Julia Loktev, Day Night Day Night

A NYU Film School graduate whose video work and installations have been exhibited at P.S.1, Julia Loktev's debut feature, Day Night Day Night was chosen for the 59th Cannes Film Festival's prestigious Directors Fortnight and won the Prix Regards Jeune, given to a first-time director. With documentary-style precision and a couple of wild cards Day Night Day Night is, especially for New Yorkers, an intense, intentionally unnerving work, chronicling as it does what may be the last two days - the morning, night and the next morning and night - of a female suicide bomber whose destination is Times Square. Loktev was interviewed atop the Cannes Hilton during the 2006 festival, steps from lounging sunbathers by the pool, with a view of the sun-soaked Mediterranean that might prove distracting to a less committed filmmaker (17.5 minutes).

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