The Book Detective

Chronovisor (2026) - Auen, Walker Treading somewhere between a documentary and fiction, academic research and conspiracy theory, Borgesian labyrinth and schizophrenic episode, Jack Auen and Kevin Walker's Chronovisor feels like some cinematic equivalent of an uncovered dusty relic that concerns the greatest story never told.

Proving the existence and tracking down Chronovisor, a machine that shows the ancient events on screen - founding of a Roman Empire, crucifixion of Jesus, etc., which was said to be invented by a Benedictine monk with the help of renowned scientists in the 50s at the Vatican's insistence. It is the main drive of Beatrice Courte (played by a real life academic, Anne-Laure Sellier), a university lecturer, who stumbled upon the subject in books and articles. There she discovers Father Pelligrino Ernetti, a Benedictine monk in the center of it all, who remained mum about Chronovisor's power and its whereabouts most of his life, until his death in the 90s. Feigning a posthumous award as a connection, Courte tracks down anyone who knew Ernetti, in order to locate the machine that may change the course of human history. Many dead ends and red herrings later, she is sent Ernetti's belongings in a box with newspaper clippings, magazine articles and a bunch of VHS tapes, with one its ribbon in tangles outside the broken casing. She finds out that there was a grand conspiracy to suppress the knowledge of Chronvisor's existence by the Vatican under the direction of Pope Pius XII, in fear of the device falling into the hands of evil entities.

Shot on grainy 16mm in dimly lit rooms, Auen and Walker embrace doing things an old-fashioned way. In an interview from New Directors/New Films this spring, they revealed that 'thankfully' there were no research materials online when they searched for Chronovisor, which was a real life phenom, so they decided against the use of computers or mobile devices' screens displayed, which is usually quite boring. Instead, they opted for Courte going to the libraries, and doing old-school research through reading stacks and stacks of books and magazine articles. And we audiences read the information with her, displayed on screen with the books' passages directly translated in English over the top of original texts in open books. This physicality provides a different kind of intimacy than what we are used to in our digital age movie going.

The spaghettied VHS tape Courte carefully reassembles holds the key. In it is taped footage by Ernetti's nephew who informs the viewer that Chronvisor is stashed in Portugal and warns that upon viewing, it changes the viewer because it doesn't only show the past events, but also memories of people who were at present meld into the viewer's. Some of them lost their minds. And Courte, who played an armchair general in the comfort of her cozy academic surroundings up until then, needs to embark on a journey to find the device that can change the world.

The grainy, pixelated, borderline abstract images of figures and faces that Chronovisor doesn't have the creepy effects of Ring or some found-footage horror, but nevertheless unnerving. As Chronovisor charts a horror film territory at the end, we are left with the feeling that the film is not about what Chronovisor can show us after all, but more about the burning desire to uncover the knowledge that is denied to us.

Chronovisor opens 9/4 in theaters.

Rhythm of Life

Variations on a Theme (2026) - Delmar, Jacobs Devon Delmar and Jason Jacobs's Variations on a Theme is a quiet revelation of a film. Shot entirely in the small rural community of Kharkams in Kamiesberge mountains in Western South Africa, it records the daily lives of Hettie, an 80 year old goat herder and her neighbors. With a stationary camera and wide frames, it records sunrises and sunsets and everything in between, as the narration (by Jason Jacobs, a grandson of Hettie) unhurriedly informs us that some town-wide scam is in progress. On the radio and loud speakers from a car, they are asking the residents, many of whom are descendents of WWII veterans, to turn in 'the blue form' to get reparation money the government owes them. According to the narrator, black South African soldiers were only compensated with a pair of army boots and a bicycle when they returned after the war.

All of the residents are swept up in the scam, paying exorbitant fees to file the form - "to spend money to get money". Even stoic Hettie is swept up in it. But daily life goes on. She lets out the goats in the morning, gets water from the town water tank (which serves also as the town teenagers hangout), chat with her neighbors, use the communal outhouse, watch some TV shows and see the sun goes down over the rolling, picaresque hills from her porch. Others play dominoes outside the ramshackle supermarket and children play in the playground.

Delmar and Jacobs build a gentle rhythm through repetition, in Variations on a Theme. It lulls viewers into a warm, comfortable and inviting place, where every day is pretty much the same. Hettie's daily routine goes on, the local dreamer who sleeps outside still dreams of a woman he met in the 70s. The sun goes down every night, providing a spectacular sunset every time. The cramped houses and their colorful walls and live animals, everything in the film is laid back and unchanging. The commotion comes from people still anxiously holding on to a hope for the reparations to kick in, which they believe, will come any day now - Gladwin, the local hairdresser, ordered all new supplies, expecting to get paid from the fund. Domino players talk about taking an overseas trip with the money.

Hettie's birthday is coming and according to the narrator, her large family from the city that she seldom talks to will be coming for her birthday, even though she is pretty much 'detached' now and started to enjoy her isolation and solitude ever since her husband's passing. After the hectic birthday celebration, and her large family staying in her small house for several days, Hettie's daughter suggests that she come and live with them in the city. She is not getting any younger and it is time to leave behind the inconvenience of rural living.

The storm's brewing from the distant, Hettie's milk on her nightstand falls and shatters on the ground. The change is coming. Delmar and Jacobs observe all these in an unhurried fashion, lamenting silently on the inevitability of time passing and changing way of life. Beautiful work.

Preview: New Directors/New Films 2026

Presented by Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art, the 55th edition of New Directors/New Films takes place from April 8 through April 19, 2026, with filmmakers scheduled to attend in person. With a focus on innovative cinema that sets the stage for the future of film, the festival champions filmmakers with distinctive visions and bold new ideas that push the art form into new terrain.

This year’s selection will introduce 24 features and 10 shorts, including festival winners and favorites from Cannes, Sundance, Locarno, Venice, Berlinale, Rotterdam, Toronto, San Sebastián, and more. Screenings take place at FLC’s Walter Reade Theater and MoMA’s Titus theaters.

Below are some of the films I had a privilege to preview:

Strange River (2025) - Claret Muxart We get a first glimpse of 16 year old Dídac (Jan Monter), resembling a St. Sebastian in some Renaissance painting, bicycling along the forest with his family as he looks straight at the camera. Dad, mom, and his two younger brothers Biel and Guiu, are on a bicycle trip along the Danube river, camping along the way. Mom and Dad are fully aware that it will be the last trip with Dídac, who is growing up fast. There's an obvious tension between him and Biel, who is a couple of years younger, who needs to share a tent with him. As with any family trips, there is some usual annoying family stuff they deal with - arguments on the directions and following the map, sibling rivalries, sleeping arrangements, etc.

Dídac's parents are very supportive in acknowledging Dídac's homosexuality, but they are not perfect. They argue about small things and engage in extramarital affairs. As they take a break and swim in the river Dídac witnesses a naked man swimming by them. Is it his imagination or real person?

Spanish director Jaume Claret Muxart's feature debut, Strange River, is both a coming of age story told like a fairytale and an astute observation of family dynamics. With its clear-eyed gay protagonist, it gracefully skirts around the graphic nature of teen desires and instead concentrates on purity of longing for someone and possibilities of finding love anywhere, real or imagined.

The theme of rivers, connecting all the tributaries into one stream, as a metaphor for human relationships is beautifully and tenderly realized in Strange River.

Two Seasons, Two Strangers - Miyake Sho Director Miyake Sho has been steadily making films about delicate human connections over the years. Adapting from short manga stories (A View of the Seaside and Mr. Ben and His Igloo) by cult cartoonist Tsuge Yoshiharu, who passed away this year, Two Seasons, Two Stranger is a strange and wonderful diptych about a screenwriter (played by Korean actress Shim Eunkyung) and her stories as she travels Japan. As she writes, we get to see the film about two shy young people (Kawai Yuumi and Takada Mansaku) on their summer vacation, meeting on the beach and their brief friendship. The young man does most of the talking and reveals his background, while the pensive young woman listens. It culminates in them swimming in the ocean together on a rainy day.

Then the story pivots to the writer taking the train to a snowy countryside on a whim. She can't find lodging since she didn't book anything. Over the mountain, she finds an isolated quaint inn, run by a grunt who doesn't reveal anything about his private life, such as, why he is alone running the inn, which is traditionally done as a family business. On his part, after hearing that she is a screenwriter for movies and TV shows, he suggests she write about his inn, hoping for more business.

Getting bored being snowed in, The inn keeper suggests checking out a large ornamental carp pond his neighbor owns in the middle of the night. Then he proceeds to steal a carp despite the protest from the writer. But in fact, this is the most fun she has had in a long time.

Miyake goes on sketching out the human connections among strangers in a gentle, playful, abstract way, blurring both fiction and real life/creator and its creations.

Next Life - Tenjin Phuntsog Tenjin Phuntsog's feature debut, Next Life, is a quiet contemplation on death, statelessness and rebirth. It starts with the elderly father of the family being examined by a traditional Tibetan doctor. The western medicine couldn't figure out what's wrong with him. Living in California, far away from home, has got to do with his condition, the doctor tells him - a deep wound in his heart that will kill him. Resigned to his fate, the family prepares for the impending passing.

Shot minimalistically with a handful of characters and setting, Phuntsog somberly goes about contemplating the impermanence of human life and the rituals we keep for the dead and remembrance. As a family, they cope with living in an exile in California with family karaoke sessions and walk in nature. They indulge themselves with a VR setup, walking in the tranquil field that resembles their homeland.

As the son is trying to arrange his ailing father's wish to visit Tibet, he encounters Chinese bureaucracy issuing him a visa - because Tibet is still under Chinese rule. On the father's deathbed, they are told by Tibetan monks that he will be reborn in Tibet as a bird. A consolation for the remaining family in their moaning.

All is unhurriedly and quietly observed like a documentary in Next Life. The human pulse sounds like a river running. The repeated prayers have their own rhythm. Watching the film, far apart from western storytelling tradition, is a quite unique experience.

Fantasy - Isabel Pagliai Prompted by a chance encounter, director Isabel Pagliai and her teen subject Louise Morel decided to make a film, a documentary on Morel's daily lives from her diary entries. But as the film goes along, it becomes, well, a fantasy of sorts, delving deeply and intimately into the inner life of a teenage girl. Armed with a handycam, Louis documents the dark interior of her house, singing, taking baths, scrolling on her phone, playing with her calico cat and pining for someone named Antoine. Louise has a ferocity of young Sandrine Bonnaire in A Nous Amours, as she delves guilessly into her sexuality and pours out her inner thoughts.

We only find out her name later in the film, just because a stranger, Thomas (Thomas Ducasse), who is reading off of her diary in the beginning of the film, manifests himself at night in the forest, to be with Louise. Is this a fantasy of Louise or Thomas? Or is it a mutual one? Nights in the forest go by as they engage in conversations by the stream. Fantasy is a shapeless, formless exploration of the inner life of a teenager. And Pagliai makes it into a uniquely enthralling cinematic experience.

Memory - Vladlena Sandu Vladlena Sandu's searing war time memoir, dedicated to the children of war, is filled with vivid and unforgettable images. The vibrant colors, mise-en-scene and poetic images remind you of the work of Parajanov and Tarkovsky. Sandu makes a point of the effects of growing up in war and violence and condemns the culture of child soldiers and cycle of violence.

It tells the story of young Vladlena (played by (Selima Agamirzaeva, then Amina Taisumova, and later by director herself) moving to Grozny, Chechenia, from Cremia, Ukraine, her birth place, after her artist parents divorce. There she endures a tyrannical grandfather who was a WWII vet and strict Lenin devotee. But it's the 80s and the USSR dissolves, there are changes and the decade long Russo-Chechen war is coming. Being Russian/Ukrainian, Vladlena's family find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Then the tanks roll in, bombardment of Grozny begins. And she witnesses unspeakable violence and death. Memory is all told in a mix of symbolic imagery, newsreel footage, home videos and photo collages. As Sandu struggles with her grandfather's legacy, her father's drug addiction and her mother's sacrifice, she paints a truly human experience in the sweeping current of not so distant history. Memory is a remarkable debut feature and crowning cinematic achievement.