A film with a few solid laughs and crowd-pleasing moments, Death of a Unicorn never quite pushes the envelope as far as it could or should. Landing somewhere between a traditional horror comedy and a Succession-lite satire, Alex Scharfman’s debut feature is a reimagining of the unicorn maiden mythology that finds father-daughter duo Elliot (Paul Rudd) and Ridley (Jenna Ortega) in the middle of a peculiar situation. En route to visit Elliot’s mogul boss on a remote nature preserve, they unexpectedly run over a unicorn. Ridley experiences a hypnotic trip gazing into the eyes of the mythical creature, causing Elliot to beat it to a purple bloody pulp and stow it in the trunk.

Elliot is a fixer hoping to elevate himself to full power of attorney over the eccentric pharma billionaire Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant). The patriarch of a wealthy family that embodies so many cliches, Odell lives with wife Belinda (Tea Leoni) and son Sheppard (Will Poulter), an aspiring thought-leader and disrupter without an original idea in his head. Ortega’s Ridley is naturally the smartest one in the room, the pure maiden (an angle that could have been further exploited for some bigger laughs) who combs through research from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s archives, discovering that things are about to get bloody.

Steve Park and Sunita Mani play doctors on call at the mansion who stand by to synthesize the unicorn’s horns into an injectable serum that mysteriously cures Odell, who was suffering from cancer. The film gets about as scientific as Jurassic Park as the family debates what to do next. Naturally, Sheppard calls his bros and tries selling an eight-ball of horn powder to the highest bidder.

While there are glimmers of the promise of satire and Poulter delivers comic gold, the script by Scharfman gives him too little to work with––it never quite commits to a track. Unicorn instead reverts to the least-interesting path of a straight horror comedy, with the kind of unicorn horn-impaling that you might expect. Comedies such as this are delicate balancing acts; despite the value add of Rudd playing a guy who is willing to become unlikable to set himself and his daughter up for a future, the affair is mostly predictably straightforward. Ortega again plays to type as a notch above the IQ of the rest of the ensemble, giving away what’s to come as she tries to give due warning.

While, individually, the actors give it their all, Death of a Unicorn never quite finds its collective footing or place, a watered-down compromise of a picture more than a confident piece of storytelling. This feels almost like a throwback to the old days at Miramax, where Harvey Weinstein test-screened every film to death with the goal of manufacturing a hit. Sometimes you get smart feedback; usually, when you try to predict what everyone might like, you end up with a film that’s lost the script. Death of a Unicorn isn’t quite that, but it does feel like a thematic and genre compromise that doesn’t do as much with its high concept as it could.

Death of a Unicorn premiered at SXSW 2025 and opens in theaters on March 28.

Falling somewhere between a horror film and dark comedy about wellness crazes, The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick is, like director Pete Ohs’ previous Jethica, a film that suggests watching a play within a movie. Both features are difficult to discuss without spoilers––they seem to operate on a wavelength beyond genre boxes.

It might help to know the creative process going in. Tick was made collaboratively by its main cast: as Ohs explained during the SXSW premiere, they isolated on location at a country home where they would write three scenes at a time, film and analyze said scenes, and then move forward. The result is a kind of mumblecore version of an Ingmar Bergman film that feels both loose and heavily controlled. But if you’re not on the film’s wavelength it may feel like a disjointed mess. Like the wellness cures offered by AJ (James Cusati-Moyer), the resident chef in the group, they require buy-in and faith. Framed by Baz Luhrmann’s quote that “a life lived in fear is a life half-lived,” it was simply this film’s title that was enough to get frequent Ohs collaborators on board.

Camile (Callie Hernandez) invites old college friend Yvonne (Zoë Chao) to her upstate house to stay in the wake of a personal tragedy, a detox and an escape from the city. Greeted by Camile’s realtor Issac (Jeremy O. Harris) and his partner AJ, they encounter all kinds of supernatural forces in an old home that features holes in the floor ostensibly to spread out the heat, but really serve as voyeuristic portals.

The ultimate DIY filmmaker, Ohs shot and edited this picture as he had with Jethica, a kind of deconstructed Thelma & Louise with supernatural and Shakespearean undertones. As one might imagine, The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick operates with a similar approach, ratcheting up the tension in creepily effective passages proving it might only be a matter of time before Blumhouse comes calling.

Restraint is the order of the day: Ohs’ film grapples with themes of motherhood, friendship, health, wellness, and fantasy, creating a hypnotic biological narrative that is difficult to describe without spoiling details. The aforementioned tick tips the film into a light body horror category as it continues to get worse for Yvonne, who plots her escape but is ultimately captive to the quasi-family into which she’s been indoctrinated. The film veers into the spiritual territory of Being John Malkovich as the group thinks about life cycles and the next generation.

Your mileage may vary when approaching The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick, but it is a film that quite effectively melds joy, beauty, and horror elements that defy characterization. Yet it somehow sticks the landing with a sharp tone and an ensemble that has come together to make a film almost by workshop. In that way, this is a movie about the making of a movie, and independent film is largely a family affair as well. The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick is the creative process that flows from that initial idea, an obvious metaphor that doesn’t dawn on the viewer until one gleans more about its process.

The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick premiered at SXSW 2025.

A return to form for Jay Duplass, who’s also making his solo-directing debut, The Baltimorons is a charming throwback to the low-budget indies he directed with his brother Mark. Written and starring burly stand-up comedian Michael Strassner, the Baltimore-set film follows the mis-adventures of an unlikely romantic duo: Strassner’s Cliff, a stand-up comedian six months sober, and his older workaholic dentist Didi (Liz Larsen). Cliff is bantering with his fiancée Brittany (Olivia Luccardi) when he falls and chips a tooth, sending him frantically searching for a dentist who will take him on Christmas Eve. Didi is the only one who takes his call, agreeing to meet him in her empty office for surgery.

Cliff is a silly teddy bear who aims to please even when he frequently oversteps the line into offending. He’s generously curious, often living life to acquire new material for stand-up. Like the personal lives of some filmmakers who often seem to be gathering material more than enjoying existence, Cliff always appears to be testing the waters. In this case, he’s perhaps playing a long game of “yes and” improv. The Baltimorons follows a similar structure, amping up both the embarrassment and sincerity.

Gathering new material isn’t exactly a bad thing, except for the fact he’s promised fiancée Brittany no more stand-up and, of course, no drinking. Yet, after the oral surgery, there’s plenty of material for a routine when Cliff’s car is towed to an impound lot and Didi agrees to drive him. Stalling his family dinner, Cliff takes it as a sign when Brittany gives him a free pass to get something to eat on his own once it starts getting late. He and Didi ultimately spend the day and night together when they try to find a restaurant with an open table in a hot neighborhood.

The film itself does not overstay its welcome, building sympathy for our lead character while fully using winter in Baltimore to create a portrait of characters down on their luck but ultimately happier together. Didi, divorced and newly a grandmother, doesn’t want her time wasted but is ultimately terrified at the prospect of spending the holidays alone and slowly becoming irrelevant to her daughter. When she brings Cliff to crash a holiday party, he performs masterfully on his feet in front of her ex-husband, the crabber Conway (Brian Mendes), and his more emotionally available new wife Patty (Mary Catherine Garrison). Despite the obvious pain of being present in the same room with family she’s distant from, the others can clearly see how Cliff and Didi make a compatible pairing.

Like The Puffy Chair and Cyrus, The Baltimorons is a charming and endearing throwback to mumblecore’s heyday, as well as the influential, gritty character studies of the 1970s. Even with his flaws, Cliff is ultimately a tender man who wants to do right by Brittany and Didi, at times trying too hard to be perfect. Inspired by Strassner’s own struggles, The Baltimorons holds awkwardness in a kind of perfect harmony. While the film may embrace a low-budget, drab-naturalistic aesthetic, it’s far from dull. Duplass, Strassner, and Larsen brilliantly execute one of the year’s finest romantic comedies.

The Baltimorons premiered at SXSW 2025.

A big swing and nearly a miss, Chad Hartigan’s The Threesome is not without its charms even as it can overstay its welcome. A rom-com that offers a more serious tone for characters either in a state of arrested development or a new kind of adulthood that defies labels, it has much in common with Hartigan’s previous films, which live and breathe as hangout movies. His latest, written by Ethan Ogilby, starts to wane as characters continue bantering over the predicament they find themselves in time and again, leading to an awkward balancing act.

The fatal flaw is that lead Connor (Jonah Hauer-King) is too generic––a recording engineer living in Little Rock, Arkansas who appears to be an all-around good guy made for flirty banter. He’s always had a thing for hip waitress Olivia (the always-spirited Zoey Deutch). Olivia is either a free spirit or someone without a trajectory; it’s easy to see why Connor has a crush on her. One evening at the restaurant they pick up Jenny (Ruby Cruz), a stranger at the bar, and head back to Connor’s place. After the threesome takes place, Connor and Jenny exchange numbers in an awkward parting of ways moments before he asks Olivia out on a real date.

Olivia comes with her own baggage––their first date involves babysitting the rambunctious kids of Olivia’s sister––but eventually they fall hard in a montage of hanging out, going for long walks, and, of course, “Netflix and chill.” Soon they realize Olivia is pregnant and, as they deliberate the next steps, the other shoe drops: Jenny is also pregnant.

Connor is soon forced into making a good impression on Jenny’s religious family while also keeping his commitment to Olivia, who––a liberal in Little Rock conflicted about keeping her child––is full of her own contradictions with hilariously little filter, loudly telling it like it is in public. Meanwhile, Jenny is deeply religious and takes the pregnancy as a sign. She’s also a paradox, a sexually curious grad student who knows she’s not meant to be with Connor but desperately needs him to be present for her parents.

While Hartigan keeps the affair restrained and grounded with some flashes of humor, the momentum starts to drag: Connor is the least-flawed (and, by extension, least-interesting) leg of the triangle. Far more restrained than, say, a Will Gluck-directed studio rom-com, Hartigan’s picture could use a little more energy without resorting to tropes like Connor’s gay best friend (Jaboukie Young-White) who is brought in for comic relief and well-timed advice.

While uneven in character development, The Threesome is a rare rom-com that tackles serious issues around access to abortion care and what modern dating looks like, even in a politically divided city in a deep red state. While there’s a lot to admire and some big laughs courtesy of Deutch, the film will wear down audiences a bit, feeling both redundant and, as many romantic comedies do, ultimately predictable. 

The Threesome premiered at 2025 SXSW.

Directed by Rodney Ascher, best known for his horror-focused documentaries Room 237 and The Nightmare, Ghost Boy approaches its subject Martin Pistorius from, at times, the same perspective of his last feature A Glitch in the Matrix: locked in an infinite loop that suggests a simulation of life. In 1988, at age twelve, Pistorius became mysteriously ill with a sore throat. His condition rapidly deteriorated, leaving him unable to walk and feed himself. His family, initially supportive as they started slumber parties with him, became overwhelmed. A seemingly normal childhood in South Africa was upended overnight and he was ultimately sent to the Alfa and Omega Special Care Centre where he was abandoned, neglected, and abused by staff.

Like A Glitch in the Matrix and Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Ghost Boy explores existential questions about the nature of living when one is a ghost or spectator, unable to communicate despite feeling the need to scream. Like Bauby, however, Pistorius ultimately learns to communicate and, in 2011, went on to publish his best-selling book from which this film takes its title.

With an intimate, innovative structure, the bulk of Ghost Boy is dedicated to a long interview with Pistorius in which he interacts with the filmmaker through a computer-generated voice as he types. Speaking about his early childhood, the illness that wrecked his body, and the burden of his condition on his loving family and their ultimate decision to place him in a care facility, he recounts the feeling of death and floating through life. In his state he remains fully aware, even if unable to properly communicate at first––initially he loses part of his memory, which he pieces together from family scrapbooks and home movies. 

Life in the care home is cruel, staff treating their residents as subhuman. It’s only until a kind nurse, Virna, starts working at Alfa and Omega that Martin is given the tools to come out of his prison. Martin describes springing to life as Virna provides aromatherapy messages and simply talks to the residents, fostering a kind of human connection that the other practitioners did not provide. (As a teen, he was forced to watch kids’ shows, including an endless loop of Barney & Friends.) It is ultimately Virna that saves Martin as a new form of diagnosis emerges alongside new communication tools, exhibited when he’s taken in for an exam and proves he can identify symbols.

Through its recreations designed by David Offner and Jeanine Ringer, as well as extensive interviews with Martin, Ghost Boy probes philosophical questions about the nature of observing life without the tools to communicate. Ascher is a unique choice to direct the film; he does so with great sensitivity and attention to detail as Martin recounts the feeling of having all the time in the world before regaining the ability to communicate.

In the care home, Martin is alienated but observant, taking in the secrets of the staff and growing interested in what most teenage boys want: affection and intimacy from the opposite sex. Despite his limitations, he does get to experience that in spades, describing his sex ed via a computer tablet and the first time he went out on a limb and felt the most human of emotions: heartbreak.

Ghost Boy world premiered at the SXSW 2025.

A snapshot of the most exciting voices working in American and international cinema today––and with a strong focus on newcomers––the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look festival returns this week, taking place March 12-16. 

As always, the festival brings together a varied, eclectic lineup of cinema from all corners of the world––including a number of films still seeking distribution, making this series perhaps one of your only chances to see these works on the big screen. Check out our top picks below.

100,000,000,000,000 (Virgil Vernier)

Virgil Vernier’s third fiction feature sees him continuing his examination of characters floating through liminal spaces borne out of capital. He follows sex worker Afine (Zakaria Bouti) spending the Christmas holidays alone in Monaco, where he befriends a woman babysitting the daughter of wealthy parents until the new year. Shooting once again on 16mm, Vernier creates a transfixing mood through hazy imagery: Afine and his friend exist in a limbo state, inhabiting areas for the ultra-rich without ever truly being a part of them. What makes Vernier’s work so fascinating is how, with little plot, he conveys the malaise that grows from this hollow form of existence and develops into an apocalyptic dread. – C.J. P.

Bonjour Tristesse (Durga Chew-Bose)

There was slight trepidation going into Bonjour Tristesse. Justifying itself as another “adaptation” of Françoise Sagan’s text rather than remake of Otto Preminger’s masterpiece of mise-en-scène, there’s still some hesitation about the chutzpah that must go into thinking you can top that great craftsman at the height of his power. As directed by writer-turned-filmmaker Durga Chew-Bose with a great deal of formal assurance (you definitely won’t mistake this for something akin to, say, Maximum Overdrive in that career-switch category), this 2024 iteration is a highly respectable effort that’ll speak to countless people the original didn’t. One major difference being that Preminger made the film as a showcase for the muse he was having an affair with, Jean Seberg, casting some leering-male element onto the whole project. Chew-Bose’s project isn’t so much feminist as feminine––that a working-out of neurosis that doesn’t provide completely easy answers. – Ethan V. (full review)

The Fifth Shot of La Jetée (Dominique Cabrera)

While, a few years ago, Bianca Stigter explored a few minutes of footage across an entire documentary in Three Minutes: A Lengthening, Dominique Cabrera’s The Fifth Shot of La Jetée takes an even more narrow scope. As its title suggests, this documentary explores the filmmaker’s excavating of personal history as it relates to a shot from Chris Marker’s masterpiece. Structured as a mystery-of-sorts to put together the many pieces if, indeed, it was Cabrera’s family featured in a “stolen photo,” it’s an inventive, playful work, ranging from complex math calculations of probability if they were there the day of filming to more emotional revelations about the past. While those expecting a more thorough analysis of Marker’s film may leave disappointed, it’s a compelling testament to how many life stories are contained in every frame of cinema. – Jordan R.

Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 (Göran Hugo Olsson)

Göran Hugo Olsson’s documentary provides an account of the conflict between Israel and Palestine through Sweden’s publi- television broadcaster across more than 30 years. A prologue provides context that the footage should be viewed in: not as any sort of objective take on the subject, but a glimpse into how it was presented to Swedish audiences. Told chronologically in a clinical fashion, with index cards introducing each news segment, the film inevitably serves as both a primer for the ongoing war between the two nations and a look at the evolution of its coverage by the media. Respectable in its disciplined, straightforward presentation that highlights media biases, Olsson correctly frames the film and subject matter for its intended audience, who have mainly engaged with it through screens and an often unquestioned trust in the authorities presenting it. As a title card states in the opening frames, archival material says more about how things are told than how they really happened. – C.J. P.

The Periphery of the Base (Zhou Tao)

Artist Zhou Tao sets his camera on workers in the Gobi desert surrounding an infrastructure project we never see. Zhou observes from afar, panning and zooming in on workers having lunch or making their way through the vast, barren landscape. The camera continues to roam at a deliberate yet restless pace until it enters the realm of abstraction. With a pan or zoom, a defined image of a workers’ camp can suddenly change into something unrecognizable, form into an entirely different image, and then reframe and redefine itself again, all within seconds in the same shot. It’s impossible to identify whether or not The Periphery of the Base achieves this effect in-camera or through some sort of manipulation, but the results are exhilarating. – C.J. P.

When the Phone Rang (Iva Radivojevic)

Premiering at the Locarno Film Festival last year (where it picked up a special mention prize), Iva Radivojevic’s sensitive, enigmatic second feature When the Phone Rang centers on a phone call received by the protagonist Lana informing her a grandparent has passed, the foundation of which evolves into a memory piece exploring the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Radivojevic’s editing background (on such features as King Coal, Ma, and this year’s John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office) is beautifully articulated here, fragments of tender loss for both family and identity pieced together in compellingly unconventional yet affecting ways. – Jordan R.

Zodiac Killer Project (Charlie Shackleton)

What would a feature-length director commentary look like when the film was never made? This is the slippery, fascinating conceit of Charlie Shackleton’s rather brilliant Zodiac Killer Project, which finds the director walking through his failed attempt to adapt Lyndon E. Lafferty’s book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge into the first major documentary on the unsolved case. What emerges, one could argue, is even more intellectually stimulating than the original intentions: a sui generis, often humorous stream-of-consciousness journey highlighting the ever-mounting mass of repeated cliches of various true-crime documentaries and series. Instead of a simple hit piece, however, Shackleton investigates why such familiarity often works on the viewer while ensuring you’ll never watch such a program the same way again. – Jordan R. (full review)

First Look 2025 takes place March 12-16 at the Museum of the Moving Image. Learn more here.

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

Of all the directors who made the jump from music videos to feature-directing during MTV’s ’90s peak, Michel Gondry is the sole name whose work hasn’t been able to fully escape from the shadow of early pop promos. His hyper-stylized clips for artists ranging from Daft Punk to the White Stripes revealed a fondness for tactile meticulousness, shorts with an elaborate design where you could often feel the artist’s hand bringing them to life––in some cases quite literally seeing his hands shape the design. Aside from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind––a perfect narrative vehicle for his sensibility due to how its protagonist’s warped memories allowed the director to briskly jump from one visual conceit to the next––Gondry’s films have only ever recaptured this spirit in short bursts, if at all. You’d probably be forgiven for not knowing he directed the forgotten Seth Rogen vehicle The Green Hornet, and it’s somewhat safe to assume his Pharrell musical Golden was scrapped at his behest for a similar lack of authorial identity.

Running at a whisker over an hour, Maya, Give Me a Title is the most a Gondry film has lived up to the promise of his breakthrough short-form work in decades, rejuvenating his creative spirit while a minor work in intention. A selection of animated shorts made to entertain his young daughter while they lived on separate continents, all inspired by one-sentence prompts she wanted to hear stories about, the very broad boundaries set for him––both in the vagueness of each narrative concept and infinite possibilities for animation, even on this handmade scale––offer a reminder of why his breakneck imagination felt so revelatory a few decades earlier.

Fantastical animation sees him return to the barest of essentials; though Pierre Niney’s voiceover stresses that the animations were only possible using modern video-editing software, the hand-drawn character designs and wide array of backgrounds couldn’t be mistaken for the most basic of free graphic-design tools. This is a key source of Maya‘s charm: as voiceover storytelling frequently goes on tangents and left-field turns, the director’s hands come into frame, chopping and changing his creations at will. It has the delightfully ramshackle feel of a father hastily improvising a chaotic story for his daughter, ignoring plot logic as he invents details on the spot, even though he likely spent days bringing each tale to life.

At a time when phone manufacturers boast products utilizing AI that can manipulate user’s photos or videos with ease, Gondry’s film suggests a necessary rebuke to that soulless advance. Maya is, indirectly, a work about using technology to create something unmistakably personal, which no app could generate with anywhere near the same effect. You may not possess equal artistic skills, but neither does the generative intelligence designed to help users create beyond their wildest dreams. If you want to build something that will resonate––or simply amuse your daughter––nothing is going to rival your imagination. Gondry doesn’t have many more tools at his disposal than the audience, and even if he’s more adept at bringing his wildest thoughts to life, he’s still effective at conveying that you don’t need more than the bare minimum to create at his level. 

I am admittedly dancing around the overall quality of the stories themselves, which, over the course of the hour, gradually wore down my patience despite their range of subjects and narrative brevity. Some––such as a Parisian Earthquake adventure, or the autobiographical, mockingly melancholic short made in response to his daughter saying she didn’t want him to make any more films for her––are endearingly chaotic, frequently changing track like a panicked father worried about sustaining his daughter’s attention for more than a minute. But sustaining audience attention with the breakneck pacing of several shorts played out consecutively, even with a runtime so brief as 61 minutes, is a more daunting assignment that doesn’t quite cohere. I imagine any of these tales would be charming if viewed as an individual short, but burning through what might be the very best of Gondry’s homemade back catalog at such a rapid pace leaves the engine running out of steam far faster than it should. 

I suspect younger children with more hyperactive imaginations would be warmer to it. But despite the child-friendliness, Maya is firmly pitched towards their parents. Above all else, this is a snapshot of a very particular time in childhood when young minds are at their most unrestrained and inquisitive, a period that parents will spend most of their kids’ lives reflecting on and asking them, to endless confusion and embarrassment, if they remember. We only hear from Maya in very brief intervals offering up prompts, but the project feels like Gondry’s attempt to meet his daughter at the level of boundless curiosity associated with her age group. If I were a parent, perhaps I’d revel in the unabashed, childlike silliness told from an informed older perspective. As it stands, I found myself appreciating everything about the earnest creative intent while getting more than a little exhausted.

Maya, Give Me a Title makes its North American premiere at the New York International Children’s Film Festival on March 2 and 16.

Depending on who you ask, the cultural domination of the Walt Disney Company can be a wonderful thing or an inescapable nightmare. From Marvel to Pixar, 20th Century Studios to Lucasfilm, and theme parks from Orlando to Tokyo with cruise ships in the waters between them, Disney is everywhere. With that much presence and power in people’s lives, it comes as no surprise to see strange pockets of fans pop up––such as Disney Adults clinging on to childlike wonder long after their childhood years. Joshua Bailey’s Stolen Kingdom takes a look at one of the more extreme offshoots of Disney fandom through urban explorers, whose interest in Walt Disney World extends well beyond the theme park’s defined borders. It’s an entertaining, surface-level look at a bizarre subculture that, while sometimes hilarious, leaves a lot on the table.

Bailey’s hopscotch structure establishes the mystery of a missing animatronic in a defunct attraction before stepping back in time, first to establish the concept of urban exploration. Interviews with several YouTubers explain the appeal of recording themselves wandering through closed-down and forgotten locations, with Disney World’s popularity and tight security making it an attractive place to film and gain notoriety. The vast size of the park and high cost of demolishing closed-down rides means they’re usually abandoned, and for Disney these parts of their past aren’t worth a spot in their vault. Some fans disagree: one subject says he looks at theme park attractions as artworks, and thus Disney must deal with the die-hards willing to create liabilities by poking around where they shouldn’t. There’s an obvious connection to be made between Disney mining nostalgia while retaliating against its fans for doing the same thing; Bailey doesn’t bother making the link.

Instead the film goes back to the ’80s and ’90s, where former Walt Disney World employee Dave Ensign filmed his friends getting up to various forms of mischief in the park. Much of the footage is fun to watch, like when someone sneaks Playboy magazines onto the set of a dark ride at Epcot, but it isn’t exactly revelatory for anyone who ever worked summer jobs as a teen. Bailey takes us through this light history lesson to draw a line between generations––Ensign uploaded the footage in the late 2000s to YouTube and inspired others to show off backstage goings-on. 

It’s a lot of table-setting to get to the more absurd and entertaining developments with Disney fandom in recent years. Ensign, now older and mellower, looks back fondly on his younger days while understanding and respecting others who have an obsession with Disney. When one of Ensign’s closest friends (and partners in crime when they worked at the park) passes away, he films himself fulfilling the friend’s dying wish: to have their ashes spread at Magic Kingdom, which Ensign does after sneaking them in through park security. Bailey’s direction takes on a similar perspective as Ensign’s, respecting his subjects and their interests without mocking them while not shying from how extreme they can get.

The film shifts gears in its final act to former Disney World employee Patrick Spikes, who used to run an account called Back Door Disney. Like Ensign and the urban explorers, Spikes enjoyed sharing the inner workings of the park with others. Once he discovers a market of buyers interested in purchasing old parts of rides, things turn criminal, culminating in the stealing of a large animatronic. Spikes maintains his innocence, but once police begin to investigate the theft he becomes their prime suspect, and over the course of one day Spikes’ operation comes crashing down.

Bailey hits the jackpot with Spikes as a subject––his patheticness and lack of shame suggests a real-life character from a Coen brothers comedy. He’s brash and unapologetic while lacking any self-awareness, like when he says he doesn’t care about being banned by Disney while he sits in his bedroom surrounded by park souvenirs. The film’s high point comes when Spikes details the day the cops arrested him, which he recounts as if he was a mastermind several steps ahead of the authorities. Bailey juxtaposes the interview with footage from the police interrogation that show a funnier, more desperate version of events.

Stolen Kingdom extracts plenty from the moments where people’s love of Disney crosses into something more disturbing and with real, legal consequences. And while the film is a fun, short watch, Bailey can’t tie various threads in a way that’s as satisfying as its best moments. Given the decades of history and various ways people obsess over just one facet of the Disney corporation, there’s a sense that Bailey has only scratched the surface of a much deeper subject. But what he does capture is enjoyable enough––glimpsing a subject that’s full of potential.

Stolen Kingdom screened at the 2025 Slamdance Film Festival.

Amongst the debut features populating Berlinale’s new section called Perspectives, none presented so admirably fresh take on fiction and political histories as Two Times João Liberada. The Portuguese hidden gem is directed by Paula Tomás Marques, who has made a few captivating shorts and also worked as a cinematographer on others’ films (including Matiás Piñeiro’s You Burn Me) as well as being an editor and script supervisor. Given her all-round involvement with independent production, it’s little surprise her full-length debut is a film about the making of a film. In the Lisbon-set João Liberada, an actress named João (June João, collaborator of Marques on shorts and performance) is cast to play a namesake of hers in a micro-budget period film. 

Even if we spend all our screen time with João the actress, it’s João Liberada who is the film’s actual protagonist. With the twin name being a supposed coincidence, the (male) director of the film sought out a trans woman for the main part, since Liberada was gender non-conforming, according to the archival documents. Marques (who also appears as a member of the production crew) is interested in how thin the veil can be between actor and character; to explore this relation, she and June João wrote together a script of ghostly presences. Moreso, their script includes another script (for the film-within-the-film) that is far less intriguing.

As João struggles with the director’s treatment of Liberada’s story, she coats her discontent in suggestions on set during shooting. But as one colleague of hers points out, “If you want to change the script during shooting, it’s always already too late.” There are equal-parts melancholy and detachment guiding the main character, evident in the frank voiceover that peppers João Liberada from beginning to end: the making of this feature is not exactly easy, but when an inexplicable event befalls the director, João sees an opportunity to reframe the narrative.

The film picks at the politics of a set (“at least the director hired a mainly LGBTQI+ cast and crew,” João admits) and trans representation through an almost-real fabulation. João Liberada is a fictional character, but drawn together from 17th- and 18th-century trial recordings of the Inquisition pursuing gender dissidents. Instead of sticking to a more straightforward idea of a film “rectifying” or “illuminating” the “invisible histories,” Marques and her team prefer to make a meta-point about it. Not only does the film make apparent modes of representation, tropes, and the tiptoeing around them and often at the cost of truthfulness to actual queer and trans existences, but in a way that is inviting: both cheeky and gorgeous to look at. 

Shot in dazzling 16mm and bathed in summer light, Two Times João Liberada doesn’t shy from being a textured film: there are interventions made on the level of editing (with experimental filmmaker Jorge Jacome in charge), that separate “reality” from “the film,” and in other instances, overlaid writing appears onscreen atop the scene as it unfolds. Light flares and occasional marks on the 16mm footage are there too, as tactile as João’s own discontent.

Two Times João Liberada contains a wish-fulfillment element that is never self-serving. Maybe the whole film can be seen as João’s attempt to meet her queer ancestor and, in a way, it is that; yet that only complicates things. Representation is not only sometimes unreliable; it’s also vital. With histories written in a way that forcefully disregards the marginalized, questioning, curiosity, and new forms of contact provide an alternative to archaeology. Marques applies such anti-archaeological approach to her debut feature with a delightful result: Two Times João Liberada is a small treasure that shines brightly.

Two Times João Liberada premiered at the 2025 Berlinale.

The first time I came across the name John C. Lilly I was––rather fittingly, for reasons that will become clearer in a minute––not exactly sober. Late in the night or early in the morning, back from a housewarming party, my YouTube algorithm fed me a video concerned with an American scientist who’d spent his career trying to communicate with dolphins, a lifelong obsession that saw him, among several unbelievable feats, flood his beachside mansion into a pool, elect a few cetaceans as roommates, and watch as one of them became sexually fixated on his research partner. I suppose there must be other portraits of the man circulating in some dark corners of the web, but what sets apart Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens’s John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office is that the professor isn’t the documentary’s only focus. Lilly’s experiments on interspecies communication are secondary to the discourses they were embedded in, which is to say Earth Coincidence isn’t a biopic so much as a study of a few tumultuous decades in US history, and how ideas––even and especially the most absurd––can seep into culture.

Written by Almereyda and Stephens, with voiceover from Chloë Sevigny, Earth Coincidence paints Lilly as a 20th-century polymath, a one-of-a-kind maverick hellbent on “getting his hands on the steering wheel of consciousness.” Yet a hagiography this is not. Fascinated as it may be with its subject––a man bestowed with a “panoramic thinking” that led him to operate at the interstice between science and sci-fi––Earth Coincidence is as keen to praise Lilly for his contributions to things like the Save the Whales movement as it is to expose some of his most barbaric theories, not least that a steady diet of LSD would prove as eye-opening to his aquatic tenants as it did to him. (Whether or not that’s true we’ll never know, though it’s safe to say the acid injections Lilly routinely administered to his dolphins didn’t make their captivity any smoother.) Where others might have played the most salacious aspects of Lilly’s saga and astonishing drug intake for shock value, Almereyda and Stephens are after something different––namely, the processes through which ideas can be absorbed into the mainstream and meaningfully shape it. 

This contamination serves as the film’s through line; if Earth Coincidence has a protagonist, it isn’t Lilly but the bigger forces that negotiated his assimilation into the public sphere. Tellingly, Almereyda and Stephens situate his first experiments within the backdrop of the Cold War: as Lilly was fantasizing of a “Brain TV” that would allow us to crack the mystery of non-human language, the word brainwashing was just becoming popular, and the military-industrial complex soon latched onto the professor’s theories hoping to recruit dolphins as weapons against the Soviets. Communicating with cetaceans might help us figure out how to talk to extraterrestrial creatures––or so thought NASA, which also began funneling money into Lilly’s growingly intrepid crusade.

But if the Navy and Space Administration’s enthusiasm eventually wore out, Lilly’s theories did not; dovetailing with the New Age movement, they began to crop up in different media. Stitched together from all kinds of archival footage, Earth Coincidence doubles as a work of cultural archaeology. TV interviews, lab photographs, and Lilly’s own recordings of his experiments sit in-between excerpts of films that sponged the conspiratorial mood of the Cold War era, some of which were directly influenced by the man’s bizarre work (e.g. Ken Russell’s Altered States). If Lilly’s contributions to science remain disputed, his cultural legacy does not, and the genealogy Earth Coincidence offers is the film’s most illuminating aspect.

Is it any wonder that Almereyda and Stephens would be drawn to such a figure? Stephens’s last solo feature, Invention, spoke to her ongoing fascination with the way ideas can intersect and evolve under capitalism, while in Tesla, Almereyda trained his camera on another visionary outcast. Beyond thematic interests, the two filmmakers share a similar proclivity for the weird, a word that Earth Coincidence traces back to its Old English root: fate. Whether or not Lilly knew that bit of etymology, his most eccentric hypothesis, the Earth Coincidence Control Office, was itself tied to destiny. Conjured after years spent regularly shooting up LSD and ketamine, the ECCO was, in Lilly’s eyes, an omnipotent computer that allegedly dictates nearly all our moves and will eventually obliterate biological life altogether. All-powerful tech, alien civilizations, inter-dimensional dolphins, brain TVs––Earth Coincidence teems with all manner of deranged ideas. But how do you make the weird cinematic?

Even at its most lysergic, Almereyda and Stephens’s footage is never as trippy as the stuff Lilly imagined or got up to. That’s admittedly a very high bar to reach, but the asymmetry between the things we hear and the images they’re matched to––audiovisual relics from the era, yes, but also present-day, talking head-style interviews with former collaborators––is nonetheless palpable, and it makes the documentary an oddly lopsided experience. Earth Coincidence is fueled more by the power of its ideas than its images, or a disquieting, sax-heavy score by Brian McOmber. And though Almereyda and Stephens are careful never to let the proceedings slip into one big lecture, there are times when their film feels more informative than revelatory.

For a story that touches on something called the isolation tank––capsules in which users are deprived of all external stimuli, and the birthplace of many an acid-induced new theory by the professor––Earth Coincidence is crammed with so much information and so many detours it seems designed to leave your mind agog. A film ostensibly tethered to a man of science(fiction) swells into a far larger foray into the history of ideas and who gets to write it. Lilly may not even come across as the documentary’s most thought-provoking aspect, and if he remains largely shrouded in mysteries, perhaps that’s only fitting. In the words of Alejandro Jodorowsky, who met Lilly while touring the U.S. with The Holy Mountain and was immediately invited to slip into one of the isolation tanks: “It’s very difficult to be a human being. Very, very difficult.” Try pinpointing one such as John C. Lilly. 

John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office premiered at the 2025 International Film Festival Rotterdam and screens today, February 25, at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight 2025.

Quite a long time in the works, with Errol Morris attached to direct as early as 2013, the thriller Holland (formerly known as Holland, Michigan) finally embarked on production in the spring of 2023 with Mimi Cave (Fresh) at the helm. Led by Nicole Kidman, Gael García Bernal, Matthew Macfadyen, and Jude Hill, it’ll now world-premiere at SXSW followed by a Prime Video debut on March 27. Ahead of that roll-out, the first trailer has arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “In this wildly unpredictable thriller, Nicole Kidman is the meticulous Nancy Vandergroot, a teacher and homemaker whose picture-perfect life with her community pillar husband (Matthew Macfadyen) and son (Jude Hill) in tulip-filled Holland, Michigan tumbles into a twisted tale. Nancy and her friendly colleague (Gael García Bernal) become suspicious of a secret, only to discover nothing in their lives is what it seems.”

See the trailer below.