Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?

One could imagine that a documentary portrait of a legendary, famously austere filmmaking duo might indeed be “the best film about filmmaking ever made” (Jonathan Rosenbaum), but can it also be one of the funniest? Such is the case with Costa’s insightful treatise on the editing sessions of Huillet and Straub, “the last great filmmakers of the history of modern cinema, perhaps of cinema, period” (Serge Daney). Lodged inside the editing room while the two discuss and bicker over the re-editing of their film Sicilia!, Costa’s camera captures intense, illuminating conversations about not just an approach to filmmaking, but an approach to companionship.