The Close-up

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special archival Q&A from the 47th New York Film Festival in 2009 with director Claire Denis and cast members Isaach de Bankolé & William Nadylam on White Material, moderated by Melissa Anderson. Claire Denis returns to NYFF for this year’s 60th-anniversary edition with two films: the Main Slate selection, Stars at Noon, and the Revivals selection, No Fear No Die. Based on the 1986 novel by Denis Johnson, Stars at Noon represents a new mode for director Claire Denis, a contemporary thriller suffused with political intrigue and languid eroticism, moving entirely to the tactile rhythms of its actors, especially rising star Margaret Qualley, who gives a live-wire performance of fervid spontaneity and mercurial passion. No Fear No Die, Claire Denis’s rarely screened second feature, is a radically physical cinematic journey into the shadowy (under)world of illegal cockfighting. Isaach De Bankole and Alex Descas star as Dah and Jocelyn, two immigr