filmbriefs
Actor · Director · Screenwriter · 1951

Abel Ferrara

2
briefs
13:00
average
26 min
in total
On film.briefs2
13:00

Daddy Longlegs

Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie · 2009

Daddy Longlegs (2009) follows Lenny, a divorced Manhattan projectionist, during his annual two-week custody of his sons Sage and Frey. Shot on digital video with non-professional performers and minimal score, it observes his chaotic, often reckless parenting — from impromptu road trips to drugging the boys to avoid leaving them alone — without moral framing or psychological exposition. Directed by Josh and Benny Safdie and written by Benny Safdie and Ronald Bronstein, it is a rigorously unsentimental study of adult failure witnessed by children.

13:00

Bad Lieutenant

Abel Ferrara · 1992

Abel Ferrara’s 1992 Bad Lieutenant follows a New York police officer over a single day of spiralling addiction, abuse of power, and spiritual erosion. With Harvey Keitel in a physically uncompromising performance, the film rejects redemption arcs and procedural logic in favour of sustained, unsparing immersion in ethical collapse. Shot on gritty 16mm by Ken Kelsch and scored sparsely by Joe Delia, it treats Catholic iconography and police authority as hollowed-out symbols. Not a thriller, but a forensic study of vacancy wearing a badge.