Today on Tablet

J. Hoberman reports on a film by the Russian-born Julia Loktev, whose latest film The Loneliest Planet, haunts the viewer with her subtle approach to her characters. This may have a lot to do with her biography.

Loktev’s movies are at once cerebral and visceral and scaled-down for intimate intensity. Essentially experimental in her approach to audience manipulation, she made her way to cinema through sound art and video installations. Moment of Impact (1998) was a highly personal and disturbingly intrusive documentary on the daily life of the filmmaker’s severely disabled father as well as a portrait of her mother, devoting herself to the care of a helpless man whose emotional affect was destroyed in a split second as he crossed the street.

Check it out here!