening up a different
14 min read
by Matt Fagerholm
March 9, 2026
As someone who was born four decades ago, any fragments of home movie footage that exist from my childhood—most of which was recorded on a cumbersome camcorder borrowed from my
7 min read
by Rebecca Martin
February 5, 2026
Gara, the guiding force at the center of “To Hold a Mountain,” is living proof that not all heroes wear capes. Her days begin before sunrise — herding sheep across
8 min read
by Rebecca Martin
February 3, 2026
“Birds of War” premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where it received the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Journalistic Impact. At its core, the film is a
8 min read
by Dawn Borchardt
January 29, 2026
“Joybubbles” is filmmaker Rachael J. Morrison’s debut feature documentary, which just premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Documentary Competition. Built almost entirely from archival film footage
16 min read
by Matt Fagerholm
January 28, 2026
Sundance has always been a festival I had admired at a distance. How Robert Redford had gone about using his platform to launch the careers of countless filmmakers for over
8 min read
by Rebecca Martin
November 21, 2025
When cult filmmaker Kira Muratova told a young Isa Willinger, “The truth is, women make the harsher films,” the statement lodged itself in Willinger’s mind like a riddle. Could this
10 min read
by Rebecca Martin
October 18, 2025
In 2018, filmmaker Emily Mkrtichian began work on what she envisioned as a quiet, contemplative documentary—a portrait of women in Artsakh, the ethnically Armenian region nestled in the South Caucasus,
6 min read
by Matt Fagerholm
October 8, 2025
“I remember John Candy’s presence much more clearly than that of John Hughes,” Gaby Hoffmann told me during our interview in 2012, after I asked her about her memories of
