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Sight & Sound

The international film magazine

Discover the best world cinema:

Informed and independent film news and comment
In-depth interviews with leading filmmakers
Retrospective articles vividly bringing film history to life
Reviews of every new cinema release

The films of 2011

In a strong year for arthouse cinema, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life emerged as the clear winner of the S&S; poll of international critics’ best films of 2011, says Nick James. Read more…

Our 2011 DVDs and web video polls will be online in the New Year

» Forgotten pleasures of the multiplex
» The DVDs of 2010

The Artist New release

Moving on from his OSS 117 James Bond spoofs, French entertainer Michel Hazanavicius has found novelty magic in the style and lore of silent Hollywood. Tony Rayns finds resonances in unexpected places

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
New release

David Fincher’s thumping, pumping take on Stieg Larsson’s thrilling bestseller about the sins of patriarchy redeems the Hollywood remake, says Anton Bitel

Dara Birnbaum: the caged artist Exhibition

Laura Allsop on the video appropriator’s new and old visions of suffering for – and in – one’s art

Miklós Jancsó - cinema’s lost language DVD

Miklós Jancsó’s ‘musicals’ use songs, crowds and landscape to express social struggle, writes Jonathan Romney

Mysteries of Lisbon Film of the month

Raúl Ruiz, who died in August, has left behind a magisterial four-hour saga set in 19th-century Portugal that serves as a fittingly elegant summation of his life’s work. Jonathan Romney explores the Mysteries of Lisbon

» We Have a Pope New release
» Spring Night, Summer Night Lost and found
» The Deep Blue Sea New release

News and views

The Gilbert Adair files In memoriam

Michael Brooke introduces our tribute trove of reviews, features, columns and wind-ups written by the late Adair (1944-2011) for S&S; and our former sister publication the Monthly Film Bulletin

In a lonely place: Pyongyang International Film Festival

By way of testament to the late North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, who died on 17 December, here’s James Bell’s 2009 account of a rare trip to the Pyongyang International Film Festival

Ken Loach essay-writing competition results

Nick Bradshaw on the winners of our competition for young film writers

» Time regained: Vittorio De Seta Close up
» The Ms-fits Prize fighting
» The rebel confederacy: Doc Alliance at CPH:DOX Postcard

The current issue

Review of the year:
the January 2012 issue

100 critics and curators on their films of the year; plus Michel Hazanavicius The Artist, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, Carol Morley’s Dreams of a Life, Nanni Moretti’s We Have a Pope and Pablo Giorgelli’s Las acacias

Features and interviews

The Viennale’s Hans Hurch:
“I sleep with a gun under my pillow”
The festival directors

The curator of the much-admired Viennale festival talks to Kieron Corless

Ghosts of Christmas past:
M.R. James and Lawrence Gordon Clark

Simon Farquhar remembers the principles of Christmas horror with its small-screen master, ‘A Ghost Story for Christmas’s’ Lawrence Gordon Clark

Michael Shannon: trouble in mind Interview

For years Michael Shannon has been building a reputation as an intense, risk-taking actor on stage and in supporting roles. But his compelling turn as the dream-haunted everyman in Take Shelter proves he can carry a movie. Nick Pinkerton talks to him

» The Singing Detective: 25 years on Feature
» Clash of the wonderlands: 3D cinema Feature
» Feminism Russian style? Angelina Nikonova’s Twilight Portrait