Two friends, both actresses (Halt and Catch Fire’s Mackenzie Davis and Masters of Sex’s Caitlin FitzGerald), leave Los Angeles for Big Sur embarking on a weekend getaway to reconnect. Once alone, however, the two women's suppressed jealousies and deep-seated resentments bubble to the surface, causing them to lose grasp not just of the true nature of their relationship, but also of their own identities.

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the Screenwriting Award at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, WHAT HAPPENED WAS... is Tom Noonan's directorial debut; a darkly humorous take on dating dread. Featuring powerhouse performances by Noonan and Karen Sillas as two lonely hearts spending one claustrophobic Friday night together in an imposing apartment, the film exposes with startling clarity the ways in …

Hanging out with friends, smoking too much, spinning bottles and kissing, making mistakes, playing, refusing to accept, dreaming with open eyes – life as a teenager can be overwhelmingly beautiful and difficult at the same time. Introverted high school girl Masha sees herself as an outsider unless she’s hanging out with her two best friends, Yana and Senia, who share her non-conformist status. While …

With few exceptions, Yelnyans raise their children to become good patriots. They don’t mind the eerie, all-encompassing militarization of society. A heroic Soviet past and a destitute post-industrial present make this provincial town susceptible for the Kremlin's aggressive anti-Western propaganda leading to the militarization of society from kindergarten to pension age.

Legendary actor Michel Serrault stars as Julien, an ornery butterfly collector. When eight-year-old Elsa and her often-absent mother move into the apartment next to his, the persistent and curious Elsa adopts a reluctant Julien as her surrogate grandpa. But when Julien leaves town for a week-long hiking expedition in the Alps to find the "Isabella," an exotic butterfly as elusive as it is beautiful, …

In this lyrical and intimately nuanced story conceived by Abbas Kiarostami and starring Leila Hatami (from Dariush Mehrjui's Leila), a photographer and his young wife are stranded in a remote Iranian village after their car breaks down. The only adult inhabitant leaves with the photographer to find help, while the woman takes over the duties of teaching the village children - whose parents are nowhere …

Reza and Leila, an attractive and affluent young couple deeply in love and recently married, discover that Leila is unable to conceive. Invoking tradition, Reza's mother convinces her daughter-in-law that Reza must, out of necessity, take a second wife to produce an heir. The heartbreak that follows is "in a word, devastating" (The New York Times). Called "the most interesting and accomplished filmmaker …

One of China's foremost directors, Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle, Shanghai Dreams) has created a moving coming-of-age tale set in the final days of China's Cultural Revolution. 11-year-old Wang lives with his family in a remote village in Guizhou province. Life is tough, but they make the most of what little they have. When Wang is selected to lead his school in their daily gymnastics, he is told …

After the landing of the Allied forces in 1944, writer Louis Guilloux was recruited as an interpreter for the American army. He would soon be confronted with the dark side of liberation: the rapes and murders committed by American soldiers on civilians. Guilloux’s involvement in subsequent investigations and court martial trials would expose him to the army's system of racial segregation and the selective …

A teenage runaway. A stabbing spree during a Christmas dinner that leaves multiple casualties. A series of sexual assaults in a subway station. This is the “ordinary business” that police in the working class northern French town of Roubaix deal with over the course of several months. We follow their investigations into these crimes — even as they are hampered by false accusations, the complexities …

How does a filmmaker go from creating cutting-edge work and competing in Cannes to being labelled a failed erotic filmmaker? The debut documentary feature from Polish critic and academic Kuba Mikurda investigates the work of Walerian Borowczyk, a director of unparalleled creativity & sensitivity, revered in the 1970s for creations including Goto, Island of Love, The Beast, & Immoral Tales. The film … More

An inspired collaboration between filmmakers Emma Davie (I Am Breathing) and Peter Mettler (The End of Time) and radical writer and philosopher David Abram ("The Spell of the Sensuous"), Becoming Animal is an urgent and immersive audiovisual quest, forging a path into the places where humans and other animals meet, where we pry open our senses to witness the so-called natural world—which in turn witnesses … More

This phantasmagoric film derives from a roll of 16mm film that Koestenbaum shot on a Bolex in Brooklyn, as well as analog 35mm photographs (self-portraits and cityscapes) he took on a Nikon. In this collage film/video, “The Window and the Door,” you can see fragments of that 16mm film and those 35mm photographs, as well as found footage and other invented elements, including a sudden vista of Elizabeth … More

Koestenbaum performs here in the persona of his alter ego, October Castelnuovo Spielhaus, who delivers an impromptu monologue, half-spoken, half-sung, describing imagined and actual ecstasies and tribulations. The film is an exhortation to the viewer—taunting the viewer to experience more pleasure, more intense and unfettered delirium, linguistic as well as libidinal. The film is composed of Koestenbaum’s … More

This film is a stop-motion animation work that incorporates various elements in Koestenbaum’s painting studio. Tiny dramas and collisions—adventures, aspirations, encounters, rapprochements, downfalls, redemptions—blossom into existence via the tiny cut-out parts and painted scrims that Koestenbaum deploys in his miniature cabinet-theater, vaguely reminiscent of the dream-world of Jacques Demy (as … More

This film is a flashy document of an improvised monologue by Koestenbaum’s alter ego, October Castelnuovo Spielhaus, who tragi-comically inveighs against the studio system and other passé networks of power. Spielhaus’s spiel includes a web of references that look back to the mode of Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon and other star-struck relics, but that “sample” or “splice” these references into … More

Koestenbaum calls this film his first “horror film,” and says he was inspired by early David Cronenberg works, which juxtapose mental derangement, bodily metamorphosis, and modernist buildings. In The Blood Drinkers, two men, who may or not be strangers to each other, meet in a well-trafficked yet strangely deserted corner of New York City. Standing against an iconic building composed of mirrored, … More

Newly restored in 4K, David Buckley's landmark excursion into bisexuality, 70s relationship politics, and the historical importance of gay bathhouse culture is celebrated in his 1975 film Saturday Night at the Baths. When struggling pianist Michael (Robert Aberdeen) lands a job at the legendary Continental Baths in NYC, his wife Tracy (Ellen Sheppard) encourages him, even emphasizes how special this … More

Pioneering filmmaker Hu Jie uncovers the tragic story of a teacher beaten to death by her students during the Cultural Revolution. In 1966, the Cultural Revolution exploded throughout China, as Mao's Red Guards persecuted suspected Rightists. Bian Zhongyun, the vice principal of a prestigious school in Beijing, was beaten to death by her own students, becoming one of the first victims of the revolutionary … More

When a Vienna museum guard befriends an enigmatic visitor, the grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum becomes a mysterious crossroads which sparks explorations of their lives, the city, and the ways artworks reflect and shape the world. "Luminous." —Film Comment