Vadim Rizov

New York

Director of Editorial Operations at Filmmaker Magazine

Putting the treat in treatise. (I write about movies, mostly.) Director of editorial operations, Filmmaker Magazine. Contact: first dot last at gmail.

Articles

Cannes 2025: Entroncamento, The Mastermind

1 month ago | filmmakermagazine.com | Vadim Rizov

Back to selection by Vadim Rizov in Festivals & Events on May 25, 2025 Cannes 2025, Entroncamento, Kelly Reichardt, Pedro Cabeleira, The Mastermind In a piece about the documentaries at this year’s Cannes, Slate’s Sam Adams noted the existence of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk but declined to name the section it was in, referring to it only as “a low-profile sidebar devoted to independent productions.” That would be ACID, which—with the possible exception of the CINEF section that shows...
Cannes 2025: Highest 2 Lowest, Die My Love, The Love That Remains

1 month ago | filmmakermagazine.com | Vadim Rizov

Denzel Washington (right) in Highest 2 Lowest by Vadim Rizov in Festivals & Events on May 23, 2025 Cannes 2025, Die My Love, Highest 2 Lowest, Hlynur Pálmason, Lynne Ramsay, Spike Lee, The Love That Remains Spike Lee’s maligned 2013 update of Park Chan-wook’s 2003 revenge picture, Oldboy, did little to inspire confidence in his latest reimagining of an Asian classic, this time relocating Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) to DUMBO in Brooklyn.
Cannes 2025: It Was Just an Accident, The Secret Agent

1 month ago | filmmakermagazine.com | Vadim Rizov

Back to selection Vahid Mobasseri, Majid Panahi and Hadis Pakbaten in A Simple Accident by Vadim Rizov in Festivals & Events on May 23, 2025 Cannes 2025, It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi, Kleber Mendonca Filho, The Secret Agent Sentenced in 2010 on spurious grounds by the Iranian government to six years in prison, a punishment that came with a 20-year ban on making movies, Jafar Panahi immediately set about violating the latter.
Cannes 2025: The Phoenician Scheme, Nouvelle Vague

1 month ago | filmmakermagazine.com | Vadim Rizov

Back to selection Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera and Mia Threapleton in The Phoenician Scheme by Vadim Rizov in Festivals & Events on May 18, 2025 Though Wes Anderson’s last consensus-acclaimed feature was 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, his subsequent, progressively more divisive films have been profitable enough to emerge at a regular clip.
Cannes 2025: Sound of Falling, Two Prosecutors

1 month ago | filmmakermagazine.com | Vadim Rizov

Back to selection Lena Urzendowsky in Sound of Falling by Vadim Rizov in Festivals & Events on May 16, 2025 Cannes 2025, Sound of Falling, Two Prosecutors It’s always a dangerous business when entertainment journalists and film critics feel the need to wade into political commentary, but the Trumpian shadow hovering over everything makes people feel like they have to say something even if they don’t want to.
Visions du Réel 2025: Choose Your Illusion

2 months ago | filmmakermagazine.com | Vadim Rizov

Back to selection David Ekwe-Ebobisse in Soldiers of Light by Vadim Rizov in Festivals & Events on Apr 25, 2025 Visions du Réel In 2002, a George W. Bush aide coined the phrase “reality-based community”—a label meant pejoratively, anticipating the present belligerent moment. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” that (still!) anonymous official ranted. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.
God Help Us | Flipboard

2 months ago | flipboard.com | Vadim Rizov

5 hours agoThe prospect of smashing imagined limits on his power gives him an obvious thrill. Donald Trump’s interest in seeking an unconstitutional third term as president, like many of his most dangerous or illegal ideas, began as a joke. Trump would muse on the stump that he deserved an extra term because …
God Help Us

2 months ago | filmcomment.com | Vadim Rizov

This article appeared in the March 28, 2025 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing. Sign up for the Letter here. Jesus Revolution (Jon Erwin and Brent McCorkle, 2023)In the mid-aughts, enabled by my then-editor, A.A. Dowd of The A.V. Club, I proactively requested review assignments for anti-evolution tracts, the God’s Not Dead franchise, and adjacent mental garbage.
Escape Routes: Miguel Gomes on

Mar 18, 2025 | filmmakermagazine.com | Vadim Rizov

Back to selection Crista Alfaiate in Grand Tour by Vadim Rizov in Directors, Features, Interviews, Issues, Screenwriters on Mar 18, 2025 Grand Tour, Miguel Gomes, Spring 2025 At its core the story of a man taking extreme measures to avoid his fiancée, Grand Tour originated when Portuguese director Miguel Gomes read W. Somerset Maugham’s The Gentleman in the Parlour (1930) just before his marriage to co-screenwriter Maureen Fazendeiro.
True/False Film Fest 2025: Excavation, Therapy, Protest

Mar 14, 2025 | filmmakermagazine.com | Vadim Rizov

Back to selection by Vadim Rizov in Festivals & Events on Mar 14, 2025 True/False Film Fest, True/False Film Fest 2025 Hu Sanshou’s Resurrection premiered at last year’s Taiwan International Documentary Festival; this year, the director was awarded the annual True Vision award at True/False before the first of two showings of this feature.