Every year at the New York Film Festival, Film Comment puts on a slate of special events, including public talks and a screening presentation. Our first NYFF talk this year was titled State of the Nation, a wide-ranging conversation about the complex interplay between politics and cinema. How do filmmakers grapple with the challenge of portraying current events and recent history on screen? And how successfully are movies reflecting the political complexities of a fast changing world? FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with a variety of voices to discuss these questions from different angles: Scott Z. Burns, writer-director of The Report and writer of The Laundromat; Jamsheed Akrami, professor at William Paterson University, director of Friendly Persuasion: Iranian Cinema After the 1979 Revolution, and author of our Jafar Panahi interview feature from March-April; and Devika Girish, Assistant Editor of Film Comment, who wrote a cover story for FC last year about Black Panther.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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