“It Was Just an Accident,” the Iranian film directed and written by Jafar Panahi (“The White Balloon”), was the winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes and, somewhat inexplicably, is France’s submission for Best International Film at the 2026 Academy Awards.
“Among Neighbors,” Yoav Potash’s powerful documentary, started simply and grew more complex and insightful as his explorations expanded over a 10-year period.
Taking a chapter from the life of father and son ethnomusicologists John and Alan Lomax, writer Ben Shattuck centers this love story around the quiet joy of ethnic song collecting, a harvest, so to speak, of the bones on which this country was built.
Leni Riefenstahl glorified Nazi Germany with her beautiful, powerful films that encapsulated its philosophy of power, beauty, racial purity and morality.