Essay Film Movies

Jacques Tati and Robert Bresson were very different directors, yet the way they structure a scene is very similar.

An essay film about Jean-Paul Sartre and the French Existentialists, featuring Roland Barthes' last interview.

I am grateful to the Chinese for the invention of gunpowder — it feels as if they made it for me. Its discovery happened by accident,...

Director Thomas Heise picks up the biographical pieces left by his family, and composes an epic picture of four generations of his family, of a...

The film begins as a documentary about an author known for autofiction. By incorporating multiple making-of layers, it blends the process of making...

From 1920 to 1965, the great Buster Keaton made spectacular use of locomotives in his films. This video essay charts the course of his iconic...

After a dizzying trip through the cosmos we see how an astronaut is flung into space. Rudderless, irrevocably heading for the eternal black hole. The...

A long-hidden, personal doc about leaving a beloved house by the late, revered Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira.

A witty, forthright dive into the wonderful world of boobs by singer and filmmaker Elizabeth Sankey – from enhanced boobs to 'free the nipple',...

The six-hour essay in four parts examines the history of regimes and revolutions, leaders and martyrs, from a philosophical perspective. The collage...

A "cinematic object" by Mariano Llinás, divided into 9 chapters, based on the poetry of Henri Michaux.

How do you put a life into 500 words? Ask the staff obituary writers at the New York Times. OBIT is a first-ever glimpse into the daily rituals, joys...

After the disappearance of Aldemar his wife decided to get overall uncertainty by including him in the list of deaths in the 1938 Colombian National...

This film essay is inspired by Leonid Trauberg's eponymous autobiographical text. It also sheds light on his public condemnation in 1949 as a leader...

In 2010, an obsessed gamer designed the perfect game of Sim City. Achieved through a repeating pattern of clustered high rises,...

Premiered at the 2017 Locarno International Film Festival.

Following Bellavista and Totó, Peter Schreiner completes his informal trilogy of epic, black-and-white digital-video essay-films with the...

A meditation on early Swedish anime fandom and coming of age at the turn of the millennium. Memories from a first love in bleeding video colors, the...

Initially a made-to-order documentary on Spain, the film becomes an open-ended work-in-the-making about the creative process. “Settling in the...

What begins as an enquiry on things that mean other things itself becomes a thing that means other things, too. And whatever exactly that thing is,...