Sight & Sound March 2021

Featured in our March 2021 issue are some of the best and brightest of independent filmmaking. Standing shoulder to shoulder alongside Ahmed are Chloé Zhao, director of indie triumph Nomadland, the team behind Black Panther drama Judas and the Black Messiah, and self-proclaimed minimalist Mads Mikkelsen.

With 2020 well and truly behind us, we look forward to our most hotly anticipated films and TV series of 2021, including new films by Terence Davies and Ruben Ostlund.

Plus regular features:

Editorial
Lost in the dream

Rushes

2021: The most anticipated films and TV series to look out for
The 25 films we hope will hit cinemas in 2021. By Thomas Flew, Devika Girish, Jonathan Romney and Isabel Stevens.

+ Devika Girish talks to director Terence Davis about his latest project – a film about Siegfried Sassoon.

+ Pamela Hutchinson picks small-screen highlights for the year ahead.

+ Thomas Flew hears from Ruben Ostlund about his forthcoming foray into the world of the super-rich.

Opinion: Stream on
As more and more films bypass cinemas to be released on digital platforms, what does this mean for the future of filmmaking? By Guy Lodge.

+ Warner Bros directors on the studio’s plan to stream all its 2021 films.

Dream Palaces: Aero Cinema, Los Angeles
The director of The Farewell Lulu Wang discusses the value of shared cinema experiences and explains why art makes us human.

Obituary: Barbara Shelley: 1932-2021
Though she is known above all for her Hammer Horror roles, there was far more to this intelligent, dedicated actor. By Jonathan Rigby.

+ Screenwriter and actor Mark Gatiss on Barbara Shelley.

Obituary: Joan Micklin Silver: 1935-2020
The director blazed a trail for female filmmakers in the US, creating a number of bona fide classics in her formidable career. By Carrie Rickey.

Tribute: Michael Apted: 1941-2021
The eclectic British director is lauded for his Up documentaries, but don’t overlook his little-seen 1970s crime thriller The Squeeze. By Neil Young.

+ Director Paul Greengrass on Michael Apted.

Wide angle

Primal screen: In the beginning
Everyone knows that the Lumière brothers invented cinema, right? Well, up to a point: the story is more complicated than that. By Peter Domankiewicz.

Ways of filming: Mike Dibb in profile
Mike Dibb’s films about art and thinking, made for mainstream television, are considerable works of art in themselves. By Matthew Harle.

Experimental film and video: Laboratory conditions
In London in the late 60s and early 70s, the Arts Labs were hothouses for innovation that might hold lessons for filmmakers today. By David Curtis.

Films of the month
Dear Comrades!
Andrei Konchalovsky dramatises the hushed-up 1962 Novocherkassk massacre in the monochrome style of its time. Reviewed by Michael Brooke.

Ham on Rye
Tyler Taormina’s beguiling debut centres on a ritualistic prom-like ceremony whose effects reverberate through the protagonists’ lives. Reviewed by Ryan Gilbey.

Plus reviews of
Archive
Beginning
The Dig
Enormous
The Filmmaker’s House
The Mauritanian
MLK/FBI
News of the World
Nomadland
Persian Lessons
Pieces of a Woman
Quo Vadis, Aida?
Simple Passion
Sound of Metal
Stardust
This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
The White Tiger

Television of the month

It's a Sin

Russell T. Davies’s “beautifully gay” series creates an evocative, personal time capsule of an 1980s London beset by the Aids crisis – it’s the first great British series on the subject. Reviewed by Alex Davidson.

plus reviews of
Bridgerton
Death to 2020
The Good Lord Bird
Raised by Wolves

Home cinema features

Domesticated goddess: Marlene Dietrich at Universal 1940-1942
A new box-set shows how Marlene Dietrich set about taming her own exotic image to become more appealing to the American public. Reviewed by Christina Newland.

Rediscovery: Mothra/The H-Man/Battle in Outer Space
The monster films that came out of Toho studios from the 50s onward, once dismissed in the West, seem ever more delightful and sane. Reviewed by Alex Davidson

Lost and Found: Incident at Oglala
The late Michael Apted’s little-seen documentary about a shooting on a Lakota reservation is a typically humane outcry against injustice. By Neil Sinyard.

Archive television: Hullabaloo – The Complete Series
Reviewed by Robert Hanks.

Plus reviews of
Blue Sky
Le cercle rouge
Devil in a Blue Dress
The Great Buster – A Celebration
Inner Sanctum Mysteries: Calling Dr. Death/Weird Woman/Dead Man’s Eyes/The Frozen Ghost/Strange Confession/Pillow of Death
The Masque of the Red Death
Roadgames
Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea
The Weird and Wonderful World of Ujicha: Violence Voyager
Burning Buddha Man

Books

Women vs Hollywood: The Fall and Rise of Women in Film by Helen O’Hara (Robinson/Hachette) reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson.

The War against the BBC: How an Unprecedented Combination of Hostile Forces Is Destroying Britain’s Greatest Cultural Institution… And Why You Should Care by Patrick Barwise and Peter York (Penguin) reviewed by Robert Hanks.

Letters

Endings
Trust
The final moments of Hal Hartley’s 1990 indie black comedy see reality intrude on the closed world inhabited by its misfit protagonists. By Josh Slater-Williams.