Rifkin's Festival Page

The Cinematic Afterlife of Mort Rifkin: A Reflection on "Rifkin's Festival"

Woody Allen’s 49th film, Rifkin’s Festival (2020), serves as a sun-drenched yet melancholic meditation on the twilight of both a life and a specific era of high-culture cinema. Set against the backdrop of the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, the film follows Mort Rifkin—a neurotic, retired film studies professor and failed novelist played by Wallace Shawn —as he navigates the unraveling of his marriage and the ghosts of his own intellectual pretensions. The Protagonist as a Relic Rifkin's Festival

Mort’s journey is not one of growth in the traditional sense, but of reckoning. His inability to find joy in "pedestrian amusements" or modern superhero spectacles has left him in a state of self-inflicted isolation. He is a man who "reads the same books, listens to the same music, and sees the same movies over and over again," essentially living in a museum of his own making. A Love Letter to Classic Cinema Rifkin's Festival is a Love Letter to Art Films The Cinematic Afterlife of Mort Rifkin: A Reflection

Mort Rifkin is a quintessential "Allen-esque" archetype: a New York Jewish intellectual who feels increasingly alienated by a world that has moved on from the European masters he idolizes. He accompanies his publicist wife, Sue (Gina Gershon), to the festival, only to watch her fall for a "hotshot" French director, Philippe (Louis Garrel), whom Mort views as a pretentious lightweight. His inability to find joy in "pedestrian amusements"