Cinema Studies

His most overtly experimental work to date, in water reveals Hong at the height of his allusory powers. The story is simple: three friends set out to make a film, and then they do it. But with bold formal choices and his signature impulse toward the uncanny, Hong evokes infinite mysteries and hints at whole worlds lurking below the surface of everyday reality.

An actress and new mother is haunted by voices as she embarks on inhabiting the role of surrealist writer Suzanne Roussi-Césaire. In the sleepy palm groves of the tropics, a small group of filmmakers and actors confront the history of writer Suzanne Césaire in her youth and then stage scenes from her life, troubling the “paradise” of historical memory. Moving between narrative filmmaking and abstraction, this is a film that leaves room for the unknown. 

Subtitled "A Portuguese Comedy" and deliberately evoking the popular spectacles of yore, the film is both a sensuous and slow-burn circus act and a jewel of ingenious formal ideas and sublime lyricism. Considered by many to be Monteiro's crowning achievement, the film inaugurated a series of late-period romps featuring the endearing and dastardly João de Deus, the man you love to hate.

When Mara reunites with Matt a chance encounter threatens to spin her life in a thrilling new direction. Bonded by their history and shared interests, the two grow closer. When her husband unexpectedly cancels plans to drive Mara to a conference out of town, Matt accompanies her instead and the pressure in their undefined relationship slowly builds.

A comedy of improbable encounters and unlikely language lessons, A Traveler’s Needs marks the third collaboration between Hong and Isabelle Huppert (following 2012’s In Another Country and 2017’s Claire’s Camera). An Official Selection of the New York Film Festival.

Since its premiere at Cannes in Un Certain Regard in 1993, Moving has been one Shinji Somai’s most beloved films. In this poignant family drama, Somai transcends the tropes of stories of children dealing with divorce to bring us a film filled with indelible images about an unforgettable teenage girl who encounters the unknown and refuses to succumb to it.

A comedy of behaviors and a study in variations, Hong Sangsoo’s first film with Isabelle Huppert ranks among his breeziest and most mindbending endeavors. In Another Country inaugurated one of the most fruitful actor-director collaborations in contemporary cinema.

Freely inspired by the story of Oedipus, Angela Schanelec's latest is as terrifying as myth and as gentle as a folk song. An official selection of the New York Film Festival.

Moonkyeong decides to move to Canada where he meets Joongsik only to learn they have a rather unusual connection. Directed by Hong Sangsoo

Winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes, Three Monkeys is a moving, visually unforgettable triumph from the Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Once Upon a Time in  Anatolia, Thear Tree)

A new short from acclaimed direcctor Pedro Costa (Horse Money).  Three young sisters are set apart by the eruption of Fogo.

Director Bas Devos offers another Brussels city symphony. With a quiet grace that’s becoming a trademark, he and his team capture both the longing of contemporary urban life and the potential for enchantment that still exists in spaces shared by strangers from different worlds.

Bella, is about the life, influence and impact of California-based artist and activist Bella Lewitzky. Designated one of America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures by the Dance Heritage Coalition Lewitzky’s life demonstrates how a “uniquely Californian” artist with vision and tenacity can change the lives of her fellow citizens.

Last Things looks at evolution and extinction from the perspective of the rocks and minerals that came before humanity and will outlast us. With scientists and thinkers like Lynn Margulis and  Marcia Bjørnerud as guides, the film seeks a picture of evolution without humans at the center.

Winner of the Grand Prix at the first Tokyo International Film Festival in 1985, Typhoon Club is widely regarded as the seminal film of director Shinji Somai’s career. A work of raw, elemental power, it follows an ensemble of junior high students in a provincial town, beset by a summer-y malaise as a typhoon looms. The 10th best Japanese film of all time, according to Japan’s Kinema Junpo poll.

From acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Shinji Sômai comes an exuberant farce tinted with deep shades of melancholy and real violence, P.P. Rider is an ode to the dreams of youth against authority. Adapted from a comic strip-like scenario by Leonard and Chieko Schrader, it’s a film of unparalleled freedom, and a testament to Somai’s ability to inject his work with the potent marrow of life.

Within the human struggle to live and work on a changing planet, questions of value, extraction, and adaptation echo across seemingly disparate worlds. A Common Sequence examines shifts of life and labor through a critically-endangered salamander and plant patents in the apple industry. Weaving the stories of Dominican nuns running a conservation lab, a group of fisherman attempting to live off of a depleting lake, engineers developing AI-driven harvesting machines, and an indigenous biomedical researcher resisting the commodification of human DNA, the film becomes a meditation on the shifting border between the natural and unnatural world, and the dynamics of power at play.

A documentary immersion into all things Umberto Eco, Davide Ferrario’s film takes us on a tour of Eco’s private library, guided by the author himself. Combining new footage with material he shot with Eco in 2015