Joachim Trier's Oslo, August 31st starts with a sequence that doesn't advance the plot — and yet shifts how you watch the entire film — and ends with a sequence with almost no dialogue but a lot happens.

They're sequences I've returned to again and again over 14 years to figure out how they work — and keep discovering something new that shifts how I see the film.

In this episode, Joachim Trier talks about the problem the opening was trying to solve, Eskil Vogt talks about the challenges of writing the ending, and I talk about the pleasures of digging into them.

This month, I'll be hosting in-depth workshops on the opening and the ending of Oslo, August 31st as part of The Deep Focus.

👉 Find out more about The Deep Focus

Some of the best, most boundary-pushing cinema at the Berlinale is quietly tucked away in the sidebars where most of the press never look.

In today's episode, I'm looking at three films that feel like a step forward for women's stories:

Arrú: A Sámi musical from Norway

Black Burns Fast: A queer South African coming-of-age story directed by a Black woman

The Education of Jane Cumming: A Scottish period drama based on the first documented legal case involving accusations of lesbians in the UK

Taken together, these show how filmmakers are finding new ways to dramatize the systems shaping women's lives — from colonial land politics to the legacy of apartheid to the class and racial hierarchies of the 19th century.

👉 Curious about joining one of my film programs? Get on the waitlist here.

I only open a few a year, and they're limited enrollment, so this is the best way to ensure you get first dibs on a spot.

This episode was originally recorded for a panel at the Berlinale Film Festival called Let's talk about (short) films! Pluralistic Discourse in Film Criticism.

I was invited to speak about the online film programs I've been building for thinking and talking about film — where we don't just share opinions about a film and move on.

Instead, we're looking for something new: what does this film offer that I didn't notice the first time?

Because you don't need to wait for a major life change to see a film differently. Sometimes, all you need is a new question, a new lens, or the chance to look again with other curious people.

In this episode, I walk through some of the ways I structure those conversations to be places to explore ideas and discover something new.

And the best part? You don't need to be a film expert. You just need to be willing to notice something — even if it feels obvious — and let the group carry the torch from there.

Curious about joining the next film program?

👉 Join the waitlist to find out when the next one opens

Sound of Falling, the second feature by German writer-director Mascha Schilinski, follows women across four generations of the same farming family. Gothic and ambitious, it explores memory, intergenrational trauma, and what it's like to live inside a woman's body — while still showing moments of joy and connection. Through its form, the film offers the audience a catharsis that the characters don't have access to.

So on today's episode, host Alex Heeney digs into why the film won her over…and then talks to Schilinski about developing the film's

Schilinski talks about how the film blurs memory and imagination, the titular image of falling, the sound design, and more.

Want to learn how, like Schilinski, Joachim Trier builds a catharsis that only the audience has access to?

👉 Join the waitlist for The Deep Focus: Oslo, August 31st

The best directed TV show of 2025 is a queer hockey romance from Canada called Heated Rivalry.

And like the rest of the internet, host Alex Heeney has become quite a fan.

But she's been thinking a lot about what makes it good and what has made it popular, and how those two things definitely intersect, but the Venn diagram isn't just a circle.

So on today's episode, Alex talks about why she, too, was very excited for the cottage, why the show is hitting in this cultural moment, what still felt lacking — and how all of that sent her to rewatch Looking, a very different kind of show, to get the hit she was really craving.

👉 Want to watch/rewatch Looking with Alex and a small group this spring? Get on the waitlist here: http://email.seventh-row.com/looking

Early screenings of Chloe Zhao's Hamnet had critics weeping in the aisles

Host Alex Heeney left it dry-eyed — and so did her guest, Angelo Muredda.

We're Shakespeare fans, long-time film critics, and not exactly immune to a good cry — so in this episode, we try to figure out why the film didn't land.

We dig into what works in the film (a short list) and what doesn't (a longer one), where the adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's novel went awry, and whether having read a synopsis of Hamlet on Wikipedia might actually impede your enjoyment of the film.

👉 Stay updated on Alex's next group experiences

169. David Cronenberg's The Shrouds with Angelo Muredda

132. Sarah Polley's Women Talking with Angelo Muredda

159. Macbeth with David Tennant

What if the most powerful insights about a film don't come from watching it alone — but from talking it through with curious people who notice what you missed, and help you turn half-formed thoughts into something deeper?

In this episode, I share why I built The Long Take —

A space for deep, layered, perspective-shifting conversations about film — and how a spirit of collaboration, attention, and trust can transform how we see movies…and ourselves

We kick off Nov 2 with a zero-prep welcome session.
👉 Save your seat

How can a film with a queer protagonist, written by a queer playwright, and directed by a queer man… not be a queer film? That's the tricky question I'm tackling with The Choral, the WWI period drama that just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

In this episode: my Ralph Fiennes/Nicholas Hytner fangirling, why the film works as a crowd-pleaser but flattens queerness and other marginalized identities, and the bigger questions it raises about reclaiming — or sanitizing — queer history.

🎟 Plus, a sneak peek at Living Out Loud, my FREE three-day summit on queer and trans storytelling happening Oct 3–5.

👉 Sign up for Living Out Loud