While it’s been very difficult of late to figure out what Martin Scorsese will follow Killers of the Flower Moon (already a couple years out from its Cannes premiere), today brings some of the closest confirmation of where he’ll head next. Surprise: Leonardo DiCaprio is coming with.

Per Publisher’s Weekly, Apple Original Films have obtained rights to Marilynne Robinson’s four Gilead novels, the second of which, Home, Scorsese has discussed since 2023. DiCaprio will lead the film, produced by Todd Field, who’s co-written Home with Scorsese and Kent Jones while said to be handling the first entry, Gilead, though the article notes an ambiguity around “plans to adapt the remaining books in the series.”

The news suggests DiCaprio would play Jack Boughton, a wayward alcholic who returns to his hometown of Gilead to take care of a dying father alongside his sister Glory. These roles recur in Robinson’s other books, suggesting notable commitments from DiCaprio and whoever is cast therein––a major prospect all its own. Whatever transpires, it’s wonderful knowing Scorsese is nearing a project for which he’s expressed such passion.

After showcasing work from the likes of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Kelly Reichardt, Pedro Almodóvar, Souleymane Cissé, Jia Zhangke, Spike Lee, Lynne Ramsay, Michael Haneke, Wong Kar-wai, Agnieszka Holland, Denis Villeneuve, Luca Guadagnino, and more, New Directors/New Films is back for their 54th edition, taking place from April 2-13 at Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. The 2025 lineup has now been unveiled, including Sarah Friedland’s Opening Night selection Familiar Touch, Alex Russell’s Closing Night selection Lurker, as well as more acclaimed features such as Invention, Drowning Dry, Fiume o morte!, No Sleep Till, Two Times João Liberada, Timestamp, and more.

Dan Sullivan, 2025 ND/NF Co-Chair and FLC Programmer, says, “The lineup for this year’s edition of New Directors/New Films inevitably reflects the uncertainties and tragedies of our global situation in 2025, yet it also evinces the sheer resilience of cinema and the continued emergence of important new talents working within it. A number of films in this year’s lineup take up the challenge of recovering and reconceptualizing human connection as a cherished value, perhaps none more movingly than Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch, a sophisticated and boundlessly sensitive subversion of the coming-of-age film that challenges our preconceptions about the subjectivity of the elderly. Likewise, Alex Russell’s stylish and gripping Lurker trains its gaze on Gen Z, posing hard questions about the nature of ambition, fame, and friendship amid a culture that prizes selfish striving to the detriment of the fundamental bonds that unite us and make life worth living.”

La Frances Hui, 2025 ND/NF Co-chair and Curator, Department of Film, MoMA, observes, “Cinema dazzles in the hands of this remarkable class of new directors, who bring astonishing creativity to exploring and interpreting the vast spectrum of human experience. Their films abound with surprising, magical touches, weaving stories of love, family, and anguish, while also delving into themes of identity, history, and conflict. These filmmakers reaffirm the boundless potential of the moving image to regenerate, create meaning, and expand our horizons. Prepare to be captivated by this exceptional collection of new films.”

See the lineup below.

Opening Night
Familiar Touch 
Sarah Friedland, 2024, U.S., 91m
New York Premiere
Octogenarian Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant) has been living independently, but cracks have started to emerge: toast is placed to dry in the dish rack, confusion rests on her face, the dead are spoken of in present tense while the living (such as a son right before her) go entirely unrecognized. Her entrance into an assisted-living facility begins the strange, transcendent journey that is Familiar Touch, Sarah Friedland’s feature debut, which earned three awards in the 2024 Venice Film Festival Orizzonti Competition, including the Lion of the Future, Best Director, and Best Actress for Chalfant’s astonishing turn. Friedland builds her drama through sharp honesty, and tough as its material may be, few films are so tonally flexible, so able to turn on a dime: stray moments of tenderness, humility, even absurdity poke through, with a love and care for Ruth shown by characters and creators alike. Familiar Touch portends the arrival of major directorial talent. A Music Box Films release.

Wednesday, April 2
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Sarah Friedland, Kathleen Chalfant
8:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Sarah Friedland, Kathleen Chalfant

Friday, April 4
6:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Sarah Friedland, Kathleen Chalfant

Closing Night
Lurker
Alex Russell, 2025, U.S./Italy, 100m
New York Premiere
In Alex Russell’s irresistible, screw-turning thriller for the influencer age, Los Angeles clothing store clerk Matthew (Théodore Pellerin, Genesis) contrives his way into the entourage of up-and-coming musician Oliver (Archie Madekwe, Saltburn)—and once insinuated into the inner circle, refuses to give up his position without a fight. Lurker thrives on Pellerin’s remarkable turn—one rarely sees actors write such rich psychology in the flick of their eyes or curl of a smile—and Madekwe’s deft oscillations between affability and stone-faced detachment. A writer/producer on award-winning series The Bear and Beef, Russell helms his feature debut with a steady hand that captures the whirlwind rush of stardom and the unsettling chill of obsession as the line between friendship and fandom begins to blur beyond recognition. A MUBI release.

Saturday, April 12
7:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 1 – Q&A with Alex Russell

Sunday, April 13
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Alex Russell

The Assistant / Człowiek do wszystkiego
Wilhelm Sasnal, Anka Sasnal, 2025, Poland/U.K., 124m
Polish with English subtitles
North American Premiere
“I was just a button hanging by a thread that no one was willing to sew back on again.” So we’re introduced to Joseph, freshly fired from a menial job and stepping into a world that doesn’t want him. His fortunes seemingly reverse when he’s brought into the employ of Mr. Tobler, an inventor whose no-nonsense protocol sets in motion this riveting character drama from Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal, adapted from a 1908 Robert Walser novel. Buoyed by a star-making turn from Piotr Trojan, stunning pastoral locations, lush cinematography, a transfixing electronic score (to say nothing of its expertly deployed Smiths cue), and supreme fashion sense, The Assistant is a visually and sonically opulent film about the bonds that constrain us all.

Saturday, April 5
8:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

Sunday, April 6
6:15pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Blue Sun Palace
Constance Tsang, 2024, U.S., 116m
Mandarin, English, and Min Nan with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
For more than 30 years the Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng has forged an indelible, inimitable creative partnership with Tsai Ming-liang. Lee makes as big an impression in Constance Tsang’s Blue Sun Palace, which relocates him to working-class Queens. When wayward Taiwanese immigrant Cheung (Lee) finds his life of part-time work and light extramarital affairs shattered by violence, he connects with workers at a small Queens salon, victims themselves to the indignities forced upon strangers in a strange land. But Blue Sun Palace is no misery showcase. Intimacy and warmth co-exist with economic anxieties and deep grief that are articulated with uncommon intelligence and understanding of how adults endure any given day. In this debut feature, awarded the French Touch Prize by the jury at the 2024 Cannes Critics’ Week, Tsang shapes an immigrant’s tale, a relationship drama, a workplace comedy, and a great New York story in one. A Dekanalog release.

Saturday, April 5
5:30pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 1 – Q&A with Constance Tsang

Sunday, April 6
5:45pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Constance Tsang

Cactus Pears / Sabar Bonda
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, 2025, India/U.K./Canada, 112m
Marathi with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Western India’s stunning, cascading landscapes background Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s debut feature of familial bereavement and queer longing that earned Sundance’s World Cinema Grand Jury Prize. A family consecrates the loss of its patriarch with a 10-day mourning period that strands Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) in the countryside he long ago deserted for Mumbai. Grief’s common phases (poring over old photos, sharing beloved memories) coexist with local rituals, all while Anand’s hidden desires materialize in a rekindled friendship with childhood companion Balya. Through these experiences, sensual discoveries, and Bhushaan Manoj’s ever-measured performance, Cactus Pears emerges as an exquisite character piece perfected by its heartrending finale.

Tuesday, April 8
6:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Wednesday, April 9
8:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

CycleMahesh
Suhel Banerjee, 2024, India/U.K./Canada, 61m
Odia, Marathi, and Hindi with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Just how far would you go to reach home? When the COVID-19 lockdowns left him stranded on the other side of India, delivery boy Mahesh became a national sensation by peddling 1,700 kilometers in seven days. It’s a story good enough for a movie, one that director Suhel Banerjee has broken apart and rendered a trancelike travelogue that combines fiction and nonfiction. CycleMahesh (winner of IDFA’s Best First Feature) guides us through breathtaking terrain—wheat fields, river valleys, and raging fires complemented by gorgeous sunrises and sunsets—on an alternately hyperactive and contemplative journey that, in just 60 minutes, compresses enough formal distinction and compelling ideas for a film three times its length.

Wednesday, April 9
6:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Thursday, April 10
9:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

Drowning Dry / Sesės
Laurynas Bareiša, 2024, Lithuania/Latvia, 88m
Lithuanian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
It starts with a kick to the head. Mixed martial arts competitor Lukas has just handily defeated his opponent and celebrates with his wife, child, and friends backstage, setting the scene for a nimble combination of communal bonding and looming horrors. Writer-director Laurynas Bareiša, an ND/NF veteran for his debut feature Pilgrims, takes us on a non-linear journey through the experiences and recollections of those who survived tragedy (and those who didn’t), shot with unceasing patience and formal rigor. Drowning Dry was the second of Bareiša’s films selected as Lithuania’s entry for the Best International Feature Academy Award. Winner of Locarno’s Best Director and, in recognition of its indispensable ensemble of four, Best Performance awards. A Dekanalog release.

Thursday, April 3
8:45pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Sunday, April 6
12:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

Fiume o morte!
Igor Bezinović, 2025, Croatia/Italy/Slovenia, 112m
Croatian, Italian, Fiuman with English subtitles
North American Premiere
The past is present and fact made fiction in Igor Bezinović’s Fiume o morte!, a high-energy hybrid documentary about early-20th-century Italian warrior-poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. A model for Mussolini who ruled Rijeka, Croatia, with an iron fist, D’Annunzio’s 16-month reign left such a legacy that current denizens (street-cast in a brilliant montage) are more than a little willing to play-act as his soldiers. Bezinović elaborately restages Rijeka’s strange, bloody era in a duet between filmmaking and history that melds Wes Anderson, Straub-Huillet, and Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up while holding an uneasy mirror to contemporary fears of fascism. Winner of the top prize at the 2024 International Film Festival Rotterdam. 

Friday, April 4
8:45pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

Saturday, April 5
3:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Grand Me
Atiye Zare Arandi, 2024, Iran/Belgium, 80m
Farsi with English subtitles
North American Premiere
People are complicated and families are hard—two truisms that collide with tremendous force in Atiye Zare Arandi’s feature documentary debut, Grand Me. At 9 years old, Melina is of age to bring forth a legal case for her guardianship. The problem: neither of her divorced parents is especially interested in taking their daughter home. Melina might be cinema’s most independently minded youth this side of Antoine Doinel, but in looking closely at the circumstances, Zare Arandi—Melina’s aunt—discovers the hurt only children are capable of experiencing. Bracing but never overbearing, and with a Kiarostami-esque car ride brilliantly anchoring its narrative in contemporary Iran, Grand Me is a shining vision of both selfishness and resilience. Winner of the Next:Wave Award at CPH:DOX. 

Saturday, April 12
2:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Sunday, April 13
1:15pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

The Height of the Coconut Trees / 椰子の高さ
Du Jie, 2024, Japan, 100m
Japanese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Chinese cinematographer-turned-director Du Jie makes a seamless transition with The Height of the Coconut Trees, a Japan-set debut that is equal parts sumptuous and piercing. While Sugamoto’s relationship is coming undone, Rin mourns the suicide of his girlfriend. When calamity strikes, Sugamoto visits the countryside resort Rin has taken over to combat his grief, uniting two people for whom life has been an unbearable procession of yearning and loss. From these plots Du turns Coconut Trees into a miniature travelogue and existential road picture—come for the beautiful locales, stay for a conversation about fate, faith, and regret worthy of Rohmer—with faint wisps of a ghost tale.

Tuesday, April 8
8:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Du Jie 

Thursday, April 10
6:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Du Jie 

Holy Electricity / Tsminda Electroenergia
Tato Kotetishvili, 2024, Georgia/Netherlands, 95m
Georgian with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Winner of the Golden Leopard in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente section, Tato Kotetishvili’s debut feature is suffused with tenderness and danger alike. When young Gonga and his bookie-pressured cousin Bart find a bag of rusty crosses, they decide to fashion them into neon crucifixes and, something like Paper Moon transposed to Tbilisi, sell them door-to-door. Holy Electricity contains nary a clichéd or predictable image, nor one scenario Kotetishvili doesn’t exploit for all its comedic, dramatic, and emotional potential. It’s rare to see a film of such formal confidence assume so many new shapes and sizes (with a hilarious documentary parody for good measure), surprising us all the way to its final, ecstatic shot.

Saturday, April 12
5:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

Sunday, April 13
3:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Invention
Courtney Stephens, 2024, U.S., 72m
New York Premiere
Personal anguish and noirish mystery are inextricably bound in Invention, wherein Callie Hernandez (who co-conceptualized the film, and plays a cross between herself and some other vision) seeks the truth about her father—an inventor of devices boasting untapped power—whose death is not what it seems. Traversing a backwoods America of oddballs, cretins, estate vultures, and even the occasional sweetheart, Hernandez’s journey is a constant reminder of how much our loved ones hide from us in life and death alike. Courtney Stephens’s years in experimental documentary cinema help turn this Super 16mm–shot investigation narrative on its head, while a commanding performance confirms Hernandez (winner of a Best Performance Prize in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente) as a captivating screen performer and artist.

Saturday, April 5
6:15pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Courtney Stephens

Sunday, April 6
4:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Courtney Stephens

Kyuka Before Summer’s End / Κιούκα Πριν το τέλος του καλοκαιριού
Kostis Charamountanis, 2024, Greece/North Macedonia, 105m
Greek with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Babis takes his twin children Konstantinos and Elsa (among the best-sketched, most-charming sibling duos in recent memory) sailing through the Greek isles, engaging in all the affection and jousting common to single parents and teenage offspring. It’s a seemingly standard trip laced with secret intent: Babis is en route to finally introduce the mother who abandoned Konstantinos and Elsa in infancy, a meeting that will dredge up difficult pasts and untreated hurt. Kostis Charamountanis’s feature debut is nevertheless a constant pleasure, its complexity and detail placed against piercingly blue seas, verdant flora, and glowing sunsets. Festival favorites Aftersun or Murina may come to mind, yet Kyuka moves at a speed all its own—peppered by hypnotic documentary interludes and tense, dazzlingly edited exchanges—up to Charamountanis’s perfectly orchestrated climax.

Sunday, April 6
8:45pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

Monday, April 7
5:45pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Lesson Learned / Fekete point
Bálint Szimler, 2024, Hungary, 119m
Hungarian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Palkó has been transferred to a new school, and finding new friends and battling tough teachers are making his adolescent life all the more complicated. Meanwhile, Juci (Anna Mészöly) is a young teacher staring down the other end of the barrel at myopic superiors, bullying parents who can’t fathom why their child is struggling, and fellow teachers whose cruelty crosses boundaries. From these intersecting strands Bálint Szimler, in just his second feature, captures all the intricacy and pleasure of a campus novel—from the shame-tinged tedium of detention lessons to a dazzling school-play sequence. Photographed on deeply textured 16mm, Lesson Learned is refreshingly frank about how kids act amongst themselves, the way teachers wield power (emotional and physical) to mask their insecurities, and what happens when clueless parents are brought into the fold. It’s hard to imagine a viewer who won’t recognize much of their own schooling experience moment by moment, or find themselves moved by Szimler’s roundly empathetic worldview. Winner of a Best Performance prize and Special Mention in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente.

Thursday, April 10
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

Friday, April 11
5:45pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Listen to the Voices / Kouté vwa
Maxime Jean-Baptiste, 2024, ​​Belgium/France/French Guiana, 77m
French and Guianese Creole with English subtitles
New York Premiere
The relationship Melrick has forged with his grandmother is refreshingly candid and egalitarian: meals are cooked together, relationships discussed, feelings vented. The young boy has little choice in light of a tragedy that took his father, an event we witness only through a brilliantly abstract lens rendered by Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s feature debut, winner of a Special Jury Prize and Special Mention from the First Feature Jury in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente. Through ecstatic musical performances, close-quarter journeys through the beautiful streets of French Guiana, and dreamlike visions of the jungle, Jean-Baptiste has crafted a vision of trauma and recovery that, like too few films, understands life as distinct blocks of experience strung across one barely linear path.

Saturday, April 5
4:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

Sunday, April 6
1:45pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Lost Chapters / Los Capítulos Perdidos
Lorena Alvarado, 2024, Venezuela, 67m
Spanish with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
When a letter nestled deep inside her father’s library details the writing of an unknown author, the young, ambitious bibliophile Ena sets off to find his work. Is the fabled book real? Did the author even exist? Where most movies might use this to kick off a treasure hunt, Lost Chapters opens a door to Venezuela’s rich cultural history and troubled present. A master class in composition and sound design that leaves no detail to chance, Lorena Alvarado’s feature debut recalls the intellectual obsessiveness of Roberto Bolaño while achieving a remarkable sense of equanimity and emotional warmth from her real-life sister, father, and grandmother, whose on-screen naturalism never once lapses into mannerism. 

Thursday, April 3
8:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

Saturday, April 5
1:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)
Joel Alfonso Vargas, 2025, U.S., 101m
English and Spanish with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Rico is going to be a father. The problem: he’s only 19, barely has a job, is astonishingly immature, and is barely concerned with Destiny, the girl he got pregnant. When Destiny moves in with Rico, his no-nonsense mother, and a sister enjoying this upheaval way too much, the young man finds these new responsibilities are far more than he bargained for. In his feature debut, Joel Alfonso Vargas looks to the side of New York—and the New Yorkers—in which cinema has distressingly little interest to carve a thriller of quotidian tension. Extended, electrifying dialogue sequences allow Vargas to sketch harsh dynamics, every fight and passive-aggressive gesture tightening the screws on Rico and his bad choices. It’s hard to take your eyes off the slow-motion wreckage of Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo), a work that veers from pathos to agitation and back again.

Friday, April 4
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Joel Alfonso Vargas

Saturday, April 5
8:30pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Joel Alfonso Vargas

No Sleep Till
Alexandra Simpson, 2024, U.S./Switzerland, 93m
New York Premiere
The slice-of-life indie is alive and well in Alexandra Simpson’s feature debut, recipient of a Special Mention from the jury at the 2024 Venice Film Festival Critics’ Week. While a looming hurricane spells doom for a sleepy Florida town, citizens carry on: two friends pull pranks and ponder life; another pair captures terrifying footage of the storm; a young woman harbors a deep crush. Through this fleet exploration Simpson keeps audiences on their feet, no two stories told at the exact same tempo and no composition easily anticipated. And backgrounding it all is a sun-soaked, palm tree–lined Florida that has seldom looked as beautiful as it does in No Sleep Till.

Wednesday, April 9
8:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Alexandra Simpson

Friday, April 11
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Alexandra Simpson

Sad Jokes
Fabian Stumm, 2024, Germany, 96m
German, English, Italian, and Swedish with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Joseph—a gay filmmaker and father to a young child whose work-life balance inspires little confidence—is writing a comedy. “What kind?” his therapist asks. In lieu of a good answer, Joseph stammers about his filmography’s move from “naturalistic” to “absurdist”—a confusion that perfectly captures the enlivening, unpredictable paths taken by Sad Jokes. As writer, director, and star, Fabian Stumm blends intense strife with hilarious slapstick so effortlessly it’s hard to tell where one stops or another starts, brilliantly paying off character relationships and conflicts in a tight frame. A refreshingly honest film about the trials of directors, the foibles of hookup culture, and realizing your therapist is crazier than you, replete with the flights of fancy that only artists are capable of experiencing, Sad Jokes won the Munich International Film Festival’s German Cinema New Talent Award for Best Director. 

Friday, April 11
8:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Fabian Stumm

Saturday, April 12
4:30pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Fabian Stumm

Stranger
Zhengfan Yang, 2024, U.S./China/Netherlands/Norway/France, 113m
Mandarin, Cantonese, and English with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A woman confesses on her livestream. Two men get interrogated by increasingly agitated police. Wedding photos are taken while the groom indulges a major secret. These and other scenarios unfold in Zhengfan Yang’s Stranger, which investigates China’s social, political, and economic identity through long takes that continually evolve, surprise, and dazzle. But Stranger is more than a bravura display to recall Chantal Akerman or Béla Tarr—its command of space and movement set the stage for an actor’s showcase and master class in narrative delineation that confirms Yang as one of China’s most exciting up-and-coming cinematic talents.

Sunday, April 6
2:45pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Zhengfan Yang

Tuesday, April 8
8:45pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Zhengfan Yang

Timestamp / Strichka Chasu
Kateryna Gornostai, 2025, Ukraine/Luxembourg/Netherlands/France, 125m
Ukrainian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
The three years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have found humanity at its bravest and basest alike, conflicting energies given full display in Timestamp. A school day proceeds apace until air sirens send young children into an underground shelter. Just 18 kilometers from the front, others walk amidst classrooms turned to rubble. Adolescents train in a “patriotic military game” treated with seriousness that belies any sense of play. A combat vet bluntly informs a packed classroom that the front lines brought “nothing good.” Danger hovers over every moment of Timestamp—every expression of love, anger, friendship, and freedom. In this patchwork approach to a conflict no single film could sufficiently capture, director Kateryna Gornostai (whose previous fiction feature, Stop-Zemlia, was in ND/NF 2021) has achieved something grand, cutting through the noise and partisanship to put us in the shoes of a brave, battered populace. Winner of the Eurimages New Lab Outreach Award at CPH:DOX.

Saturday, April 12
7:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

Sunday, April 13
12:15pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Two Times João Liberada / Duas Vezes João Liberada
Paula Tomás Marques, 2025, Portugal, 70m
Portuguese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
There are so many movies about movies that one might wonder what’s left to say. Yet self-reflecting cinema finds new form in Two Times João Liberada, which charts the production of a biopic about Liberada (a gender-nonconforming nun who faced persecution during the Portuguese Inquisition) and its star, João, who’s conflicted about the job when not outright haunted by Liberada’s ghost. This is one of many bold, brilliant gestures Paula Tomás Marques makes with this feature debut that, in 70 minutes, tackles a flabbergasting number of concerns: the psychology of acting and directing, an abstract trans history, a contention with who tells what story, failed artistic ambition, and art as the means to make sense of ourselves. Two Times João Liberada forms a tapestry that’s as grand as it is intricate, with a lead performance from June João that makes emotional sense of intellectual complexity.

Monday, April 7
8:30pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Tuesday, April 8
6:15pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

The Village Next to Paradise
Mo Harawe, 2024, Austria/France/Germany/Somalia, 133m
Somali with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A news broadcast announces the U.S. drone strike that’s killed an Al Qaeda associate in a “remote area” of Somalia. When that story ends, The Village Next to Paradise begins: Mamargade is the hardworking civilian for whom burying this terrorist leader is but one way to provide for his family in a world of strivers and cheats. This deeply moving, brutally honest vision of Somali life probes economic and familial anxieties with a brilliance that recalls great works of Italian neorealism. In his feature debut, the first Somali film to be an Official Selection at Cannes, Mo Harawe has created a film of stirring music, rich colors, and fine textures, one that grants a better understanding of our planet and a deeper love for those on it.

Thursday, April 3
6:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2

Saturday, April 5
1:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater

The Virgin of the Quarry Lake / La Virgen De La Tosquera
Laura Casabé, 2024, Argentina/Mexico/Spain, 90m
Spanish with English subtitles
New York Premiere
It’s 2001 and the sun is hitting Argentina hard enough to cut power on the internet café from which Natalia (Dolores Oliverio) messages Diego, a local boy to whose looks and charm she’s entirely susceptible. The problem: her friend is also into him, Diego’s into an older woman, and his feelings toward Natalia never extend past friendship. From this no-win scenario director Laura Casabé extracts all the pleasures, anxieties, and frenzy of teenage life. Based on short stories from Mariana Enríquez’s acclaimed The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, The Virgin of the Quarry Lake should please coming-of-age enthusiasts with its nostalgia-inducing details, but most remarkable is Casabé’s skill for pivoting to horror—and some of the most startling violence in recent memory—like the flip of a switch. None of this would be possible without Oliverio, whose lead performance brings Natalia to life in full frightening capacity.

Thursday, April 3
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Laura Casabé

Friday, April 4
8:30pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Laura Casabé

ND/NF 2025 Shorts Program I (89m)

Films are listed in the order that they will screen

Landscapes of Longing
Alisha Tejpal, Mireya Martinez, Anoushka Mirchandani, 2024, India, 14m
Hindi and English with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Three generations of women explore their connections and differences through a family archive of photographs, music, and storytelling in an intimate search for their identity and roots, bringing memories to life via the ever-evolving, dissociative experiences of longing and migration.

You Can’t See It From Here / No se ve desde acá
Enrique Pedráza-Botero, 2024, Colombia/U.S., 19m
Spanish and English with English subtitles
New York Premiere
The state of the American Dream is assessed through a series of vignettes that follow the opportunities available to Latin American immigrants of disparate social and economic status arriving in modern-day Miami. Questions of identity, economic opportunity, and cultural assimilation play out against the bureaucracy of immigration, as archival footage underscores the nation’s obsession with American individualism. 

In Retrospect / Rückblickend betrachtet
Daniel Asadi Faezi, Mila Zhlutenko, 2025, Germany, 14m
German with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Inaugurated in 1972, Munich’s Olympia mall was built by Gastarbeiter (“temporary workers”). In 2016, a mass shooting motivated by xenophobic, far-right extremism occurred in its vicinity. In Retrospect expertly uses archival footage, current images, and Sohrab Shahid Saless’s Addressee Unknown (1983)—about an affair between a white German woman and a Turkish architect—to offer a chilling reflection on our political present.

The Inhabitants
Maureen Fazendeiro, 2024, France/Portugal, 41m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
The co-director of The Tsugua Diaries (2021) draws inspiration from Chantal Akerman’s News from Home (1977) to blend images of the tranquil Parisian suburb of her upbringing with letters from her mother, one of the few women who defiantly assists the commune’s newest inhabitants: a Roma community.

Wednesday, April 9
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Enrique Pedráza-Botero

Thursday, April 10
8:30pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Enrique Pedráza-Botero

ND/NF 2025 Shorts Program II (86m)

Films are listed in the order that they will screen

Life Story
Jessica Dunn Rovinelli, 2024, U.S., 10m, 35mm
U.S. Premiere
Philosopher and theorist McKenzie Wark (Hacker Manifesto, Raving) reads excerpts from an original text that intertwines the history of the Left with her own corporeality. The camera delicately traces her nude body, laying bare the marks of her gender transition, as she muses on love, the making of one’s self, and lost futures while the specter of death looms large.

Crushed
Camille Vigny, 2024, Belgium, 12m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
The haunting story of a toxic relationship resonates with images of wrecked cars racing in a demolition derby. In Crushed, Camille Vigny captures stock cars as though they were bodies bearing trauma, creating a moving, cathartic experience from memories of a young, abusive love driving around in circles.

Maidenhair
Julia Sipowicz, 2025, U.S., 7m
World Premiere
Winnie, a preacher’s daughter in Newbury, Ohio, spends her days tending to her horses and assisting with her father’s congregation. When a young Bible salesman pays a visit to her father’s church, a nascent sense of desire is awakened in Winnie that leads her to the edges of her repression.

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
Kevin Walker, Irene Zahariadis, 2025, Greece/U.S., 26m
Greek with English subtitles
North American Premiere
In this intimate, observational work of docu-fiction, the nine remaining inhabitants in the village of Archia on the Greek island of Nisyros must relocate the remains of their ancestors to make room for those of the recently deceased. Steeled away from the confines of death in a timeless town, the spirits of the dead co-mingle with the living as a local priest leads the community’s procession to the top of a mountain to perform the ceremonial re-burial.

What We Ask of a Statue Is That It Doesn’t Move
Daphné Hérétakis, 2024, Greece/France, 31m
Greek with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Inspired by Greek poet Yorgos Makris’s 1944 proclamation that the Parthenon should be blown up, Daphné Hérétakis creatively blends and experiments with various styles—documentary, street interviews, and musical skits—to question the significance of history, cultural heritage, gentrification, and the disruption of local routines in a European capital as it accommodates mass tourism.

Friday, April 11
8:45pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Jessica Dunn Rovinelli, Julia Sipowicz, Kevin Walker, Irene Zahariadis

Sunday, April 13
3:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Jessica Dunn Rovinelli, Julia Sipowicz, Kevin Walker, Irene Zahariadis

Wherever you call home, it’s hard to be invested in cinephile culture without a mind towards its health. It was hardly some casual choice when Sean Baker took time during an Oscar-acceptance speech to plea for greater attendance––with each year every purchase at an Anthology, Spectacle, or Maysles feels more and more like an investment in the future, or perhaps a protest vote against our present. And few fight so valiantly as La Clef Revival Collective, a Parisian group who’ve earned praise from Martin Scorsese, Jean-Luc Godard, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, John Carpenter, Justine Triet, Leos Carax, Adèle Haenel, and Céline Sciamma (the latter of whom sits on their board).

When La Clef, a Parisian theater initially open since 1973, faced severe risk of closure in 2019, the Revival Collective and aforementioned filmmakers joined forces to save the space. They are seeking $400,000 between now and April to fund renovations, and will visit New York this week to hold promotional screenings. It is––not mincing words––an honor to partner with them and show (via Amnesiascope) Lina Soualem’s Bye Bye Tiberias this Sunday at the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, for which tickets are now available. (If you won’t take my recommendation, listen to Brian Cox.)

Below is information on each screening, followed by video appreciations from Scorsese and Carpenter. With all respect for other five-borough happenings, La Clef’s New York jaunt is clearly your best cinematic option this week.

Wednesday March 5 at 8pm
Film Forum (209 W Houston Street)
A Woman Is a Woman by Jean-Luc Godard (1960, 88’)
Angela, an afternoon stripper in the sleazy Zodiac Club, yearns for motherhood, but live-in boyfriend Jean-Claude Brialy “isn’t ready yet,” while hanger-on Jean-Paul Belmondo is more than happy to oblige.

Thursday March 6 at 7.30pm
Anthology Film Archives (32 2^nd Avenue)
Earthlight by Guy Gilles (1970, 98’)
Pierre, a young man who lives in Paris with his father, travels to his native Tunisia in search of his early childhood and distant memories, including that of his long-since-deceased mother.

Saturday March 8 at 7.30pm
Spectacle (124 South 3^rd Street)
Dernier Maquis by Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche (2008, 90’)
The owner of an industrial pallet and truck repair yard, nicknamed Mao by his Arab and African employees, tries to keep everyone happy and productive, as long as it doesn’t affect his bottom line. But the accord between labor and management goes awry when Mao creates a mosque in the yard.

Sunday March 9 at 7.30pm
Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research (251 Huron Street)
Bye Bye Tiberias by Lina Soualem (2023, 82’)
Leaving her Palestinian village to follow her dream of becoming an actress, Hiam Abbass (Blade Runner 2049, Succession) also left behind her mother, grandmother and seven sisters. Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter Lina returns with her to journey through the vanished places among the scattered memories of four generations.

Monday March 10 at 7pm
Maysles Documentary Center (242 Lenox Avenue / Malcolm X Boulevard)
Xaraasi Xanne (Crossing Voices) by Raphaël Grisey & Bouba Touré (2022, 122’)
Using rare archives, Crossing Voices recounts the adventure of Somankidi Coura, an agricultural cooperative created in Mali in 1977 by western African immigrant living in workers’ residencies in France. The story of this improbable, utopic return to the homeland follows a winding path through the ecological challenges and conflicts on the African continent from the 1970s to the present day.

Wednesday March 12 at 7pm
Alliance New York (22 East 60^th Street)
The Temple Woods Gang by Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche (2022, 116’)
A retired military man lives in the Temple Woods housing project. Just as he’s burying his mother, his neighbour Bébé, who belongs to a gang of robbers from the area, is preparing to rob the convoy of a wealthy Arab prince.

After his brutally piercing trio of features thus far with Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Nest, and The Iron Claw, director Sean Durkin is looking to lighten the mood. He’s set to write and direct an adaptation of Holly Brickley’s debut novel Deep Cuts, which just arrived on bookshelves this week and tells a love story of two music-obsessed twenty-somethings in the 2000s.

Deadline reports Saoirse Ronan and Austin Butler will star in the feature, which is set up at A24 with Ronan also on board as a producer, alongside Ronald Bronstein, Eli Bush, and Josh Safdie. Ronan will next be seen in Jonatan Etzler’s Bad Apples while Butler is gearing up for a big summer with Ari Aster’s Eddington and Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing.

Check out an interview with Holly Brickley below about her novel, as well as an official synopsis from Amazon and a playlist of every song featured in the book.

It’s a Friday night in a campus bar in Berkeley, fall of 2000, and Percy Marks is pontificating about music again. Hall and Oates is on the jukebox, and Percy—who has no talent for music, just lots of opinions about it—can’t stop herself from overanalyzing the song, indulging what she knows to be her most annoying habit. But something is different tonight. The guy beside her at the bar, fellow student Joe Morrow, is a songwriter. And he could listen to Percy talk all night.

Joe asks Percy for feedback on one of his songs—and the results kick off a partnership that will span years, ignite new passions in them both, and crush their egos again and again. Is their collaboration worth its cost? Or is it holding Percy back from finding her own voice?

Moving from Brooklyn bars to San Francisco dance floors, Deep Cuts examines the nature of talent, obsession, belonging, and above all, our need to be heard.

MUBI has unveiled its lineup for next month’s streaming offerings, featuring Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin, Zhang Yimou’s Shadow, Quentin Dupieux’s Daaaaaali!, along with El Planeta from Amalia Ulman, whose latest Sundance-premiering feature Magic Farm was picked up by the company. An additional highlight is Joanna Hogg’s new short Autobiography of a Handbag, which is also available to stream below.

Alistair Ryder said of Quentin Dupieux’s Daaaaaali! in his review, “Despite casting several of France’s finest character actors as the famed Spaniard, this isn’t an I’m Not There-style tribute to the artist’s spirit attempting an unconventional work in vein like theirs. Dupieux clearly has no interest in those sub-genres of the biopic, either, even if he does have a clear reverence for his subject. Instead his madcap romp manages to blow up all biopic expectations in the most winningly stupid ways imaginable; as with his other recent work, there is a more profound question lingering beneath the broad gags, but it’s never written to feel like a grander thesis statement to distract from the comedy. If anything, the inherent silliness of the film exists to help further the exploration of the biopic genre’s inherent failings, and whether any artist should allow someone else’s voice to spin their story into their own words.”

Check out the lineup below, and get 30 days free here.

March 1st
Glassland, directed by Gerard Barrett / Sláinte: Contemporary Irish Cinema
Intermission, directed by John Crowley / Sláinte: Contemporary Irish Cinema
Kisses, directed by Lance Daly / Sláinte: Contemporary Irish Cinema
Byzantium, directed by Neil Jordan / Sláinte: Contemporary Irish Cinema
The Journey, directed by Nick Hamm / Sláinte: Contemporary Irish Cinema
Song of Granite, directed by Pat Collins / Sláinte: Contemporary Irish Cinema
El Planeta directed by Amalia Ulman / Latest & Greatest
The Assassin, directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien / Beyond the 36th Chamber
The Final Master, directed by Xu Haofeng / Beyond the 36th Chamber
Shadow, directed by Zhang Yimou / Beyond the 36th Chamber
Citizenfour, directed by Laura Poitras 
Ema, directed by Pablo Larraín

March 7th
100 Yards, directed by Xu Haofeng, Junfeng Xu / Latest & Greatest 

March 9th
Muse, directed by Paweł Pawlikowski

March 14th
A Date for Mad Mary, directed by Darren Thornton / Sláinte: Contemporary Irish Cinema
Daaaaaali!, directed by Quentin Dupieux / Latest & Greatest

March 21st
Autobiography of a Handbag, directed by Joanna Hogg / Miu Miu’s Women Tales

That it has been nine months since Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia premiered at Cannes should do nothing to diminish the excitement of its U.S. release finally commencing next month. I saw the film right in the heart of a busy NYFF schedule and have found it retaining more than most, still disturbing me well after a first encounter. As Guiraudie fans should find themselves pleased, newcomers might come away hoping to see as much as they can; few working directors are so brilliant with tone and temperament, so fearless towards concepts of moral judgement.

Ahead of Misericordia‘s March 21 opening from Janus and Sideshow, we’re pleased to exclusively debut a poster that melds its three great strengths: Félix Kysyl’s unknowable expression, autumnal atmosphere, and a splash of blood where needed (or desired). Extra credit for a tagline that got a genuine smirk out of me.

As Leonardo Goi said in his review from Cannes, “Misericordia is neither a dirge nor a lofty symposium. Strange as it may be to say for a story that begins with a burial and then shatters after a heinous death, this is a supremely and surprisingly funny film, where humor gradually accrues a subversiveness not unlike desire’s own.”

Find the poster and preview below, and check back next month for my interview with Guiraudie:

Spike Lee’s major year already kicked off in a big way at the Super Bowl with a tie-in to one of his most underappreciated films and now the filmmaker is finishing his first narrative feature in five years ahead of a likely Cannes debut. Highest 2 Lowest, his reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, follows a reteam with Denzel Washington after Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game, and Inside Man. Ahead of a confirmed summer release, the filmmaker has now shared the first look.

As seen below, Lee has shared a still of A$AP Rocky in the film following the artist and actor’s not-guilty verdict in his recent assault trial. Also starring Ilfenesh Hadera, Jeffrey Wright, and Ice Spice, the film is scripted by Alan Fox and Spike Lee, and backed by Apple Original Films and A24. Based on Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom, the original film starred Toshiro Mifune as a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a ruthless kidnapper.

See below, along with praise from Martin Scorsese and that Lee has shared.

Claire Denis, set to turn 79 this year, has not slowed in the least. As cameras roll on Cry of the Guards she’s entered negotiations to direct The Soap Maker, an update-of-sorts of Mauro Bolognini’s 1977 horror feature Gran Bollito, itself a spin on real-life killer Leonarda Cianciulli––an Italian whose methods for murdering three women involved the composting of their bodies into soaps, candles, and sweets enjoyed by her contemporaries. Producers have acquired rights to both the original film and Cianciulli’s diaries which, per Variety, she “wrote in the psychiatric prison were she spent the rest of her life after confessing her crimes,” while their EFM-friendly package is comparing it to Silence of the Lambs, Se7en, and Get Out.

What is a slightly odd pairing at first glance only makes too much sense when comparing such material with Denis’ oeuvre. Hers is, at heart, a corpus about relationships’ capacity to spill into violence; Trouble Every Day hits the horror mark right on the nose, but 2013’s Bastards is quite as frightening, and perhaps the best distillation of her non-pareil powers. It’s hard loving her work and not being at least a tad ecstatic about such material in her hands, or a lover of Tindersticks who doesn’t imagine what textures they might conjure.

No streaming service does a director retrospective like the Criterion Channel, and March offers two masters at opposite ends of exposure. On one side is Michael Mann, whose work from Thief through Collateral (minus The Keep) is given a spotlight; on the other is Alain Guiraudie, who (in advance of Misericordia opening on March 21) has five films arriving. (2001’s duet of That Old Dream That Moves and Sunshine for the Scoundrels have perhaps never streamed in the U.S. before.) Meanwhile, three noirs from Douglas Sirk (Lured, Shockproof, and Thunder on the Hill) are programmed alongside a Lee Chang-dong retrospective that features three new restorations.

Showcases will be staged for Dogme 95, Best Supporting Actor winners, and French Poetic Relaism (Renoir, Carné, Duviver, you know the deal). Welles’ The Trial gets a Criterion Edition alongside Demon Pond; Horace Ové’s newly restored Pressure makes a streaming premiere alongside spruced-up copies of Amadeus, Love Is the Devil, Port of Shadows, and Burning an Illusion, as well as recent favorite Only the River Flows; and all three parts of Penelope Spheeris’ The Decline of Western Civilization are given their own corner.

See the full list of films streaming in February and more at the Criterion Channel:

Ali, Michael Mann, 2001

Amadeus, Miloš Forman, 1984

American Promise, Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster, 2013

The Bad and the Beautiful, Vincente Minnelli, 1952

Burning, Lee Chang-dong, 2018

Burning an Illusion, Menelik Shabazz, 1981

Collateral, Michael Mann, 2004*

The Crime of Monsieur Lange, Jean Renoir, 1936 

Dancer in the Dark, Lars von Trier, 2000

The Decline of Western Civilization I, Penelope Spheeris, 1981

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, Penelope Spheeris, 1988

The Decline of Western Civilization Part III, Penelope Spheeris, 1998

Demon Pond, Masahiro Shinoda, 1979

Ed Wood, Tim Burton, 1994

The End of the Day, Julien Duvivier, 1939

A Fish Called Wanda, Charles Crichton, 1988

From Here to Eternity, Fred Zinnemann, 1953

Ghost, Jerry Zucker, 1990*

Glory, Edward Zwick, 1989

The Grapes of Wrath, John Ford, 1940

Green Fish, Lee Chang-dong, 1997

Hannah and Her Sisters, Woody Allen, 1986 

Heat, Michael Mann, 1995

The Insider, Michael Mann, 1999

Le jour se lève, Marcel Carné, 1939

Julien Donkey-Boy, Harmony Korine, 1999

Key Largo, John Huston, 1948

The Killing Fields, Roland Joffé, 1984

L.A. Confidential, Curtis Hanson, 1997

Ladies’ Paradise, Julien Duvivier, 1930

The Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann, 1992

The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanovich, 1971

Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, John Maybury, 1998*

Lured, Douglas Sirk, 1947

Manhunter, Michael Mann, 1986*

Mifune, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, 1999

Mother Hummingbird, Julien Duvivier, 1929 

Nobody’s Hero, Alain Guiraudie, 2022

Oasis, Lee Chang-dong, 2002

Only the River Flows, Wei Shujun, 2023

Peppermint Candy, Lee Chang-dong, 1999

Poetry, Lee Chang-dong, 2010

Port of Shadows, Marcel Carné, 1938

Shampoo, Hal Ashby, 1975

Shockproof, Douglas Sirk, 1949

Slaying Goliath, Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster, 2008

Stateless, Michèle Stephenson, 2020

Staying Vertical, Alain Guiraudie, 2016

Stranger By the Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013*

Such a Pretty Little Beach, Yves Allégret, 1949 

Sunshine for the Scoundrels, Alain Guiraudie, 2001

T, Keisha Rae Witherspoon, 2019

That Old Dream That Moves, Alain Guiraudie, 2001

They Were Five, Julien Duvivier, 1936 

Thief, Michael Mann, 1981

The Trial, Orson Welles, 1962

*Available in the U.S. only

Marking one of their biggest upgrade months yet, the Criterion Collection is consecrating May 2025 with new 4K editions for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, In the Heat of the Night, and (reaching well back into the library) Withnail and I, running a gamut from opulent, fantastical color to solid 60s-studio sheen to the outright gnarly.

Meanwhile, Charles Burnett‘s legendary Killer of Sheep is given a major upgrade as Richard Lester’s Three Musketeers / Four Musketeers duet also earns full honors. Which should not distract from Abbas Kiarostami’s epochal The Wind Will Carry Us coming to Blu-ray, nor the same for another Bruce Robinson-Richard E. Grant collaboration, How to Get Ahead in Advertising.

See artwork below and more at Criterion:

Coming after a major 2024 with the U.S. release of his blistering satire Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (which nabbed a spot in our top 10) and the premiere of a pair of smaller-scale, experimental films, Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude is gearing up for quite a 2025. His forthcoming Dracula film will arrive before year’s end, but first Kontinental ’25 will make its world premiere in competition at the 2025 Berlinale. The film, debuting next Wednesday, starts with a sheriff’s bailey making a disastrous attempt to evict an old man from an abandoned building and follows her through an exploration of what it means to be both a Romanian and a European in 2025. Ahead of the premiere, we’re delighted to exclusively premiere the first poster.

Radu Jude tells us of the poster design, “We consider the poster to be a part of the mise-en-scene of the film, and we created it in the same spirit in which the film is made: low-budget, DIY. More than the film itself, the poster pays homage to Europe ’51 by Roberto Rossellini––the film that inspired us to make ours.”

Here’s the synopsis: “Cluj, Transylvania. After being driven from his shelter in a house cellar, a homeless man commits suicide. Orsolya, the bailiff who carried out the eviction, is impelled to make various attempts to address her feelings of guilt. Using a mixture of drama and comedy, topics as diverse as the housing crisis, post-socialist economics, nationalism and the power of language to maintain social status are dissected with a sharp, absurdist scalpel, in a movie-literate narrative that plays partly as a homage to Rossellini’s Europa ’51––not least in the modesty of this independent, low-budget production’s means. But while in Rossellini’s film a woman’s crisis of conscience leads to meaningful activity, here the protagonist facing the dilemma is unable to find anybody to understand her and becomes increasingly desperate for external reassurance and validation, in a manner that would be easy to condemn if Orsolya’s moral relativism were not such an uncomfortably accurate reflection of a modern-day malaise from which few of us are wholly immune.”

See the exclusive poster premiere below, along with a recent conversation with Martin Scorsese in which he sang the praises of Jude, saying, “He’s something else. Especially Aferim!, which he shot in black and white, and another one that I’m sure isn’t to everyone’s taste, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. That one is shocking––it takes political content, cinema, morality, immorality, throws it all on screen, then shatters it into a thousand pieces, and suddenly, you see the world differently.”  

Update: See the first trailer below.

The Room Next Door wasn’t the only Sigrid Nunez adaptation to premiere at fall festivals last year. David Siegel and Scott McGehee’s Montana Story follow-up The Friend finds Naomi Watts as a woman in NYC who looks after the dog of her friend (Bill Murray) after he passes away. The Telluride, TIFF, and NYFF selection was picked up by Bleecker Street who have now released the trailer ahead of a March 28 release in NYC and a wide release on April 4.

Here’s the synopsis: “In THE FRIEND, adapted from the bestselling novel, Iris (Naomi Watts) finds her comfortable New York life upended when her friend and mentor Walter (Bill Murray) bequeaths her his Great Dane, Apollo. The regal yet intractable beast is a constant reminder of Walter and causes various problems—yet as Iris bonds with Apollo, she begins to cope with her past, her lost friend, and her own creative inner life.”

Michael Frank said in his NYFF review, “Independent filmmaking duo Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s The Friend, their newest in a 30-year collaboration, is a dog movie. Or, more aptly, it’s a film about a dog and Iris (Naomi Watts), a woman who hates dogs. Iris inherits a Great Dane, Apollo, from her late friend, mentor, and lover Walter (Bill Murray). The movie, adapted from Sigrid Nunez’s National Book Award-winning novel of the same name, is light to the touch, despite its themes of grief, suicide, and depression. It’s the type of film my parents would love––something shown on a cable network on a Sunday afternoon, easy to watch with just enough substance to make the audience feel something reminiscent of sadness. That’s a compliment, though: The Friend reminds us of the immeasurable role that dogs, and pets, play in our lives.”

See the trailer below and read our interview with the directors here.