By Jay Kuehner There’s a certain poetic justice to the unxpected trajectory—provided by the 14th Buenos Aires Festival of Independent Cinema—of America’s preeminent film critic, who, having been recently laid off from his long-standing post (34 years!) at The Village Voice, now materialized at a festival symposium half a world away to discuss his labour…

1. This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb) 2. The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr) 3. L’Apollonide—Souvenirs de la maison close (Bertrand Bonello) 4. Dreileben (Christian Petzold, Dominik Graf, Christoph Hochhäusler) 5. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) 6. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick) 7. Kill List (Ben Wheatley) 8.…

By Robert Koehler The lure of islands, their fundamental thereness, their separation from, and fragile connections to, the rest of civilization, their existence as an ideal metonym for individual identity but also for the world as a whole—all these, and more, make islands powerful places for filmmakers to land upon. When they do, they’re hopefully…