John Foster / 31 Mar 2023

Italy After Neoliberalism

Mussolini’s Grandchildren, by David Broder

Giorgia Meloni’s election win in September 2022 was a watershed moment in history. Coming from Italy’s postfascist right, Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) was the first party to overcome the antifascist nostrums that had been integral to European politics since 1945.(...)

Charlie Bertsch / 02 Mar 2023

We Are All Donkeys

Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO

The donkey is lying on the ground, like a corpse. We see a close-up of the blood-spattered hairs on its nose. But then it takes a breath, then another.(...)

John Foster / 24 Feb 2023

The Biggest Failure Ever

R. T. Howard’s Spying on the Reich

From the vantage point of the early 21st century, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the interwar period was a preamble to catastrophe.(...)

Charlie Bertsch / 16 Feb 2023

Ukraine in Hindsight

Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front, Edward Berger’s astoundingly brutal adaptation of Eric Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel about World War I – the favourite to win this year’s Best International Film Oscar – is timely to a degree that would have been hard to imagine when the project began.(...)
Charlie Bertsch / 02 Feb 2023

Pre-Neoliberal Poland

Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Scar

Krzysztof Kieślowski's 1976 film The Scar, which chronicles the construction and operation of a large chemical factory, breaks many of the rules that had governed narrative cinema since the silent era.(...)
Charlie Bertsch / 14 Sep 2022

Details Are Everything

Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend

The first thing that came to mind, when I learned that Jean-Luc Godard had passed away, was a sequence from his 1967 film Weekend. Not one involving one of its many fiery car crashes or the guerrilla outfit that tramps around in the woods near the end, but something more subtle.(...)

Charlie Bertsch / 08 Sep 2022

France in Revolt

Maudit Dragon on Punk

Maudit Dragon’s eponymously-titled debut demonstrates what happens when a band stubbornly pursues its artistic vision without worrying about whether it might be out of step with the times.(...)