slow cinema

Andrei Tarkovsky, one of the faces on the Mount Rushmore of slow cinema, never made a boring movie. His movies are slow, they’re contemplative, they have long stretches where “nothing happens”, yet they’re not boring.

We need to talk about Jeanne Dielman Shagrrotten 2026

Much of the so-called “slow cinema” we see internationally owes something to Akerman, who proved that you could reset people’s metabolism and made even mundane, everyday tasks seem riveting and existentially revealing.

2022: The year the Sight & Sound film poll blew up Scott Tobias 2022

Tarr’s films, unapologetic in the demands they make of our time and attention, are often grouped under the handy yet reductive rubric of “slow cinema”—alongside the work of filmmakers including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Chantal Akerman, Lisandro Alonso, and Lav Diaz.

Béla Tarr’s Unbroken Visions Justin Chang 2026