Sight and Sound: the September 2026 issue

“The pre-release posters for The Odyssey did not feature the names and faces of the many stars, or a tagline about the greatest story ever told, with exclamation marks – it just showed Christopher Nolan’s name in bold, and the word ‘Imax’. The commercial and critical success of Oppenheimer (2023) – it grossed nearly $1 billion (£770 million) worldwide and won seven Academy Awards – in Nolan’s words, “gave me options”. And the two words ‘Nolan’ and ‘Imax’ were clearly intended to conjure up epic storytelling – old-school with new insights – on the one hand, and collective moviegoing – in cinemas – on the other. And celluloid rather than digital.”

— Christopher Frayling introduces his cover interview with Christopher Nolan

After the success of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan has gathered his considerable artistic and industrial resources behind the challenge of bringing to the screen one of the foundational texts of Western culture, Homer’s epic homecoming story The Odyssey. The director talks about the modern meaning and relevance of the poem, the choices and challenges he faced in its adaptation, and his determination to mount the f ilm on the greatest possible canvas. By Christopher Frayling. 

The Odyssey marks the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s two‑decade quest to bring Imax, the biggest, richest film format, to Hollywood, not just for screenings but at the point of the filmmaking itself. He recounts the many trials with the unwieldy cameras that cast and crew overcame. 

Fifty years ago, Martin Scorsese released Taxi Driver, a critical and commercial hit, shot over six weeks in New York. That same year, Chantal Akerman was also in New York, f ilming News from Home. Half a century on, both films remain striking time capsules of a past era and newly evocative of our troubled present. By Becca Voelcker. 

Christopher Nolan is far from being the only contemporary artist turning to classical Greece for inspiration: Gary Owen’s searing 2015 play Iphigenia in Splott transplanted Euripides to the austerity scarred streets of modern Cardiff. Here, Owen explains how his acclaimed English-language drama came to be filmed in Welsh, in the mountains of Gwynedd, as Effi o Blaenau. 

In Bitter Christmas, Pedro Almodóvar’s 24th feature film, an ageing filmmaker feeds off the lives of his friends and family to create a fictional alter ego. Discussing his most autofictional film yet, the (real) director reflects on the mysteries and moral tangles of artistic inspiration, the joy of self-confrontation and the power of communion in art and life. Interview by Maria Delgado. 

After making her name with invitingly intimate chamber documentaries from Tea Time to The Mole Agent and The Eternal Memory, Chile’s Maite Alberdi delves into deeper interiority with A Child of My Own, the true story of a young Mexican woman who feigned pregnancy to placate her family. She talks about misogyny, make-believe and unfathomable reality. By Nick Bradshaw. 

Tom Charity and filmmakers from Bong Joon Ho to John Woo pay tribute to the critic, curator and translator Tony Rayns (1948-2026), whose support and friendship shaped their careers. 

New films by Steven Soderbergh, Jia Zhangke, Park Chan-wook and Maïmouna Doucouré. By Hope Rangaswami.

The Canadian filmmaker on Tony, his pre-fame biopic of the young, brash Anthony Bourdain. By Thomas Flew. 

“Sam Neill died in character. Fellow actors, contemporaries and plain onlookers were lining up to say what a first-class man he had been – reliable, modest, good-humoured (and amusing), resourceful, brave, always willing to mask any intimations of natural authority that he possessed.” 

— David Thomson pays tribute to Sam Neil

The 40th anniversary of the restoration festival brings dolce vita pleasures. By Rachel Pronger. 

On the eve of the release of Bitter Christmas, we explore the exuberant posters for Pedro Almodóvar’s films. By Hope Rangaswami.

Rudolf Valentino died young, but his sexual disruption still streaks across the screen. By Pamela Hutchinson. 

Rachel Cusk’s quasi-Natalie Portman biography evokes the deep blur of entering celebrity orbit. By Nicole Flattery.

Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie tries to idealise the frontier, but Wilder’s books were always phony. By Andrew Male.

From ancient Greece to modern Wales, the stories we call epic depend on where we choose to point the camera. By Mike Williams

A story of conjuring and clairvoyance, a western set among North African sand, this may not be Claude Chabrol’s best film (it may even be his second worst), but it repays watching – or would if there were any way of watching it. By Catherine Wheatley. 

One of the most innovative yet still undersung of filmmakers, Harlem native Greaves sought to challenge limitations from race to film form. As a retrospective pays tribute, we retrace his career. By Matthew Barrington. 

One of the most prolific of the French New Wave filmmakers, Claude Chabrol was also the hardest to pin down behind his films’ barbed, class-conscious mischief-making. As BFI Southbank hosts a retrospective, we republish Rui Nogueira and Nicoletta Zalaffi’s interview looking back over the first dozen years of his career. 

Our critics review: Late Fame, & Sons, A Child of My Own, Disclosure Day, Lady, Bouchra, On the Sea, Our Hero, Balthazar, Bitter Christmas, Colony, Super Nature, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, Paper Trail, The Death of Robin Hood, Life Support, Pressure, Sunny Dancer, The Summer Book, The Odyssey, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, I Want Your Sex. 

Our critics review: Pink Narcissus, The Pornographers, The Outfit, Hairspray, Stavisky…, Mortal Kombat Kollection, La Tête contre les murs, Fun House, Madhouse, Bullet in the Head. 

Our critics review: The Machine that Kills Bad People: Notes on a Film Club, The Curse of Queen Kelly, Richard Fleischer: Journeyman.