As the arthouse cinema market continues to regain its footing, the list of what may be considered an overlooked film could be quite vast, depending on one’s metrics. For our yearly feature highlighting the 50 most overlooked films––arriving before our overall top 50 films––we’ve sought to dig deep to find the gems that deserved more attention upon their initial release and have mostly been left out of year-end conversations. Hopefully, with many widely available on a variety of streaming platforms, they will begin to find an expanded audience.
Sadly, many documentaries would qualify for this list, but we stuck strictly to narrative efforts; one can instead read our rundown of the top docs here. While they aren’t included on this list, we also hope a number of 2022 qualifying films find an audience when they get a proper release next year, including Saint Omer, One Fine Morning, and Return to Seoul.
Sadly, many documentaries would qualify for this list, but we stuck strictly to narrative efforts; one can instead read our rundown of the top docs here. While they aren’t included on this list, we also hope a number of 2022 qualifying films find an audience when they get a proper release next year, including Saint Omer, One Fine Morning, and Return to Seoul.
- 12/15/2022
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
“A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist–moving an audience through a movie […] making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark,” said the late, great Gordon Willis. As we continue our year-end coverage, one aspect we must highlight is, indeed, cinematography. From talented newcomers to seasoned professionals, we’ve rounded up the examples that have most impressed us this year.
Aftersun (Gregory Oke)
It’s been seven months since I unassumingly saw Aftersun at an unspeakable morning hour in the Director’s Fortnight sidebar at Cannes, and I haven’t stopped thinking about that polaroid shot. Just after a photo is taken, the camera cuts to a long, still take of the polaroid image slowly apparating. It’s the shot I’ve thought about most this year (and not just because it’s clever). In narrative context it delivers a heavyweight moment. But in...
Aftersun (Gregory Oke)
It’s been seven months since I unassumingly saw Aftersun at an unspeakable morning hour in the Director’s Fortnight sidebar at Cannes, and I haven’t stopped thinking about that polaroid shot. Just after a photo is taken, the camera cuts to a long, still take of the polaroid image slowly apparating. It’s the shot I’ve thought about most this year (and not just because it’s clever). In narrative context it delivers a heavyweight moment. But in...
- 12/14/2022
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Though we aim to discuss a wide breadth of films each year, few things give us more pleasure than the arrival of bold, new voices. It’s why we venture to festivals and pore over a variety of different features that might bring to light some emerging talent. This year was an especially notable time for new directors making their stamp, and we’re highlighting the handful of 2022 debuts that most impressed us.
Below one can check out a list spanning a variety of different genres, and many are available to stream here. In years to come, take note as these helmers (hopefully) ascend.
The African Desperate (Martine Syms)
One of the most exciting directorial debuts of the year, Martine Syms’ The African Desperate is an electrifying ride through a day in the life of Palace Bryant (Diamond Stingily). An Mfa grad on her final day of academia, she navigates...
Below one can check out a list spanning a variety of different genres, and many are available to stream here. In years to come, take note as these helmers (hopefully) ascend.
The African Desperate (Martine Syms)
One of the most exciting directorial debuts of the year, Martine Syms’ The African Desperate is an electrifying ride through a day in the life of Palace Bryant (Diamond Stingily). An Mfa grad on her final day of academia, she navigates...
- 12/8/2022
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Martine Syms's The African Desperate is now showing exclusively on Mubi in the series Debuts and Glitch Zone: Films by Martine Syms.When the college campus is deployed in film or in fiction, it is usually a symbol of possibility: the point at which the world is said to open up. But in Martine Syms’s debut feature, The African Desperate, the college campus feels like the claustrophobic vortex where possibility goes to die. The film’s protagonist, Palace, played brilliantly by the artist and poet Diamond Stingily, is in the last 24 hours of her low-residency Mfa program. Her final critique, supposedly celebratory, is less about her work and more about her teachers’ projections onto it. The day that follows is all anticlimax, like the slow afternoon hours still colored by bad morning sex. Much of the film’s tension is sustained by negation. Palace is consistently forced to say no: to her classmates,...
- 11/16/2022
- MUBI
As 2022 winds down, like most cinephiles, we’re looking to get our eyes on titles that may have slipped under the radar or simply gone unseen, so—as we do each year—we’re sharing a rundown of the best titles available to watch at home.
Curated from the Best Films of 2022 So Far list we published for the first half of the year, it also includes films we’ve enjoyed the past few months and some we’ve recently caught up with. While our year-end coverage is still to come, including our staff’s top 50 films of 2022, this streaming guide will hopefully be a helpful tool for readers to have a chance to find notable, perhaps underseen, titles of late.
Note that we’re going by U.S. releases and that streaming services are limited solely to the territory as well. If you want to stay up-to-date with new titles being made available,...
Curated from the Best Films of 2022 So Far list we published for the first half of the year, it also includes films we’ve enjoyed the past few months and some we’ve recently caught up with. While our year-end coverage is still to come, including our staff’s top 50 films of 2022, this streaming guide will hopefully be a helpful tool for readers to have a chance to find notable, perhaps underseen, titles of late.
Note that we’re going by U.S. releases and that streaming services are limited solely to the territory as well. If you want to stay up-to-date with new titles being made available,...
- 11/15/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Moviegoing Memories is a series of short interviews with filmmakers about going to the movies.Martine Syms is the director of The African Desperate, now showing exclusively on Mubi. Following a hallucinatory day-in-the-life of a Black artist (Diamond Stingily), the film is both a riotously funny satire of art-world pretensions and a rowdy portrayal of sex and drugs in the Internet age.In this conversation, Syms tells us about her key cinematic influences and the experimental microcinema scene in Los Angeles.
- 10/27/2022
- MUBI
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
The African Desperate (Martine Syms)
Early into Martine Syms’ The African Desperate, Mfa finalist Palace (Diamond Stingily) sits for her last exam in an upstate New York art school tucked deep in the woods. It’s the end of a three-year voyage, the kind of moment that should trigger swaths of pride and relief. But Palace, a Black student in an exceedingly white college, is frustrated, tired, on the verge of a breakdown. Her art has already shown at the Venice Biennale, a feat her all-Caucasian examiners don’t really know how to respond to. Even after they christen her a Master of Fine Arts, the mix of animosity and envy lingers acridly in the room. “There are lots of female artists...
The African Desperate (Martine Syms)
Early into Martine Syms’ The African Desperate, Mfa finalist Palace (Diamond Stingily) sits for her last exam in an upstate New York art school tucked deep in the woods. It’s the end of a three-year voyage, the kind of moment that should trigger swaths of pride and relief. But Palace, a Black student in an exceedingly white college, is frustrated, tired, on the verge of a breakdown. Her art has already shown at the Venice Biennale, a feat her all-Caucasian examiners don’t really know how to respond to. Even after they christen her a Master of Fine Arts, the mix of animosity and envy lingers acridly in the room. “There are lots of female artists...
- 10/21/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Art student Palace Bryant coolly contemplates the people crowding up to her, wanting to hang out or have sex – but there’s not much else here
Despite a (potentially) interesting central character and a genuinely confrontational and uncomfortable opening scene, this feature from artist and film-maker Martine Syms spins its wheels dramatically, with indulgent, undirected performances and ideas. It is archly knowing about the art world, yet never quite earns its putative status as satire: a movie about someone graduating from art school that itself feels like a graduation project.
The contemporary artist and writer Diamond Stingily (who has collaborated with Syms on other work) plays Palace Bryant, a young woman of colour about to undergo a viva voce exam from an uptight panel of advisors as part of her Mfa degree. Some of them are supportive, some uneasy and one is openly sceptical about Palace’s claims to be...
Despite a (potentially) interesting central character and a genuinely confrontational and uncomfortable opening scene, this feature from artist and film-maker Martine Syms spins its wheels dramatically, with indulgent, undirected performances and ideas. It is archly knowing about the art world, yet never quite earns its putative status as satire: a movie about someone graduating from art school that itself feels like a graduation project.
The contemporary artist and writer Diamond Stingily (who has collaborated with Syms on other work) plays Palace Bryant, a young woman of colour about to undergo a viva voce exam from an uptight panel of advisors as part of her Mfa degree. Some of them are supportive, some uneasy and one is openly sceptical about Palace’s claims to be...
- 10/17/2022
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
After perusing our massive, 60-film, two-part fall preview, there shouldn’t be too many surprises on our first monthly highlights of the season. While September is often thought of as prelude to awards-season favorites, there are also a number of stellar, smaller-scale offerings we hope don’t get lost in the cracks––including a rather strong honorable mentions list to follow. Check out our picks below.
12. Petrov’s Flu (Kirill Serebrennikov; Sept. 23)
Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov has been invited to back-to-back Cannes, premiering Petrov’s Flu last year and Tchaikovsky’s Wife this year. The former is finally getting a U.S. release, and Rory O’Connor said in his review, “Petrov’s Flu opens on a stuffy commute—a Moscow bus in the early years of post-Soviet Russia. The eponymous protagonist is already bent over a handrail, stricken with his affliction. The mood is fevered, almost circus-like, the lighting like pea soup. In a moment of madness,...
12. Petrov’s Flu (Kirill Serebrennikov; Sept. 23)
Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov has been invited to back-to-back Cannes, premiering Petrov’s Flu last year and Tchaikovsky’s Wife this year. The former is finally getting a U.S. release, and Rory O’Connor said in his review, “Petrov’s Flu opens on a stuffy commute—a Moscow bus in the early years of post-Soviet Russia. The eponymous protagonist is already bent over a handrail, stricken with his affliction. The mood is fevered, almost circus-like, the lighting like pea soup. In a moment of madness,...
- 9/2/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
"I'm a believer in art." Mubi has unveiled an official trailer for an intriguing art-house indie film titled The African Desperate, which will be opening later this month. It premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival earlier this year, and also played at New Directors/New Films in NYC. This electrifying film tracks one very long day for Palace Bryant, a newly minted Mfa grad whose final 24 hours in art school become a real trip. She is not going to the graduation party! She needs to get home, back to Chicago from upstate NY. But that means surviving a hazy, hilarious, and hallucinatory night-long odyssey, stumbling from academic critiques to backseat hookups. With a banging soundtrack and cinematography that references street photography, giddy gonzo cinema and 1990s high-school romcoms, The African Desperate ultimately chronicles the need for release and emancipation from mental slavery. Starring Diamond Stingily, Erin Leland, and Ruby McCollister.
- 8/31/2022
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
One of the most exciting directorial debuts of the year, Martine Syms’ The African Desperate is an electrifying ride through the day in the life of Palace Bryant (Diamond Stingily). An Mfa grad on her final day of academia, she navigates saying goodbye to some genuine friends and some not-so-genuine annoying teachers and colleagues, as well contemplating what is next. Following a New Directors/New Films premiere earlier this year, the film was picked up by Mubi for a theatrical release next month, followed by a streaming release. We recently featured it on our fall preview and now the first trailer has arrived.
Leonardo Goi said in his Nd/Nf review, “Rollicking, piercing, and wildly entertaining, The African Desperate is pitched along the border that runs between being excited for one’s future and terrified about not knowing what it’ll look like. A 24-hour chronicle of Palace’s graduation...
Leonardo Goi said in his Nd/Nf review, “Rollicking, piercing, and wildly entertaining, The African Desperate is pitched along the border that runs between being excited for one’s future and terrified about not knowing what it’ll look like. A 24-hour chronicle of Palace’s graduation...
- 8/31/2022
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Mubi has released a new trailer for The African Desperate, the feature debut from acclaimed visual artist Martine Syms. Filmmaker previously interviewed Syms during the film’s premiere at this year’s edition of New Directors/New Films as well as for our most recent Summer print issue. The African Desperate follows Palace Bryant (Sym’s frequent collaborator Diamond Stingily) on her final day at an Mfa program in New York’s Hudson Valley. During these last 24 hours of art school, Palace experiences the full gamut of grad school woes and (synthetic) wonders—including a racist final thesis review, encounters with her insufferable classmates and […]
The post Trailer Watch: Martine Syms’s The African Desperate first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post Trailer Watch: Martine Syms’s The African Desperate first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 8/31/2022
- by Filmmaker Staff
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
‘The African Desperate’ Trailer: Martine Syms’ Feature Debut Deconstructs Race in the High Art World
Los Angeles-based artist Martine Syms is turning the high art world upside down with her feature debut “The African Desperate.”
A coming-of-age comedy, the film premiered at New Directors/New Films this year as the closing night selection, and opens in theaters September 16 at Brooklyn Arts Museum (Bam) and the Quad in New York City, as well as select theaters nationwide, from Mubi
Per the official synopsis, “The African Desperate” tracks one very long day for Palace Bryant (an expertly deadpan Diamond Stingily), a newly minted Mfa grad whose final day of art school becomes a real trip. Palace is not going to the fucking graduation party! She hates the woods. If this were a reality show, she would be the person who was not here to make friends. Palace needs to get home, back to Chicago from upstate New York. But that means surviving a hazy, hilarious, and hallucinatory night-long odyssey,...
A coming-of-age comedy, the film premiered at New Directors/New Films this year as the closing night selection, and opens in theaters September 16 at Brooklyn Arts Museum (Bam) and the Quad in New York City, as well as select theaters nationwide, from Mubi
Per the official synopsis, “The African Desperate” tracks one very long day for Palace Bryant (an expertly deadpan Diamond Stingily), a newly minted Mfa grad whose final day of art school becomes a real trip. Palace is not going to the fucking graduation party! She hates the woods. If this were a reality show, she would be the person who was not here to make friends. Palace needs to get home, back to Chicago from upstate New York. But that means surviving a hazy, hilarious, and hallucinatory night-long odyssey,...
- 8/31/2022
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
After a fairly quiet summer––outside of a few gems––the fall movie season is near and there’s much to anticipate. As we do each year, after highlighting the best films offered thus far, we’ve set out to provide an overview of the titles that should be on your radar––and while some dates will certainly shift and some films added, it’s quite a promising lineup.
Featuring 40 films, the below preview includes both the best we’ve already seen (with full reviews where available) and the anticipated with (mostly) confirmed release dates over the next four months. A good amount will premiere over the next few weeks at Telluride, Venice, TIFF, and NYFF, so check back for our reviews.
The Cathedral (Ricky D’Ambrose; Sept. 2)
What makes the fabric of our upbringing? The memories we’ll reflect on after those years have passed are often not what we...
Featuring 40 films, the below preview includes both the best we’ve already seen (with full reviews where available) and the anticipated with (mostly) confirmed release dates over the next four months. A good amount will premiere over the next few weeks at Telluride, Venice, TIFF, and NYFF, so check back for our reviews.
The Cathedral (Ricky D’Ambrose; Sept. 2)
What makes the fabric of our upbringing? The memories we’ll reflect on after those years have passed are often not what we...
- 8/25/2022
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Exclusive: Mubi has acquired world rights to Martine Syms’ feature The African Desperate, which is due to open theatrically in New York on September 16, with a wider rollout to follow.
The film had its world premiere at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam and North American premiere as the closing night film at New York’s New Directors/New Films. CAA Media Finance brokered the deal on behalf of the filmmakers.
Pic follows artist Palace Bryant (Diamond Stingily) on one very long day in 2017 that starts with her Mfa graduation from a white liberal arts college in upstate New York and ends at a Chicago Blue Line Station. Palace navigates the pitfalls of self-actualization and the fallacies of the art world.
Syms will present the film internationally as part of an in-person event tour throughout September and October in the U.S. and Europe. Following the theatrical release and events,...
The film had its world premiere at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam and North American premiere as the closing night film at New York’s New Directors/New Films. CAA Media Finance brokered the deal on behalf of the filmmakers.
Pic follows artist Palace Bryant (Diamond Stingily) on one very long day in 2017 that starts with her Mfa graduation from a white liberal arts college in upstate New York and ends at a Chicago Blue Line Station. Palace navigates the pitfalls of self-actualization and the fallacies of the art world.
Syms will present the film internationally as part of an in-person event tour throughout September and October in the U.S. and Europe. Following the theatrical release and events,...
- 7/6/2022
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
Early into Martine Syms’ The African Desperate, Mfa finalist Palace (Diamond Stingily) sits for her last exam in an upstate New York art school tucked deep in the woods. It’s the end of a three-year voyage, the kind of moment that should trigger swaths of pride and relief. But Palace, a Black student in an exceedingly white college, is frustrated, tired, on the verge of a breakdown. Her art has already shown at the Venice Biennale, a feat her all-Caucasian examiners don’t really know how to respond to. Even after they christen her a Master of Fine Arts, the mix of animosity and envy lingers acridly in the room. “There are lots of female artists your age and race making the same stuff you’re doing,” a professor chides her over drinks, “how are you going to differentiate yourself?”
Rollicking, piercing, and wildly entertaining, The African Desperate is...
Rollicking, piercing, and wildly entertaining, The African Desperate is...
- 5/3/2022
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
Kicking off this week at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art, the 51st edition of New Directors/New Films brings together highlights from Sundance, Berlinale, Venice, Locarno, Rotterdam, and many more to provide an essential snapshot of new filmmaking talent. With Audrey Diwan’s Golden Lion winner Happening commencing the annual festival starting Wednesday, it’s one of 12 films we can recommend as we also look forward to catching up with the rest. Check out our picks below.
The African Desperate (Martine Syms)
It’s a hot July day in upstate New York when Palace (Diamond Stingily) sits for her final art school exam, a passive-aggressive interview with an all-white faculty that leaves her with that soul-crushing question: what are you going to do next? The answer, in Martine Syms’ rollicking debut feature, is a night-long graduation party, a bacchanal that sends Syms’ friend...
The African Desperate (Martine Syms)
It’s a hot July day in upstate New York when Palace (Diamond Stingily) sits for her final art school exam, a passive-aggressive interview with an all-white faculty that leaves her with that soul-crushing question: what are you going to do next? The answer, in Martine Syms’ rollicking debut feature, is a night-long graduation party, a bacchanal that sends Syms’ friend...
- 4/19/2022
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Returning from April 20-May 1 for its 51st edition, New Directors/New Films has announced this year’s lineup. Taking place at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art, the slate includes the top prize winners at Sundance and Venice this past year, Nanny and Happening, respectively, as well as the latest work from Ricky D’Ambrose, Eskil Vogt, Sierra Pettengill, Sara Dosa, and more.
La Frances Hui, Curator, Department of Film, MoMA and 2022 Nd/Nf Co-chair said, “Portraits of individuals and communities navigating uncertain and turbulent circumstances in pursuit of freedom, self-determination, and survival set a remarkably contemplative tone to the lineup. This year’s new directors look inwards and draw on events past and present to reflect on our collective humanity. Together, these films reaffirm the creative power of cinema to see, critique, and inspire the way we live.”
See the full lineup below, including...
La Frances Hui, Curator, Department of Film, MoMA and 2022 Nd/Nf Co-chair said, “Portraits of individuals and communities navigating uncertain and turbulent circumstances in pursuit of freedom, self-determination, and survival set a remarkably contemplative tone to the lineup. This year’s new directors look inwards and draw on events past and present to reflect on our collective humanity. Together, these films reaffirm the creative power of cinema to see, critique, and inspire the way we live.”
See the full lineup below, including...
- 3/30/2022
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art has set Audrey Diwan’s Happening and The African Desperate by Martine Syms will bookend the 51st edition of their collaboration, New Directors/New Films running April 20–May 1 in NYC.
The festival will introduce 26 features and 11 shorts and total of 39 directors — 21 of which are women.
“Portraits of individuals and communities navigating uncertain and turbulent circumstances in pursuit of freedom, self-determination, and survival set a remarkably contemplative tone to the lineup,” said La Frances Hui, curator of MoMa’s film department and event co-char.
Happening (L’Événement), winner of the 2021 Venice International Film Festival’s Golden Lion, is the portrait of a young woman attempting to secure an illegal abortion in 1960s provincial France. It was acquired by IFC Films and will be released May 6.
The African Desperate, a debut feature from Syms, rushes through 24 hours in the life of protagonist Palace...
The festival will introduce 26 features and 11 shorts and total of 39 directors — 21 of which are women.
“Portraits of individuals and communities navigating uncertain and turbulent circumstances in pursuit of freedom, self-determination, and survival set a remarkably contemplative tone to the lineup,” said La Frances Hui, curator of MoMa’s film department and event co-char.
Happening (L’Événement), winner of the 2021 Venice International Film Festival’s Golden Lion, is the portrait of a young woman attempting to secure an illegal abortion in 1960s provincial France. It was acquired by IFC Films and will be released May 6.
The African Desperate, a debut feature from Syms, rushes through 24 hours in the life of protagonist Palace...
- 3/29/2022
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
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