Andreas Fontana,
Azor, 2021, DCP, sound, color, 100 minutes. Yvan De Wiel (Fabrizio Rongione).
IN THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY EDITION of New Directors/New Films, the hippies pull more weight than the politicos, to borrow a ’60s dichotomy. There is a lot of journeying in these films—too much of it for my taste—couched as quests for spiritual enlightenment, or undertaken to discover the unity in all things, or to let go of the traumas of the past by, well, I’m not sure what means. ND/NF, which is jointly curated by programmers from the Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center, is devoted to first and second independently produced features by directors from an ever-expanding world cinema. Because this is a major anniversary, this year’s ND/NF also includes a retrospective of eleven films from its rich history. Seize the opportunity to view early work, now digitized, from such acclaimed directors as Charles Burnett, Humberto Solás, Christopher Nolan, Chantal Akerman, and Lee Chang-dong, and also from a few who remain less known than they should be, such as the Indian master Mani Kaul and the Trinidadian Horace Ové, whose 1986