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A Cruel Dance

Sirât by Olivier Laxe

Article
10.12.2025
NL EN

If Laxe’s true subject is detachment and indifference, and his film is a form of punishment, then that results in a peculiar cruelty. In various interviews, Laxe says that Sirât arose from a “wound,” which he traces back to Gestalt psychology. “Art is pushing boundaries, spirituality is pushing boundaries, and that’s where you get to know yourself,” he says. The word “wound” also encapsulates the duality of the film: wounds can be healed and inflicted. Strangely enough, Sirât does both.

Useful Fictions

Bugonia (2025) by Yorgos Lanthimos

Article
26.11.2025
EN

[Bugonia] sets itself in a broader genre of conspiracy movies such as Alan Pakula’s 1974 The Parallax View, Philip Kauffman’s 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and John Carpenter’s 1988 They Live. In such movies, aliens or conspirators are generally de-individualized so that they can function effectively as metaphors for “the system”. A way to see such movies is as an attempt to thematize conflict in late capitalism, meaning a contradiction that cannot express itself anymore in the terms of class war. For atomized workers, the conspiracy theory provides a “useful fiction” to understand the social totality itself.

All My Life (Bruce Baillie, 1966)
Prisma #59

03.12.2025
NL

All my life…I’ve been waiting for you. De felrode bloemen, de verweerde schutting en de blauwe hemel zijn de hoofdfiguren van deze korte film. Met een telelens vertelt Bruce Baillie in een drie minuten durende panbeweging een liefdesverhaal tussen de kijker en de struiken. Wat is er zo bijzonder aan dit Californische zomertafereel?

State of Cinema 2025

In Praise of the Unexpected

Manifesto
12.11.2025
NL FR EN

The magic of cinema is something which leaps out, which isn’t planned: it’s what happens beyond all the work, the materials tools, the script, etc. In my life as an actress, it’s the encounters and surprises which attract, or even enchant, me.

The Aesthetic Future of Television

Article
19.11.2025
NL FR EN

Television maintains, first of all, a quotidian intimacy with life and the world, such that it penetrates every day into our living rooms, not to violate our privacy, but rather to become part of it and enrich it. Even more precisely, TV, in the infinite variety of its revelations, favors man. Each time a human being who deserves to be known enters into the field of this iconoscope, the image is made richer and something of this man is rendered to us.

Looking at Animals: Karl Kels

Article
12.11.2025
EN

Through a mix of cultural neglect and self-absorption, experimental cinema has often remained outside vital contemporary discourses, for better or worse. Take for example its most towering figure, Stan Brakhage. Between the late 1950s and early 2000s, in nearly twenty films dealing with animals, Brakhage, more radically than anyone else, rendered amorphous the distinctions between looking and being looked at, subject and perception, human and non-human. Yet his work is rarely addressed from this vantage point. Surveying the repertoire of experimental and artists’ films for animal presence inevitably brings up many other formidable names. The most atypical figure who might feature in such a hypothetical catalogue could be the Berlin based experimental filmmaker Karl Kels, whose fascination with the zoological inspires both awe and admiration.

ISSUE
19.11.2025
André Bazin, televisiecriticus André Bazin, critique de télévision EN
André Bazin, Television Critic
COMPILED BY Tillo Huygelen

Few figures in film history have left a greater mark than André Bazin (1918–1958), considered by many to be the film critic of the twentieth century. Between 1942 and his early death in 1958, Bazin wrote an impressive body of work comprising nearly three thousand texts – amounting to an average of roughly one piece every two days. Less well known are the hundreds of articles he wrote as a television critic. He began doing so primarily for health reasons: in the early 1950s, his fragile condition forced him to give up his daily activities, leave Paris and seek rest in the small town of Bry-sur-Marne. But there was also a deeper reason: for Bazin, television formed an integral part of the emerging visual culture, an evolution he wanted to follow closely and comment on.

Thinking Sideways about Sound and Montage

Article
29.10.2025
NL EN

During editing, the filmmaker decides how each shot should be preceded and followed by other shots. Sound does not come after (or alongside) the image: sound is visible on the screen, it's part of the image, it comes out of the image, it's all around the screen, sound embraces the screen.

Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise

Article
19.11.2025
EN

From [Frans van de Staak], I learned not only how to make films but also how to be determined in doing so. He was open, unassuming, modest, but very strong. He was one of those rare people whose life and art matched perfectly. He spoke very little. He would laugh and say, “I started talking very late; my mother took me to the doctor for that.” Yes, his films tend to be modestly silent, but they could delve deeply into what he was telling, reaching the very essence of the subject, without any bombast.

Encounters with Belgian Filmmakers

Sabzian x Avila

22.10.2025
A COLLECTION OF 18 texts,
NL FR EN

Together with Avila, the non-profit film distributor dedicated to showcasing Belgian auteur cinema online and in cinemas, we’re happy to present a curated selection of interviews from our archive with Belgian filmmakers whose work can be watched on Avila. These include, among others, Ellen Vermeulen, Bas Devos, Eric de Kuyper, Boris Lehman, the Dardenne brothers, as well as several founding members of Sabzian. A rich collection of voices that spans more than half a century of Belgian film history.

Cinema op voorschrift

Article
29.10.2025
NL

Julian, maar evengoed andere recente films als Skunk of Small Things Like These en zeker Close, capteren feilloos de hedendaagse gevoeligheid waarin sentimentele druk de ultieme munteenheid van artistieke kwaliteit is geworden. De zogenaamde “mokerslag” die deze films uitdelen, is allerminst emancipatorisch. Pijn en verlies lijken de enige toegelaten sleutels tot diepgang. Elk gevoel wordt met zwaar geschut afgedwongen: grensoverschrijdend gedrag in Julie zwijgt, incest in Dalva, pestgedrag in Holly, Un monde en Skunk, zelfverminking in Girl, zelfdoding in Close en een terminale ziekte in Julian. Alsof enkel het noodlottige leven waarde heeft.

Support Sabzian!
NEWS
15.10.2025
NL FR EN

Last year Sabzian celebrated its 10th anniversary. Since 2014, we have been publishing essays, interviews, translations, curated Collections and Issues, a calendar, and more – all freely accessible and created with a love for cinema. To continue this work, we need your support! Become a Supporter or Patreon, or make a one-time donation. 

Peter Watkins (1935-2025)
Obituaries
03.11.2025
EN

British filmmaker Peter Watkins passed away last week near Felletin, France, where he had lived for more than twenty-five years. He had just turned ninety.

Jean-Luc Godard: Unmade and Abandoned
NEWS
17.11.2025
EN

At the ICA in London, Jean-Luc Godard: Unmade and Abandoned (25 November 2025 – 21 June 2026) examines projects Godard never realised. The programme brings to view his shelved film ideas, unmade television scripts and fragments that never grew into finished works.

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