Have you ever sat in front of a large poster depicting the human body without its skin? One muscle gets entangled into another, the precision and complexity of their web apparent in the areas that are most crucial for movement, but with the face on top of this transparent carcass looking very much alive.

Anatomie d’un chute is her fourth feature, and, like all of her work, it shows a keen interest in the chaos of interwoven movements both toward and away from others that humans somehow revel in testing and rearranging, as if unable to figure out the big picture—and in spite of the confusion they keep inflicting on themselves. Never before, though, has Triet displayed such analytical rigour in laying out the ramifications of her premise and reassembling them in a harmonious exposé.

By Aurélie Godet Canadian filmmaker Matt Embry is living proof that one can do well despite being stuck with multiple sclerosis, provided that one circumvents the medical establishment’s augur of incurability by diversifying sources of information on the causes and treatment of the disease. This is the main takeaway of Living Proof, a documentary that…

By Aurélie Godet Scientific findings keep revealing, with an accelerated urgency, the disruptive and irreversible impact that human activities have on the natural environment and on the species that coexist with them on Earth. Set at a remote sub-Antarctic research station, Nic Gorman’s Human Traces attempts to fuse an urgent message about environmental consciousness with…

By Aurélie Godet Xavier Beauvois is an interesting case of half-tamed wildness. He knows to surround himself with the most reliable professionals—here producer Sylvie Pialat, composer Michel Legrand, and, of course, Caroline Champetier, his cinematographer since 1995’s N’oublie pas que tu vas mourir. You feel that he’s enough of a rebel to resist external pressures…

By Aurélie Godet Augmented and improved from the short film of the same name that Huang Hsin-Yao directed in 2014, the “Plus” version of The Great Buddha is the Taiwanese filmmaker’s first narrative feature. This wink to technology branding is consistent with the central role played by satirical humour in all of Huang’s storytelling endeavours,…

By Aurélie Godet In Hlynur Pálmason’s enigmatic short Seven Boats (which screened at TIFF 2014), a man adrift at sea in the wreckage of his vessel was ignored or pushed away by the occupants of the smaller boats floating around him. Winter Brothers, the Icelandic filmmaker’s first feature, recalls these motifs of rejection and the…

By Aurelie Godet Johannes Nyholm has forged his own path, bending techniques to suit his personal vision in a number of astonishing music videos and short films, including the award-winning Las Palmas, which featured marionettes and his own baby daughter. An artisan in spirit, he has continuously experimented, mixing genres in a style both rough…

By Aurelie Godet Arnaud des Pallières’ visually powerful and cerebral works have kept critics intrigued and hopeful for the day that these qualities would espouse a certain narrative efficiency for which he consistently demonstrates a clear distrust. One of his weapons in this internal struggle is an irrepressible penchant for dislocation, which is all over…

By Aurelie Godet Houda Benyamina grew up with a lot of anger in her, directed at a society unwilling to let its poor climb up the ladder and at people in positions of authority who, instead of helping, contribute to reinforcing those glass ceilings. She channelled that sentiment in two acclaimed medium-length films which pictured…

By Aurelie Godet One of the boxes automatically checked by most critics on the occasion of After Love’s Cannes premiere was high praise for the film’s lead actors, Bérénice Béjo and Cédric Kahn. (See such comments as “they carry the film.”) Indeed, this account of the final stages in a couple’s separation is permanently focused…

By Aurélie Godet Having long self-diagnosed myself with an addictive personality, combined with a rather unhealthy relationship with money, I dread movies about gamblers. So while watching Mississippi Grind, I spent half an hour standing at the back of the theatre, ready for my exit. But I never left, eyes drawn to the screen as…

By Aurélie Godet Three years ago, French-Algerian filmmaker Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, a consistently ambitious auteur, played the title role in his film Les chants de Mandrin (Smugglers’ Song), a beloved outlaw of pre-Revolutionary France who was barbarically executed in a public square. In a sort of amplification of that project’s scope, the writer-director proposes with Story…