Donbass is a region in Eastern Ukraine that’s occupied by various criminal gangs, the Ukrainian regular army, supported by volunteers, and separatist gangs, supported by Russian troops. In "Donbass," the film, the events that are richly-depicted by Ukraine-born Sergei Loznitsa (“Maidan,” “Austerlitz,” “My joy”) in stunningly-realistic fashion bring the point across, with great clarity, that this war didn’t just happen in the open fields. It happened in the homes, the bunkers, the government offices, the food drives of this community. In fighting this proxy war through the separatist gangs

Last night’s opening ceremony, which was shown to the press corps via simulcast in the Debussy theater, was pure joy, especially if you speak French. French film and theater actor Edouard Baer emceed the event with ironic bonhomie and a piano player who accompanied him as he delivered a spoken-word-style love letter to cinema and to humanity at large. With Anna Karina, the actress from “Pierrot le fou,” (this year’s poster depicts a scene from that movie) watching him in the audience, he played short clips from the film and entertained the audience with quips.

Who was this giant of cinema, this at once diffident and arrogant workhorse of a filmmaker, Fassbinder? He was self-destructive, gay, antigay, versatile (he learned just about every trade associated with the cinema), he was terribly vexing and charming, all at once. Trying to pigeonhole him is a fool’s errand (he covered his trail, eluded categorizing). He dominated the melodramatic genre, in all its shades, from the

Among all the films at this year’s Tribeca festival, the most stunning one was “State Like Sleep,” a modern-day film noir with all the suspense of a Hitchcock movie.  The story, set in the underbelly of Brussels, follows the widow of a deceased Belgian actor who one-year after his death decides to investigate the mystery behind his apparent suicide. The film’s heroine, Katherine Waterston (“Alien: Covenant,” “Fantastic