Show Notes
One of the highlights of this year’s New York Film Festival is the latest feature by the nonfiction master Gianfranco Rosi, known for documentaries like Sacro GRA (2013), Fire at Sea (2016), and Notturno (2020), which paint both lyrical and urgent portraits of places that function as thresholds—between land and water, life and death, heaven and hell. His new cinematic essay, Below the Clouds, brings that approach to the Italian city of Naples. Shot in ethereal black and white, the film explores Naples as an environment both cosmic and prosaic—a city whose skies are suffused with volcanic ash and whose earth is shaken by tremors; and where a glorious and ancient past scaffolds a gritty, melting-pot present.
Below the Clouds premiered in August at the Venice Film Festival, where Film Comment's Devika Girish sat down with the filmmaker for a conversation. The two discussed how Pietro Marcello (director of the NYFF selection Duse) inspired Rosi to make a film in Naples, as well as Rosi’s uniquely embedded and immersive technique, and the state of nonfiction cinema today.
More from The Film Comment Podcast
On this week's episode, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited FC Contributing Editor Inney Prakash and Assistant Editor Michael Blair to debate three new films that are currently gracing the marquees of multiplexes and stirring up discourse: Bassam Tariq's Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (2:30); Alejandro González Iñárritu's Digger (16:35); and Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's You Can See Everything (27:12). Subscribe to Film Comment today to explore our Fall 2026 digital issue, the entirety of our archive dating back to 1962, and much more.
As the 64th New York Film Festival drew to a close last week, it was once again time for Film Comment’s Festival Report, our annual live overview of the NYFF that was. Critics Bilge Ebiri and Molly Haskell joined Film Comment Editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish for a spirited wrap-up analysis of the highlights and lowlights from this year's lineup. The panel discussed and debated Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love, Chris Rock's Misty Green, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's You Can See Everything, Valeska Grisebach's The Dreamed Adventure, Luca Guadagnino's Artificial, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor's NAZA, Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s 9 Temples to Heaven, and many more selections. The Questions: Favorite performance? (2:35) Favorite moment? (18:36) A movie that you can’t shake, for good or bad? (29:30) A hidden or underrated gem (47:03)
Several films—both old and new—across this year’s NYFF lineup push the boundaries of depictions of sensuality and desire on screen, posing provocative questions for the current cinema landscape, where sex has become a divisive subject. Last Tuesday at the festival, filmmaker and scholar Ayanna Dozier and Film Comment Contributing Editor Melissa Anderson joined Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute to explore films like Nitrate Kisses, The Devils, The Drift, The Unknown, and others to discuss what thrills and terrifies us about sexuality on screen. Subscribe to Film Comment to explore our brand-new Fall 2026 digital issue, the entirety of our archive dating back to 1962, and much more.
For the last two weeks, we've handed over The Film Comment Podcast to the participants of the 2026 Film at Lincoln Center Critics Academy—an annual program for up-and-coming critics held during the New York Film Festival, led by Film Comment editors.
This week and next, we're handing over The Film Comment Podcast to the participants of the 2026 Film at Lincoln Center Critics Academy—an annual program for up-and-coming critics held during the New York Film Festival, led by Film Comment editors.