Catherine Gund’s Paint Me a Road Out of Here uses the artwork to tell truths about the US carceral system.

Whether it’s catfishing clueless rich guys, catching sex predators on YouTube, or assisting a woman in conceiving a child, questions of legality often have little to do with morality.

In the mid-20th century, the Norwegian painter plumbed the tensions, envies, frustrations, and tender bonds among feminine subjects.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most brain-quiveringly beautiful films ever to flood a screen.

An eclectic round-up spanning feature-length investigative documentaries, avant-garde short films, YouTube essays, and even talk shows. 

When dancer Loïe Fuller’s spinning garment reflected the stage lights, it took on a life of its own, beguiling those in New York, Berlin, and Paris.

Merging the filmmaking process with snippets of the protagonist's life and words,The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire blurs distinctions between past and present.

The dancers we grow to know (and love) in Swan Song are sweating, swearing, soaring women, at odds with conceptions of purity and frailness. 

Uninterested in proving anything definitively, this film instead asserts the complicated humanity of psychic healers, their clients, and the practice itself. 

The coming-of-age documentary is as full of whimsy and joy as it is packed with clear-eyed resilience.

Two films make US viewers reckon with the extent to which American ignorance — and indifference — to the conflict is a side effect of “winning” the Cold War.

Man Ray’s Return to Reason film series anticipated the extent to which the motion picture would inform how we curate and call up memory. 

Julio Torres’s directorial debut takes a fantastical approach to depicting the very real trials of immigration and creative work.

Kimi Takesue’s new documentary nudges us to consider whether we in the audience differ all that much from the tourists whipping out their iPhones.

Newly restored, G.W. Pabst’s 1929 film provides a bleak, unsettling account of a showgirl’s ruin at the greedy hands of competing male suitors. 

This year’s Sundance Film Festival offered an array of documentaries spanning cultural vantages and historic eras, about women who span the globe.

Kaouther Ben Hania’s feature film blurs the distance between the personal and cultural, individual and systemic.

What does it mean for a film addressing overtly political themes to remain apolitical?

Director Nicole Newnham chronicles the rise, fall, and disappearance of the iconic feminist sexologist.

How to Have an American Baby exposes a Chinese business that cares only for the bottom line, and a private US hospital system more than happy to serve patients paying cash.

Paul B. Preciado’s film prizes creative passion over pathology, and trades individual trauma for collective and individual transcendence.

Women artists’ contributions shine in The Culture, an exhibition about hip hop at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

To say that Bethann Hardison has contributed to racial progress in one of the world’s most whitewashed realms is an understatement. But a new documentary about her life might have gone a step too far.

D. Scott’s documentary on Black trans sex workers is as sunny as it is sobering, a film that refuses to moralize.

Make Me Famous, a new documentary about East Village artist Edward Brezinski, does little to prove that its subject should have risen to the top.

Alexandre O. Philippe’s documentary would seem a must-see for fans of the yellow brick road or the Great Northern Hotel of Twin Peaks. If only.

Victim/Suspect reveals the extent to which women are vulnerable to pressures to take the blame, and even serve time, for their own violent rapes.

Little Richard: I Am Everything honors the a-lot-ness that made him a 20th-century pioneer, while acknowledging the bumps along the trail he blazed.

If God (and the Devil) are in the details, the craft of printmaking proves a powerful outlet for exploring Eisenman’s most enduring themes.

Amanda Kim’s documentary shows how Paik anticipated the dizzying ways in which electronic and digital culture would transform human discourse. 

Smith’s 1998 film exudes the DIY charm of a low-budget, first-time feature while keenly depicting the complexities of both race- and gender-related inequalities.

A House Made of Splinters bears witness not only to children’s ongoing trauma, but to their enduring ability to seek out and sustain their own support networks.

At this year’s Sundance International Film Festival, more than half the feature-length movies were made by directors who identify as women.

Jean Renoir's newly restored 1939 classic proves that lawless wealth — then as now — makes a marvelous farce of us all.

The aggressive kineticism of Futurism in Chase-Riboud's sculpture is tempered by a keen appreciation of the erotic and lyrical.

For those up for seriously weird, naughty “cyberdyke” mayhem, this movie will likely disturb and delight.

Capturing an urban ecosystem of animals and humans, Shaunak Sen’s second feature sits somewhere between a nature doc, political drama, and touching family portrait.

Just as sex with a revolutionary does not make one revolutionary, a penchant for setting films in developing countries does not make Denis a resident expert.

The unabashedly feminine oeuvre of the collagist, sculptor, and conceptual artist is a smorgasbord of shimmer and sequin, a bling manifesto for the senses.

With its recent 4k restoration, Daisies endures as a New Wave masterpiece and hyper-feminine smorgasbord of sensory pleasure.

The most fruitfully jarring artistic disruptions at documenta 15 unsettle their own settings, stealthily intervening in traditional German institutions or landmarks.

The engulfing vocal testimony of Miller's audio-visual art speaks to the threat of death faced by people of color in this country.

Assembly Required suggests it is high time to strap on a colorful mask and play with someone you don’t know — or don’t know well enough.

Hanna Bergholm’s stunningly original debut film Hatching embraces the experience of female adolescence as the monster that it is, and then gives that monster literal wings.

Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s directorial debut offers a twist of zest to the tired tale of a vivacious young woman pursuing romance with an older man.

Everybody seems to be infatuated with everyone else in the film, locking eyes with an intensity that could shame a tantra guru.

After Yang merges director Kogonada's fastidious attention to form with a rare empathy for the insecurity of the human condition, especially within the nuclear unit.

Laura Wandel’s debut film examines the psychological — and physical — carnage wrought between children when grown-ups look the other way.

Jackson's two-dimensional surfaces lead us into a maze of shapes and visual gestures, yet tease us into recognizing the figures hidden within.

Part of the glory of the film is that its heroine’s choices, however unexpected, are taken seriously.