Yael Friedman – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

DROP DEAD CITY: NYC in Film During the 1970s – Essay by Yael Friedman (Guest post)

February 6, 2026February 8, 2026 Guest Post al pacino, documentary, Drop Dead City, Dustin Hoffman, federal bailout, martin scorsese, Michael Rohatyn, Motion Picture Production Code, NYC fiscal crisis, Pauline Kael, Peter Yost, robert deniro, urban crisis, Yael Friedman

The wonderful recent documentary Drop Dead City by Michael Rohatyn and Peter Yost about the 1975 fiscal crisis is a fittingly dramatic retelling of this pivotal moment in the city’s history. It is, of course, titled after the famous Daily News headline from when President Gerald R. Ford allegedly told the city to “drop dead,” after Mayor Abe Beame and Governor Hugh Carey arrived in Washington, hats in hand, asking for federal aid. The film shows the disdain for New York held by politicians and folks elsewhere, and the righteous indignation of New Yorkers after seeing the headline. Ultimately, President Ford’s conviction to let New York City fail did not prevail, his coarse morality tale about the role of government and the spendthrift Sodom was disrupted. With aid from Washington and a new austerity plan created by the newly formed Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC), New York pulled back from the brink–––even if to emerge a lesser city in many ways.

Reviews

SIRAT – Review by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

January 21, 2026January 25, 2026 Guest Post Bruno Nunez, guest post, Kangding Ray, Oliver Laxe, Sergi Lopez, Sirat, Yael Friedman

Literal and metaphorical guardrails suddenly evaporating. We are plunged into the reality that the end of the world is not waiting to announce itself. Sirat follows a charming motley crew of nomadic Europeans ravers, somewhere in southern Morocco. A party in a desert fills up the screen with this moonscape beset by electronic beats, basslines, dancing bodies in various states of rejection of polite society. We are totally immersed, easily led into this pilgrimage, ready to hand ourselves over to this camaraderie, to feeling fully embodied in dance and drugs, the rest of the world melting away. The beautiful and unrelenting score, by Kanding Ray, never lets you unhook.

Movie of the Week

MOVIE OF THE WEEK August 15, 2025: ANXIETY CLUB

August 10, 2025August 10, 2025 Jennifer Merin Anxiety Club, Aparna Nancherla, Baron Vaughn, betsy bozdech, Cate Marquis, comedians, documentaries, Eva Victor, guest post, jennifer merin, Joe List, leslie combemale, marc maron, Mark Normand, nell minow, Tara Brach, Tiffany Jenkins, Wendy Lobel, Yael Friedman

Whether you live with anxiety yourself or care about someone who does, odds are good that Wendy Lobel’s documentary Anxiety Club will strike a resonant chord. As the comedians the movie follows share their stories — and their worries (so very many worries) — they reveal that no matter how funny they are on stage, they’re raw and vulnerable off stage. And that revelation makes them and their experiences all the more relatable.

Guest Posts Reviews

ANXIETY CLUB – Review by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

July 28, 2025August 10, 2025 Guest Post Anxiety Club, Aparna Nancherla, Baron Vaughn, comedians, documentaries, Eva Victor, guest post, Joe List, marc maron, Mark Normand, Tiffany Jenkins, Wendy Lobel, Yael Friedman

At first blush, Wendy Lobel’s Anxiety Club may seem like another straightforward exploration of individual comics battling their demons amid the broader questions about comedy and mental illness. Even Marc Maron, the OG of digging through emotional muck together, is on hand. Yet he is there as a sort of founding father passing on the torch to a new generation who have already internalized the power of vulnerability as critical to both their well-being and their comedy. They are so fluent and self-aware, seamlessly capturing their generation’s earnestness and their own keen ability for expression.

Guest Posts Interviews

Yael Melamede talks ADA: MY MOTHER THE ARCHITECT – Yael Friedman interviews (Guest Post)

May 15, 2025November 28, 2025 Guest Post Ada Karmi-Melamede, Ada: My Mother The Architect, architecture, Louis Kahn, My Architect, Salty Features, Sharon Yaish, Supreme Court of Israel, the female gaze, Yael Friedman, Yael Melamede

There seems to be an endless appetite for depictions of the lone genius architect, both as a mythological creature walking amongst us, and as a metaphor for just about everything. And yet one of the best movies about one may never get its due. Ada: My Mother The Architect, by Yael Melamede, about her mother, Ada Karmi-Melamede, one of Israel’s most celebrated architects, is an extraordinary film that addresses all the big questions while also portraying a human being who is very much mortal. Yael Mellamede chats with Yael Friedman about making the deeply personal documentary.

Guest Posts Reviews

E.1027 – EILEEN GRAY AND THE HOUSE BY THE SEA – Review by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

May 8, 2025 Guest Post Beatrice Minger, docudrama, documentary, E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea, Le Corbusier, the female gaze, Yael Friedman

The erasure of women from the annals of history is usually figurative – they are overlooked, conveniently forgotten, somehow missing from the picture. But Eileen Gray (1878-1976), the pioneering modernist Irish designer and architect, was almost literally removed from the architectural record by one of its most looming figures – Le Corbusier himself. A lovely new docudrama, “E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea,” by Beatrice Minger, revisits a chapter that sounds like a parable of how the great men of history can ensure they alone receive credit for shaping it

Reviews

ADA: MY MOTHER THE ARCHITECT – Review by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

April 23, 2025May 17, 2025 Guest Post Ada Karmi-Melamede, Ada: My Mother The Architect, architecture, documentary, israel, mother daughter relationship, the female gaze, Yael Friedman, Yael Melamede, Zionist idealism

Essays Guest Posts

A REAL PAIN, Holocaust Tourism & Gaza – Essay by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

March 26, 2025May 6, 2025 Guest Post A Real Pain, Gaza, guest post, Holocaust tour, jesse eisenberg, Jewish roots, Kieran Culkin, lithuania, Poland, the female gaze, vilna, vilnius, Yael Friedman

A Real Pain utilizes the familiar tourist trip as a convincing canvas. Nailing down the charmingly Bohemian Benji (Kieran Culkin) by booking a conventional tour by the more conventional cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg), made sense. It was a perfect vehicle for allowing their dynamics, personalities, the themes of memory and trauma tourism, to unfold. The exposition in this screenplay was a master class, even though the actors are laying versions of themselves, or because of it. It’s a neat sleight of hand to turn a character you think you know into one entirely invented. As fun as Benji was and as envious as the more straitlaced and neurotic David got, the tragedy of Benji’s character pierced deeply. He endeared and broke and enraged you in equal measure. We never really find out why Benji has been cast adrift in life, and we don’t need to. We meet him where he is and worry for what is next. Just enough is given to make it real and utterly palpable.

Essays Guest Posts Reviews

DAHOMEY – Essay by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)

January 24, 2025May 6, 2025 Guest Post art restitution, benin, dahomey, documentary, guest pst, international oscars, Malkenzy Orcel, mati diop, mubi, Wally Badarou, Yael Friedman

Dahomey, the new beautiful documentary from director Mati Diop, addresses the forces that wrested history from its original owners, and interrogates what it means to try and recompense for the past. The film plays witness to an unprecedented moment – the return by France of 26 objects (26 out of many thousands) to Benin – the once Kingdom of Dahomey (1600-1904). It is the first such return of the cultural heritage colonial powers plucked from their African vassal states. The Europeans carved up a continent and removed its sacred objects (among other sins), sending them across the Atlantic to sit in sterile vitrines in grand galleries, tourists strolling by once-mighty gods.