“One of the year's great debuts.”
The Film Stage
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“One of the year's great debuts.” —The Film Stage
The feature debut from Bad Bunny collaborator STILLZ and featuring the first original score by Arca, BARRIO TRISTE is a generational portrait of Colombia’s forgotten youth, both personal and specific in its perspective, yet unclassifiable in its formal audacity. Accentuated by Arca’s intense, shape-shifting sonic palette, STILLZ boldly navigates the liminal spaces between despair and transcendence.
“An aesthetically bold, personal animation.” —The Film Stage
With a lived-in granularity and unmistakable visual style, BOUCHRA, the feature debut from acclaimed visual artists Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki, is a singular portrait effortlessly towing the line between documentary, visual art and resonant family drama. Deeply felt, surprisingly sexy and formally adventurous, Bennani and Barki’s distinctive debut forges new ground that “will make it a classic of queer cinema for years to come” (Next Best Picture).
“A family portrait as painted by a moderately demented Cubist.” —The New York Times
“Maverick director Katsuhito Ishii (who created the animated sequence in Kill Bill: Volume 1) pulled out all the stops for this endearing outré take on the Japanese psyche. Replete with non-stop irreverent gags, anime digressions, musical numbers and candy-coated lysergic passages, The Taste of Tea is, “a true delight that elevates feel-good cinema to a whole new level and charms from start to finish” (Screen Anarchy).
“An elegiac excavation of a girl’s emotional life...delicate and touching.” —The Hollywood Reporter
Chie Hayakawa’s sophomore feature is a tender, often unsettling portrait of childhood grief and the sinuous imagination of an inquisitive young girl. Led by transfixing newcomer Yui Suzuki, RENOIR “delicately articulates the girl’s inner child in a way that allows us to feel it expand across the season,” (IndieWire) and “steps to a delicate rhythm whose echo isn’t heard until the very end” (RogerEbert.com).
“Can hold its own in any comparison with Oshima’s version.” —Japan on Film
Preceding Nagisa Oshima’s renowned telling of the same sensationalized crime, In the Realm of the Senses, by a year, A WOMAN CALLED SADA ABE is “more intimate, more cinematically stylized and arguably more erotic" (Midnight Eye).
“One of the finest efforts in the Roman Porno style.” —Asian Movie Pulse
A colorful and mercurial look into the underbelly of Japan’s nightlife, Noboru Tanaka’s raunchy comedy explores the sexual eccentricities of everyday people with just the right mix of unbridled imagination and measured dismay.
“Among the most unmissable films this year.” —Rogerebert.com
In a near-future Tokyo where the threat of a catastrophic earthquake pervades daily life, two rabble-rousing best friends are about to graduate high school. One night they pull a prank on their principal, which leads to a surveillance system being installed in their school. Stuck between the oppressive security system and a looming national political situation, the two respond in contrasting ways.
“Vigorously evokes the epic tales of crime and punishment...in 1970s American cinema.” —Screen
Belgium, 1995. The shocking disappearance of two young girls leads to the formation of a secret police operation known as Maldoror. Newly recruited officer Paul Chartier is tasked with monitoring a dangerous suspect but soon finds himself in a losing battle against bureaucracy and systemic dysfunction. As official efforts collapse and the case is closed still unsolved, Paul spirals into obsession, pushing him beyond legal and moral boundaries in a relentless pursuit for justice. Inspired by true events, Maldoror is “a propulsive, compelling thriller” (Screen Daily) about crime, punishment and the failures of institutions meant to protect society.
“An arthouse breakthrough for Switzerland's gifted Zürcher brothers.” —Variety
The latest film from acclaimed writer and director Ramon Zürcher (The Strange Little Cat, The Girl and The Spider), The Sparrow in the Chimney is a “darkly engrossing psychodrama of pent-up domestic tensions.” (Variety) With “deep, bold dives into the nightmarish and the surreal” and a venomously comedic touch, this is the “rare film that feels like a catharsis for protagonist and director both,” (The Film Stage).
Based on the graphic novel
A downtrodden cafe worker in Sao Paulo follows a mysterious customer into a sinister underworld where he’s caught between rival tribes of bespoke vampires in this stylish, neon-soaked tale of seduction, redemption and bloodlust.
“Snappy, sensual, and searching in equal measure.” —Indiewire
Screenwriter Zhao Badao makes his feature directorial debut with this charming and introspective rom-com. Riffing on Before Sunrise but set across a bewitching night in Beijing, a nuanced character in its own right, it melds metatextuality, cinematic sleight of hand and emotional honesty into a film as lively and delightful as the euphoria of sudden infatuation.
“Assured...an engaging portrait of a modern-day Swedish relationship.” —Screen Anarchy
Fanni Metelius’s candid, sharply observed debut is an emotionally raw exploration of modern love and sexuality that exposes the invisible power struggles beneath modern romance and the painful distance between loving someone and being truly seen by them.