May 2020 | Sight&Sound | 1
Contents May 2020
5 Editorial The lay of the land
Rushes
7 Coronavirus: Guy Lodge reports on the
impact of the pandemic on cinema
9 Industry: Charles Gant explores the
effect of the shutdown on the box office
10 Festivals: Nick Bradshaw signs up
for CPH:DOX’s ‘virtual’ edition
12 #MeToo: Rebecca Liu on new films
that respond to the #MeToo movement
13 Interview: Christina Newland talks
to intimacy coordinator Yarit Dor
14 Obituary: Michael Brooke celebrates
the life of the late, great Max von Sydow
16 Dream Palaces: Fire Will Come
director Oliver Laxe on Barcelona’s
Filmoteca de Catalunya
16 Rising Star: Mariana di Girolamo,
star of Pablo Larraín’s Ema
17 Soundings: Frances Morgan on
Fatima Al Qadiri’s score for Atlantics
18 Festivals: Jessica Kiang sees
promising signs at this year’s Berlinale
20 Global Spotlight: Ehsan Khoshbakht
on the case of Mohammad Rasoulof
Wide Angle
23 Primal Screen: The year 1920
marked the beginning of modern
cinema, with The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari the most famous among a host
of remarkable films. By Bryony Dixon
95 Letters
Endings
96 Alex Ramon on how the conclusion
of Jane Campion’s 1996 The Portrait of a
Lady subverts the idea of the screen kiss
Viva Haine
Twenty-five years after Mathieu Kassovitz’s incendiary portrait
of disaffected youth La Haine burst on to the screen, the
director talks to Kaleem Aftab about the powerful legacy of the
film, what he stole from the great directors and why Spielberg
needs to turn down the music in his films PLUS Steph Green
listens in to the sound and fury of the film’s music
FEATURES
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‘Film is a tool: it changes things’
Ladj Ly’s gripping Les Misérables offers
a contemporary look at life in the
Parisian banlieues. He talks to Elena
Lazic about fighting to create a space
for filmmaking outside the country’s
often insular mainstream channels
42
In isolation: What is happening to acting?
What has acting done to happening?
As viewers in the 1950s grew increasingly
sophisticated and cottoned on to the
artifice at the heart of all movies, they
started to wise up to self-important
attempts by actors to reflect emotional
truth. But as performances grew
more enigmatic, a numbness crept
into them – the origins of a seductive
culture that now threatens to displace
life itself, writes David Thomson
48
Swingtime in Paris
Netflix drama The Eddy punctures
the romantic myths of jazz culture by
exploring the gritty reality of the lives of
musicians and staff in a club in modern-
day Paris. Jonathan Romney tunes in
54
Women with a movie camera
The 14-hour documentary Women Make
Film explores the art of cinema through
a compilation of clips from some of the
world’s greatest films. Its director Mark
Cousins explains the project’s genesis
and picks ten images that highlight
the full range of its eclectic treasures
REGULARS
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IMAGE: ALAMY
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