NYFF - The Unknown Girl

Here's Manuel reporting from the New York Film Festival with the latest from the Dardenne brothers.

The nameless girl at the center of the Dardenne brothers’ latest film is a black girl who, one Friday night near an expressway in Seraing, Belgium, rings the buzzer of a medical clinic. Doctor Jenny Davin (Adèle Haenel) is both too tired to see yet another patient and too riled up from a disagreement with her intern Julien (Olivier Bonnaud) to let either of them respond to see why anyone would be buzzing at such a late hour. Neither thinks twice of it. “If it’d been an emergency they’d have rung twice,” she rationalizes. But the next day a police officer informs Dr. Davin that the girl has been found dead not too far from the clinic with no ID on her—her image on the clinic’s surveillance system the only clue they have to figure out what may have happened with her...

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"Moulin Rouge!" Finally Coming To The Stage

You may have heard elsewhere that Moulin Rouge! will finally be coming to the stage fifteen years after coming into our lives. Forgive us for not sharing our delight immediately. When Moulin Rouge! first came out, Baz Luhrman had mentioned envisioning the show in a casino format, but the assembling team sounds more like a promise for a Broadway future: John Logan (Skyfall and the Tony winning Red) will adapt with Alex Timbers directing (Broadway's Peter and the Starcatcher and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson). The stage adaptation obviously has quite a lot to live up to, both in the high expectations of its admirers and the immaculate craft of the film. Your move, Logan and Timbers.

Once it finally arrives, we'll be waiting with bated breath to see how some of our favorite moments are recreated / reenvisioned for the stage. We polled Team Experience to see which moments they're most looking forward to...

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Beautiful Teasing: "Fences" and "20th Century Women"

The latest potentially rich films to tease are two of our most anticipated 2016 features. They aren't coming out until the last week of December. We worry for 20th Century Women that it will be lost in the shuffle (why oh why this release date?) but Fences at least will win attention due to the combined starpower at its center and the event prestige of the August Wilson award-winner making it to the big screen. The terrific teaser trailers are after the jump with a few notes on each.

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Doc Corner: Two Films Highlight the Outrageous and the Tragic of North Korea

Films about North Korea have an unfair advantage. The country is one of such baffling oddness that films told about it are often either tragic or outrageous, two extremes that make for memorable viewing. On the other hand, the nature of North Korea’s political situation means few films are indeed made about it. Titles like Solrun Hoaas’ Pyongyang Diaries in which the Australian filmmaker ventured to a North Korean film festival and gave us a glimpse of what it means to be a traveller in this land of fake smiles and concrete, and the giddy delight of Anna Broinowski’s Aim High in Creation in which she travels to North Korea to learn how to make propaganda films from the makers themselves.

This year we can add two more entertaining docs. Both are full of surprises that beggar belief at seemingly every turn: The Lovers and the Despot and Under the Sun. 

The former from directors Ross Adam and Robert Cannan is the most accessible of the pair; an espionage documentary about husband and wife filmmakers who were kidnapped by North Korea and forced to make movies for the country’s dictator leader before their brazen escape from the clutches of Kim Jong-il. Yeah, I know!

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Ava DuVernay's "The 13th" Gets A Trailer

NYFF is about to officially kick off this Friday, and one of the festival's biggest question marks is Ava DuVernay's documentary The 13th. The opening night selection explores our current prison-for-profit system's exploitation of African Americans and its ties to the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery except under terms of punishment for crimes. The festival was something of a surprise opener for the fest (and rare doc to do so) and here is our first glimpse of what DuVernay has in store for us:

Expect an expansive and passionate timely critique from one of out most vital filmmakers. What's more is that you won't have to wait much time past its debut to see it if you're not lucky enough to attend - Netflix will make the film available to stream October 7 as well as giving it a limited theatrical run. Netflix has had some luck breaking through in the Documentary Feature race at the Oscars, so we'll also be waiting to see if DuVernay's added cache could make it a contender this year.