Death
Moscow on the Med
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Two winters in Istanbul. If you are a holder of a Russian passport, there are few places in the Western hemisphere that you can go without a visa.
Jesus in the pines
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Refugees and border guards in the Białowieża Forest. Scenes of violence play out behind a thick cover of trees, in a remote corner of Poland.
« Ça ira! There will be fire and enthusiasm in you »
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In search of Anthon van Rappard, Vincent van Gogh’s forgotten friend.
The original Dybbuk
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A story about afterlife. « A saint! What do you mean he’s a saint! the scholar says. He’s a librarian! Are librarians saints? »
Schwarzeneggerology
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On Arnold, action cinema & Übermenschlichkeit. « Arnold Schwarzenegger was action cinema’s Adamic man, alternately entering and exiting normal human time. »
On location
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Mission: Impossible and Eurocentric stunts, from Hollywood to Hong Kong. What does an action movie want to be?
The cemetery-goer
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On the travels of Karl-Markus Gauß, and the unlikely guardians of the dream of Europe.
Doom is in the details
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Floods, hailstorms, plague, fire, children lost on a mountain or trapped for years in a ruined villa. On the stories of Adalbert Stifter.
The inborn germ
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Why death? Who or what dies? Philosophers tend not to explain, but to justify. When do such questions become biological questions? Does it help?
Flags & bones
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On Curzio Malaparte’s Europe — and ours. The midcentury novelist read anew, on war’s aftermath and transatlantic romance. What was, or is, « postwar Europe », anyway?
Skinned alive
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Imagine your therapist assigned you to write your autobiography, after which you decided you were cured, so your therapist published it as revenge. Zeno’s Conscience turns 99.
No pity
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The documentary When spring came to Bucha reaches beyond common representations of war and one-dimensional victimhood.