We look forward to the Art of the Real festival every year, and 2022 is no exception. In fact, a spotlight on the work of French filmmaker Alice Diop makes this year’s roundup of groundbreaking nonfiction and hybrid filmmaking especially exciting. Diop’s We (2021),  a perceptive and beautifully wrought exploration of national identity, was a highlight of last year’s festival circuit. Her previous films, screening as part of the spotlight, are no less revelatory.

For today’s podcast, Film Comment editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish invited critics Leo Goldsmith and Chris Boeckmann to join us for an overview this year’s Art of the Real, opening March 31 at Film at Lincoln Center. We kicked off the conversation with Diop’s early films ​​Towards Tenderness and The Death of Danton, before turning  to standouts including Jacquelyn Mills’s Geographies of Solitude, Sharlene Bamboat’s If from Every Tongue It Drips, David Easteal’s The Plains, Peter Tscherkassky’s Train Again, and more.