It's Not Me

The spirit of the late Jean-Luc Godard lives on in It’s Not Me, French iconoclast Leos Carax’s latest unclassifiable whatsit — a film that, its title notwithstanding, is all about the director himself. Originally assembled for an exhibition in the Centre Pompidou, one that never ended up taking place, the film is ostensibly an answer to a simple question: “Where are you at, Leos Carax?” Running just 40 minutes long, Carax’s response is an anarchic, essayistic foray into the process of artistic creation itself, featuring the music of Ravel and David Bowie, the films of artists like Jean Vigo and FW Murnau, not to mention footage from his own iconic filmography (Holy Motors, Lovers on the Bridge, et al)

Endlessly inventive, rhythmically precise, and tonally unpredictable, It’s Not Me is as invigorating a cinematic experience as one is likely to encounter this year. No mere victory lap, it is a self-portrait of an artist confronting his place in movie history — a film that pays tribute to cinema’s past in order to make way for its future.

Pure cinema!

Nicholas Rapold, New York Times

Profound, self-reflective insights about what it means to make moving images in the 21st century.

David Jenkins, Little White Lies