Metrograph

GIANFRANCO ROSI PUTS FAITH IN an almost classical form of emotional portraiture that bodies forth themes of survival, resilience, grief, time, and the sublime (both the terrible and the wondrous). The sheer strength of his often painterly imagery is matched by the evident trust he builds up with his subjects, whose lives he captures in a welter of daily routines and looming crisis.

FORTY-THREE MINUTES INTO LANA DAHER’S Do You Love Me (2025), a girl in pink pants and a Tweety T-shirt says, “Film me!” to the person already filming her with a consumer-grade video camera. She squats on a white dining room chair. A three-explosion cluster answers her and the cameraman, her father, calmly explains that it was “a sonic boom,” a conclusion unavailable to Westerners not being assaulted by varieties of Israeli materiel.

You don’t have to love football to love these films, but you do have to love circles and squares. —Alexandre Koberidze 1. The First Swallow (dir. Nana Mchedlidze, 1975) This film tells the story of the first Georgian footballers. It is a splendid experience to watch people as they are overcome by a completely new, unfamiliar, incomprehensible and unbridled emotion.

Columns Metrograph’s Listen Up! column continues with a look at Paul Schrader’s love letter to Cleveland, family, and rock ’n’ roll. Light of Day (1987) plays at Metrograph from Saturday, June 27 as part of Back to the Fox: The Early Films of Michael J. Fox.

BOUCHRA (2025), THE DEBUT FEATURE BY Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki, explores the relationship between Bouchra, a 35-year-old Moroccan coyote living in New York, and her mother Aicha, in Casablanca. It is a queer, computer-animated film with the same processual question driving an early ’90s Disney film: how can animation give form to intimacy? Together, across continents and emotional gulfs, Bouchra and Aicha navigate the complexities of love, pain, and secrets that unite them.

Ira Sachs, photo by Jac Martinez Interview The filmmaker on living, and making art, without secrets. Keep the Lights On (2012) is currently streaming on Metrograph At Home.

Essay On how Ringo Lam’s scorchingly impassioned action cinema returned Hong Kong cinema to the mean streets. Ringo Lam on Fire opens at Metrograph on Friday, June 5. Share: RINGO LAM’S ON FIRE TRILOGY (1987-1989) sits at the core of a decade of vital filmmaking that is representative of Hong Kong cinema to this day. But when Lam first returned to Hong Kong in the early 1980s, he was a man unstuck in time.

Essay On a slippery, beguiling vision of war-torn Czechoslovakia seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy. Long Live the Republic! opens at Metrograph on Sunday, June 7 as part of Maybe If You Smile, They Will One Day All Return. Share: Long Live the Republic! (1965) A BONY, RAKISH BOY RUNS towards a wide puddle in the road. He jumps to make it over. An invisible gust seems to lift him way up high, setting him down easily on the other side.

FOR MORE THAN THREE DECADES, Shunji Iwai has crafted rapturous films that invite deep reflection on intertwining emotions: alienation and love, desperation and angst. So palpable are the inner realities of his characters that his films become intimate examinations of contemporary existence. The Japanese filmmaker started his career making television dramas.

Columns In Futures and Pasts, Metrograph’s Editor-at-Large Nick Pinkerton highlights screenings of particular note taking place at the Metrograph theater. For the latest entry, he considers Grigori Kromanov’s raffish, rug-pulling amalgam of whodunnit and science fiction, an enduring cult item and one of Estonian cinema’s towering peaks. Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel plays at Metrograph from Friday, May 29 as part of Hotel Europa.