FEATURES: Interviews with Alice Rohrwacher, Miranda July, Pawel Wojtasik, John Akomfrah, and Nuri Bilge Ceylan; and reviews of The Interrupters and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

READ: Interview with Göran Hugo Olsson, Fall and Rise, Misfits, Out of Sight

Summer in Paris and, so we are told, the city closes down. And indeed the excellent Cinémathèque, with its theater, museum, and archive, is shuttered for the whole of August. But my visit brings a chance to see those seasonal releases that never make it to Cannes (much less to foreign festivals), the genre movies to which locals flock, heedless of awards and international distribution.

Mark Fisher reviews Steve McQueen’s bleak, blank tale of New York addiction and emptiness, starring Michael Fassbender, Shame.