Sight and Sound: the March 2025 issue

“It’s hardly hyperbole to say that [David Lynch] was one of the very few absolutely unique visionaries cinema has had in its 130-odd-year history; using the word ‘visionary’ should ordinarily give us nervous pause, but not this time. Of course, uniqueness has always had its pitfalls: for most observers, going back to the 1980s, characterisations of Lynch have been variations on the idea of him being a chugging, unchecked id, a ‘surrealist’ dream engine spewing racy weirdnesses without a filter, farmed out of the post-war American midlands. 

“The reason for this appeared to be thinly disguised nonplussedness – though to be fair, we all invented ‘Lynchian’ as a descriptor in the 80s because there was no extant word that met the challenge. There still isn’t. (One hopes that over the decades he might’ve been amused, rather than maddened, by the mainstream attempts to articulate his work.) But, surprisingly, with mystification has come culture-saturated adoration, as though even Gen Z media-gulpers saw in the Yankee-scapes of inner Lynchistan a physics of derangement that rhymes with their sense of their inherited world.”

— Michael Atkinson, in our cover tribute to Lynch

As he excavated America’s subconscious, and ruffled the viewer’s, from Eraserhead to Twin Peaks to Mulholland Dr., David Lynch didn’t just expand the idea of cinema: he created a new version of reality, an alternative world that changed our sense of the one we thought we were living in. Words by Michael Atkinson. Portrait by Sandro Miller.

In 1984, David Lynch was known as the director of two very different features: Eraserhead and The Elephant Man. To mark the release of his third, Dune, he was interviewed in front of an audience at the National Film Theatre in London. The director talked about painting, his first steps in the film business, the process of making his features, the failure of another project – and a film he’d like to make, called ‘Blue Velvet. Interview by Chris Auty.

For all the singularity of his vision, David Lynch was admired by those who worked with him for his open and collaborative spirit. Here, in archive extracts from Sight and Sound and the BFI, key collaborators discuss their experiences of working alongside him. 

PLUS Ali Abbasi, Robert Eggers and Gaspar Noé, each of whom voted for a Lynch film in the S&S Greatest Films of All Time poll, pay tribute to his inspirational genius.

Shot from the point of view of a ghost inhabiting a family’s new suburban home, Steven Soderbergh’s ingenious haunted house thriller Presence offers a deeply satisfying twist on the genre. Here the director explains the real-life supernatural event that inspired the film. By Philip Concannon.

In an extract from the latest edition of Sight and Sound’s auteurs series, a 100-page print special on Chantal Akerman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire’s director Céline Sciamma writes exclusively about the influence the auteur has had on her work and explains why thinking about her makes her want to ‘grab film by the lapels and shake it’.

Mike Leigh is on scintillating form in Hard Truths, a scabrously funny and emotionally devastating portrait of the sharply contrasting lives of a pair of sisters and their families in suburban London. Here he explains the subtle difference between realism and naturalism, the critical importance of collaboration to his films and why his work is about understanding, not judging. By Jonathan Romney.

Three decades after her Oscar-nominated performance in Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies, Marianne Jean-Baptiste has reunited with the director for Hard Truths, playing Pansy, a brittle, lonely woman beset by obsessive thoughts and grievances. Here the actor describes the meticulous process of character building and explains the challenges of inhabiting someone wracked by mental turmoil. By Leila Latif.

Walter Salles’s first fiction film for more than a decade, I’m Still Here follows a woman seeking answers about the disappearance of her husband after his arrest by the Brazilian military in 1971. The director talks to Geoff Andrew about the ever-present spectre of the past in the country and outlines a very personal connection to the tragedy.

After years of run-ins with the authorities, the Iranian director was forced to direct his latest film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, remotely and in secret. But the methods are at odds with the film’s direct and open criticism of the country’s repressive regime. By Ehsan Khoshbakht.

New films by Ben Wheatley, Robert Eggers, Christopher Nolan and Charli xcx. By Thomas Flew.

How to describe Malcolm Le Grice, who has died aged 84, and who leaves a significant body of work and art and countercultural legacy in his wake? When any friend and/or member of a community dies, the loss can be hard to make sense of as memories zoom in and out of focus. By William Fowler.

Yamada Naoko’s The Colors Within is an innovative anime about three teenagers who start a band. Here, Yamada and composer Kensuke Ushio talk about sound, vision and what ‘Born Slippy’ means to them. By Kambole Campbell.

My memories of falling in love with David Lynch are forever tied to my nostalgia for the video age. By Pamela Hutchinson.

There’s a profound cynicism at the heart of Babygirl and All Fours that speaks to our times. By Nicole Flattery.

Skeleton Crew is light years ahead of the stodgy, lore-heavy storytelling of recent Star Wars spinoffs. By Andrew Male.

In the singular world of David Lynch, there was no such thing as a side project. By Mike Williams.

Given the way things have been going lately, why haven’t we been paying more attention to Buñuel, cinema’s great scourge of authority and religious orthodoxy? Well, here’s our chance to get started. By Hannah McGill.

The tail end of the Swinging 60s, Ian McShane on the run through London’s underworld while his girlfriend parades around in Biba, set to a cool jazz score – Francis Megahy’s thriller has all the ingredients of a cult success, except the cult. By Adam Scovell.

An event that continues to carve out a distinctive niche in the festival ecosphere, this year’s programme saw a stimulating selection of films grouped around the theme of ‘islands’ and a trio of fascinating documentaries. By Kieron Corless.

John Boorman’s little-seen 1970 film, starring Marcello Mastroianni, explores the multicultural world of Notting Hill, offering a fascinating insight into the mysteries and possibilities of the ‘white gaze’. By Sukhdev Sandhu.

In nearly eighty films during the silent era the Danish star Asta Nielsen established herself as one of the all-time greats of screen acting and a global icon of contemporary womanhood, one whose influence is still felt today.

Despite the practical advice on matters of the heart that closes Chantal Akerman’s musical comedy of love, loss and consumerism set in a Brussels shopping mall, the film reveals her to be an incorrigible romantic. By Henry K. Miller

Our critics review: Memoir of a Snail, Nosferatu, I’m Still Here, Here, Presence, On Falling, Emmanuelle, Saturday Night, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, Pepe, A Complete Unknown, By the Stream, Julie Keeps Quiet, To a Land Unknown, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Watchman, The Fire Inside, I Am Martin Parr, The Last Showgirl, The Colors Within, Bring Them Down.

Our critics review: Mikey and Nicky, Requiem for a Vampire, Mermaid Legend, Two films by Ermanno Olmi, Cure, Bushman, Park Lanes, The Cat, Punch-Drunk Love, High and Low.

Our critics review: Hollywood on the Tiber, I Spit on Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies, Playing the Percentages, How Film Distribution Made the Hollywood System.