Illustrations by Niklas Wesner.
As the year draws to a close, we’d like to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of our contributors. Here are some of their finest essays, interviews, festival coverage, and more from this year. We’re looking forward to much more in the new one. As always, thank you for reading.
No Other Land (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor, 2024).
ESSAYS
The current cinema:
- Mary Turfah on the wishful thinking of No Other Land (2024)
- Nathan Lee on the intellectual (not only bodily) horror of David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds (2024)
- Rafaela Bassili on the peculiarly Brazilian absurdity and horror of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent (2025)
- Jawni Han on the Korean notion of piksari in Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 (2025)
- Kit Duckworth on mothers, murderers, and postwar deformities and Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle (2024)
- Mark Asch on Jia Zhangke and the Chinese century
- Farran Smith Nehme on Alexander Horwath’s career- and nation-spanning essay, Henry Fonda for President (2024)
- Kim Hew-Low on Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet (2025) and other green-card comedies
- Quinn Moreland on love, obsession, and fandom in Alex Russell’s Lurker (2025)
- J. Velásquez on the god’s-eye montage of Bill Morrison’s Incident (2023)
Nightshift (Robina Rose, 1981).
Repertory:
- Elena Gorfinkel on the nocturnal labors of Robina Rose’s Nightshift (1981)
- Adam Piron on decay and rebirth in Christina Hornisher’s Hollywood 90028 (1973)
- Sanoja Bhaumik on the shifting role of the Indian family in Nirad Mohapatra’s The Mirage (1983)
- Imogen Sara Smith on ruin and resilience in Jocelyne Saab’s The Razor’s Edge (1985)
- Robert Rubsam on Adak Amirkulov’s The Fall of Otrar (1991) and the historical epic
David Lynch's woodshop. Photograph by Kyle Hurley.
Retrospectives:
- In our tribute to David Lynch, many of his former collaborators discuss his legacy
- Amalia Ulman sings the praises of Elaine May’s loser brunettes
- Adam Nayman on the hard-luck outsiders of the late Ted Kotcheff
- Lawrence Garcia on the evolution of Bruno Dumont
- Jonathan Mackris on Vittorio de Sica’s collective actions
- Mark Asch on the cut-up films of William S. Burrough and Antony Balch
- Lucia Ahrensdorf on the advocacy cinema of Bolivia’s Grupo Ukamau
- Rafaela Bassili on Pia Frankenberg’s uncertain women
- David Schwartz on Chantal Akerman in exile
- Imogen Sara Smith on Mikio Naruse’s depiction of women
From the Alamo Drafthouse workers picket. Photograph by Eleanor Petry.
Film culture:
- Vikram Murthi reports from the picket lines of the Alamo Drafthouse strike in New York City
- Yasmina Price contributes expanded program notes for her series on the Black worker on screen
- Lawrence Garcia on the first-person camerawork of RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys (2024) and others
- Dylan Adamson on yuppie-maxxing and TikTok realism
- Sarah Fensom on the failures and successes of television-to-cinema adaptations
- Sakhi Thirani on adaptations of Shakespeare in Bollywood
- Abishek Budhathoki on Bhutan’s spiritual new wave
Deragh Campbell in Trinity Bellwoods Park, Toronto. Styled by Mara Zigler. Photograph by Saffron Maeve.
Profiles:
- Saffron Maeve profiles Deragh Campbell, stalwart of the Canadian screen
- Jillian Steinhauer profiles Rashaad Newsome and his AI griot, Being
- Carlos Valladares profiles Jerry Schatzberg on the occasion of a major retrospective
Illustration by Zoé Maghamès Peters.
Book reviews:
- Kaitlyn A. Kramer on the beds of the exhibitionist artist Sophie Calle
- Paul Attard on Tom Gunning’s The Attractions of the Moving Image
- Arun A. K. on Omar Ahmed’s The Revolution of Indian Parallel Cinema in the Global South (1968–1995)
- Nirris Nagendrarajah on the fractured lives and complex legacies of Merle Oberon and Nancy Kwan
- Ryan Meehan on the glandular cinema of Z-movie maestro Ed Wood
- Dylan Adamson on Abel Ferrara’s stoned-to-sober recovery memoir
Illustration by Liv Garber.
Around the galleries:
- Andrew Norman Wilson tries to find a seat for Christian Marclay’s The Clock (2010)
- Perwana Nazif on François Pain’s experimental documents of institutional psychotherapy
- Katie Tobin on the accident-fueled videos of Sohrab Hura
- Forrest Cardamenis on the still photography of Nuri Bilge Ceylan
- Madeleine Seidel on Ufuoma Essi’s videos, which connect distant points in the history of Black radicalism
- Rhian Sasseen on Christian Marclay’s labyrinthine and oneiric Doors (2022)
Night and Fog in Zona (Jung Sung-il, 2015).
Translations:
- Jawni Han translates a 2022 conversation between the Korean critic Jung Sung-il and the Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing
- Hossein Eidizadeh translates a review-cum-manifesto by the Iranian poet and filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad
Illustration by Chau Long.
The Notebook Insert is a seasonal supplement on moving-image culture.
This spring, “Are You Experienced?”considered the past, present, and future of the extra-audiovisual sensory cinema:
- Tom Gunning on sensational attractions as a recurrent fantasy of modernity
- Blake Williams on immersive video made for the Apple Vision Pro
- Erika Balsom on the shifting relationship between the avant-garde and the cinema space
- Gabriel Winslow-Yost on the 4D experience
- Andrew Norman Wilson, Sara Magenheimer, Kevin B. Lee, and Vera Drew on speculative cinematic paraphernalia, with illustrations by Jake Tobin
Illustration by Michelle Urra.
This fall, “Ad Infinitum,” looked at the wide world of advertisements:
- James N. Kienitz Wilkins’s fevered visions from an ad-glutted world
- Tarsem on making a living in advertising and the dark arts
- Sierra Pettengill on the commercials that celebrated the decline of the Soviet Union
- Eliška Děcká on the revolutionary animated advertisements of Karel and Irena Dodal
- Celia Young, Nicholas Henriquez, Debashree Mukherjee, Olivia Popp, Mark Asch, and Nathan Lee deliver case studies in guile, from a post-independence Indian scooter ad to the awkward cousin of clickbait
Far from Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002).
INTERVIEWS
- Michael Koresky in a career-spanning conversation with Todd Haynes
- Nathan Lee in conversation with Melissa Anderson on her new collection of criticism, The Hunger
- Carlos Valladares in conversation with Charles Burnett on The Annihilation of Fish (1999)
- Natalia Keogan in conversation with Courtney Stephens and Michael Almereyda on John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (2025)
- Elissa Suh in conversation with Athina Rachel Tsangari on Harvest (2024)
- Laura Staab in conversation with Lucile Hadžihalilović on The Ice Tower (2025)
- Matthew Thrift in conversation with Paul W. S. Anderson on In the Lost Lands (2025)
- Leonardo Goi in conversation with Alejo Moguillansky on Pin de Fartie (2025)
- Jordan Cronk in conversation with Alex Ross Perry on Videoheaven and Pavements (both 2025)
- Daniel Kasman in conversation with Claire Denis on The Fence (2025)
Dracula (Radu Jude, 2025).
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Edo Choi, Elissa Suh, and Keva York join us for a roundtable on Radu Jude’s Dracula (2025)
- Sofia Bohdanowicz brings her camera behind the scenes of Dominga Sotomayor’s Swim to Me (2025)
Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt, 2016).
EXCERPTS
- Elena Gorfinkel and John David Rhodes on the prop and the performer
Illustration by Franz Lang.
FESTIVAL COVERAGE
- Daniel Kasman on the Berlinale
- Daniel Kasman, Leonardo Goi, and others on Cannes
- A cycle of close reads from the Locarno Critics Academy by Charlyne Genoud, José Emilio Gonzalez Calvillo, Botagoz Koilybayeva, Jason Tan Liwag, Olivia Popp, and Sonya Vseliubska
- Leonardo Goi, Daniel Kasman, Chloe Lizotte, and Maxwell Paparella on Venice, Toronto, and New York
- Christopher Small on Busan
- Laura Staab on the Viennale
- Maxwell Paparella on Film Fest Knox
One of Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias’s storyboards for Pepe (2024).
FILMMAKER CONTRIBUTIONS
- Eight production designers tell us the story of one object that made the world of the film
- Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias’s storyboards for Pepe (2024)
- Phoebe Jane Hart brings us behind the stop-motion scenes of Bug Diner (2024)
- Dijby Kebe on the filmic inspirations for L’avance (2024)
- Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane invite us along on the pandemic strolls that inspired Grand Theft Hamlet (2024)
- Haley Elizabeth Anderson walks us through the many points of genesis of Tendaberry (2024)
- Daniel Soares on the relevancy of rage rooms and Seneca to Bad for a Moment (2024)
- Saulė Bliuvaitė shares her preparatory scrapbook for Toxic (2024)
- Koya Kamura on the making of Winter in Sokcho (2024)
- Valeria Hofmann on the serpentine shape of AliEN0089 (2023)
- Kohei Igarashi introduces Super Happy Forever (2024)
- Ali Cherri introduces The Watchman (2024)
- Kurdwin Ayub introduces Moon (2024)
Illustration by Emi Ueoka.
IN PRINT
Issue 6, dedicated to expressions of youth in cinema:
- Durga Chew-Bose describes some of her favorite coming-of-age moments in cinema
- Christopher Holliday details the complexities of de-aging technology
- Philippa Snow reflects on the adolescent drive to seek out graphic imagery
- Sofia Satchell-Baeza surveys the vast and appropriately unruly canon of underage auteurs
Issue 7, organized around the theme of “the unfilmable”:
- Paolo Cherchi Usai on the many categories of the unfilmable
- Bilge Ebiri gives a brief history of the frame rate
- Yoana Pavlova on the censor-dodging gambit of Bulgarian children’s cinema
- Yasmina Price on found footage and the survival of memory
Anora (Sean Baker, 2024).
COLUMNS
The Current Debate is a column by Leonardo Goi that connects the dots between great writing about a topic in the wider film conversation.
Immortality (Sam Barlow, 2022).
Cutscenes is a column by Matt Turner that explores—and blurs—the intersection of cinema and video games.
- “Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel Turn the World into a Game”
- “A Hit of Pure Videodrome: Sam Barlow and Natalie Watson on Full-Motion Games”
Peter Strausfeld’s poster for The Butcher (Claude Chabrol, 1970).
Movie Poster of the Week is a column by Adrian Curry celebrating the art of the printed film advertisement.
- “An Interview with Kenny Gravillis”
- “The Action-Packed Posters of Mort Künstler”
- “Thomas Benton and The Grapes of Wrath”
- “The Posters of the Thirteenth New York Film Festival”
- “The Iconic Linocuts of Peter Strausfeld”
Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends (Keishi Otomo, 2014).
The Action Scene explores the form, history, and visceral power of action cinema through its set pieces.
- “Bruising Banality in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire (2011)”
- “Choreographing the Real: A Conversation with Kenji Tanigaki”
First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017).
One Shot invites close readings of film grammar’s most basic unit.
- Carolyn Funk on Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (2017)
- Ciara Moloney on Uncle Buck (1989)
- Saffron Maeve on Stanley Kwan’s Women (1985)
- Jenna Ham on Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin (2004)
PlayStation, “Mental Wealth” commercial (Chris Cunningham, 1999).
Soundtrack Mix is a column by Florence Scott-Anderson that surveys cinema history through sound collage.
From “Going to the Movies” by Dash Shaw.
COMICS
- Dash Shaw finds Gary trying to get someone to see Passages (2023) with him
- Allee Errico discovers that the Bob Dylan greatest hits compilation is really hitting right now
Continue reading Notebook’s 2025 Year in Review.