Chris Barsanti

The knock on many documentary festivals is that they can be a festival of despair. Whether it’s watching stories about indigenous people fighting off corporate depredations or people locked away for crimes they didn’t commit, a day spent in documentary land can sometimes feel like marking the Stations of the Cross.

A meek blacksmith in a 16th-century Japanese village must decide between staying true to his family calling or picking up the sword in this overlong samurai story.

A couple’s spur-of-the-moment decision to turn their new home into a commune has unexpected consequences in Thomas Vinterberg’s promising but problematic drama.

Andrzej Wajda’s final work is a staunchly moral portrait of staunchly iconoclastic Polish modern artist Władysław Strzeminski and his battle with the postwar Stalinist regime.