Hesitation Wound dir. Selman NacarIntercepted dir. Oksana KarpovychA Journey in Spring dir. Wang Ping-Wen, Peng Tzu-HuiLost Country dir. Vladimir PerišićMalu dir. Pedro FreireMeezan dir. Shahab MihandoustOf Living Without Illusion dir. Katharina LüdinOmen dir. BalojiOtro Sol dir. Francisco Rodríguez TeareThe Permanent Picture dir. Laura FerrésThe Rim dir. Alberto GraciaStress Positions dir. Theda Hammel
Shorts Program IVia Dolorosa dir. Rachel GutgartsGoodbye First Love dir. Shuli HuangShimmering Bodies dir. Inês Teixeira
Shorts Program IIBreak no. 1 & Break no. 2 dir. Lei LeiThe night of the minotaur dir. Juliana Zuluaga Montoya
Nos Îles dir. Aliha ThalienThe Voice of Others dir. Fatima Kaci
Kill ’Em All dir. Sebastian Molina RuizThe Porn Selector dir. Lou FaurouxDigital Devil Saga dir. Cameron Worden
The New Directors/New Films selection committee is made up of members from both presenting organizations. The 2024 feature committee comprises Dan Sullivan (Co-chair, FLC), Tyler Wilson (FLC), Maddie Whittle (FLC), La Frances Hui (Co-Chair, MoMA), Rajendra Roy (MoMA), and Josh Siegel (MoMA), and the shorts were programmed by Katie Zwick (FLC) and Francisco Valente (MoMA).
Tickets will go on sale to the general public on Thursday, March 7 at noon ET, with early-access opportunities for FLC and MoMA members on Tuesday, March 5 at noon. Tickets are $18 for the general public; $15 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $13 for MoMA and FLC members. Opening Night tickets are $25 for the general public; $22 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $20 for FLC and MoMA members.
See more and save with a 6-Film Package for $99; discount automatically applied when adding tickets to cart (excludes Opening and Closing films). Complete your ND/NF experience with a VIP Pass: $400 for the general public and $350 for FLC and MoMA Members (includes two tickets to every film and two tickets to Opening Night and the Opening Night Party). Learn more at newdirectors.org.
New Directors/New Films is presented by Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art.
Film at Lincoln Center funding for New Directors/New Films is provided in part by FLC’s New Wave Membership Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. American Airlines is the official airline of FLC.
Film at MoMA is made possible by CHANEL. Additional support is provided by the Annual Film Fund. Leadership support for the Annual Film Fund is provided by Debra and Leon D. Black, with major contributions from the Triad Foundation, Inc., The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), The Young Patrons Council of The Museum of Modern Art, and by Karen and Gary Winnick.
Travel support provided by German Films; Unifrance; and Taipei Cultural Center in New York, Ministry of Culture, ROC (Taiwan).
FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS
Films will screen at either Film at Lincoln Center Walter Reade Theater (165 W. 65th Street), and the Francesca Beale Theater (144 W. 65th Street) or The Museum of Modern Art Titus 1 / Titus 2 Theaters (11 W. 53rd Street)Please note the screening location for each film below.
Opening Night
A Different ManNew York PremiereAaron Schimberg, 2023, U.S., 112mWith the hotly anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed sophomore feature, 2018’s Chained for Life, New York-based director Aaron Schimberg boldly announces himself as one of the most fearless and socially incisive new voices in American independent cinema. Sebastian Stan, winner of this year’s Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlin Film Festival, delivers an ingeniously embodied performance as Edward, an aspiring actor with severe facial disfigurement, to whom we’re introduced as he navigates a dreary daily existence marked by discouragement and resignation. When a winsome playwright (Renate Reinsve) moves in next door, and an experimental medical procedure becomes available to change his face, Edward’s outlook brightens, and he jumps at the chance for a new lease on life—until the arrival of Oswald (Adam Pearson), an outgoing and warmly charismatic stranger puts his newfound “normalcy” into perspective, and his artistic aspirations in jeopardy. Schimberg’s latest is a discomfiting tour de force, a social satire that wrangles thorny questions of identity and authenticity with unflinching honesty and slyly virtuosic storytelling flair. An A24 release.
Wednesday, April 37:00pm, MoMA T1 (Q&A with Aaron Schimberg and Sebastian Stan)7:30pm, MoMA T2 (Intro with Aaron Schimberg and Sebastian Stan)
Thursday, April 48:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Aaron Schimberg)
Closing Night
Stress PositionsTheda Hammel, 2024, U.S., 95mNew York PremiereThe bewilderment of the early days of COVID is given a manic queer twist in Theda Hammel’s propulsive, brilliantly discombobulating comedy set in Brooklyn in the summer of 2020. Feeling the sting from a recent separation from his husband, Terry (John Early) is doing his due, über-masked diligence to watch over his nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash), a Moroccan male model who is staying with Terry while nursing a broken leg. Meanwhile, Terry is fearful that his punchy best friend, Karla (Hammel, in a vibrant, take-no-prisoners turn), working through her own relationship chaos, will be a bad influence on Bahlul, who proves to be a lot wiser and less naive than his uncle might think. Hammel’s cinematic approach is thrillingly unpredictable both visually and sonically, alternating between cacophonous volleys of dialogue and meditative journeys into her characters’ subjective states, while the heightened delirium of Hammel and Faheem Ali’s script evokes the hapless rules of engagement in the ever-shifting borders of queer politics. A NEON release.
Saturday, April 136:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Theda Hammel)8:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Intro with Theda Hammel)
Sunday, April 145:15pm, MoMA T1 (Q&A with Theda Hammel)
All, or Nothing at AllJiajun “Oscar” Zhang, 2023, China, 124mMandarin and Shanghainese with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereThe innovatively conceived and constructed feature debut from Jiajun “Oscar” Zhang takes place entirely within the overwhelming, majestically artificial confines of the vertical Global Harbor shopping mall in Shanghai. Against a gleaming and glittering backdrop of endless escalators, perfume samples, skin-care product demonstrations, breakdancing, and elaborately foamed coffee beverages, we are introduced to alternate yet thematically overlapping narratives centered around two pairs of strangers nursing or running from romantic crushes on each other—pursuits experienced in Zhang’s visual approach as both profoundly human and technologically mediated. Threading various narrative avenues and aesthetic textures, All, or Nothing at All offers an entertaining examination of a new generation of young adult disaffection amidst the overload of contemporary living that conceptually parallels the multistory consumerist landscape where it’s set. Zhang conceived the film to be presented in two versions, the second of which inverts the order of the film’s two halves; we will be presenting both versions at this year’s festival.
Thursday, April 118:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Jiajun “Oscar” Zhang)
Friday, April 125:45pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Jiajun “Oscar” Zhang)
Blackbird Blackbird BlackberryElene Naveriani, 2023, Switzerland/Georgia, 110mGeorgian with English subtitlesNew York PremiereWinner of the grand prize at the Sarajevo Film Festival, Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry is the funny, tender, and erotic story of 48-year-old Etero, an unmarried shopkeeper in a Georgian village mocked as a spinster by her gossipy friends even as she secretly carries on a torrid affair with a married man. Georgian cinema is famous not only for the quality of its absurdist storytelling but also for the predominance of women filmmakers throughout its history; now we can celebrate the arrival of writer-director Elene Naveriani and actress Eka Chavleishvili, as the defiantly independent, pleasure-seeking Etero, boldly upholding this rich tradition.
Saturday, April 131:00pm, MoMA T2
Sunday, April 146:15pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Blaga’s LessonsStephan Komandarev, 2023, Bulgaria/Germany, 114mBulgarian with English subtitlesNew York PremiereSeventy-year-old retired schoolteacher Blaga (Eli Skorcheva) has recently lost her beloved husband, a former police officer well-known in the austere, small northern Bulgarian town where she still lives. Determined to purchase a substantial gravesite and headstone for the deceased, the stern-minded, no-nonsense widow continues to work, giving Bulgarian language lessons to immigrants. However, Blaga’s already precarious world is overturned when one afternoon she falls prey to a frightening telephone scam. This is merely the beginning of a tautly conceived thriller that skillfully captures the feeling of a bleak post-Communist society beset by corruption—in both criminal and official capacities. Stephan Komandarev’s entirely gripping film rests on the ever-strengthening shoulders of veteran actress Skorcheva, whose remarkable journey from weather-beaten victimhood to aggressive resolve persuasively transforms the film into a provocative story of individual morality in a world gone wrong.
Tuesday, April 98:30pm, MoMA T2
Sunday, April 141:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Cu Li Never CriesPham Ngoc Lân, 2024, Vietnam/Singapore/France/Philippines/Norway, 92mVietnamese with English subtitlesNorth American PremierePersonal and political histories are ever-present in the story of Mrs. Nguyên (Minh Châu), who returns to her hometown to spread the ashes of her estranged husband and to reconnect with her niece, Vân (Hà Phuong). Yet Vân harbors resentment against Mrs. Nguyên—a mother figure to the orphaned young woman—for her long absence, complicating this homecoming and dredging up a difficult past. As the older woman traverses the familiar yet increasingly alien environs of her past, she has the companionship of Cu Li, the pygmy slow loris her deceased spouse left her, whose impossibly wide, glassy eyes become a reflection for characters caught in a half-dreamscape. Shot in a pristine black-and-white that offers immersive realism one moment and a fairy-tale shimmer the next, Cu Li Never Cries is a tender yet commanding feature debut for Pham Ngoc Lân in which the legacies of Vietnamese history are written on its characters’ uncertain futures. Winner of the Best First Feature prize at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival.
Tuesday, April 96:00pm, MoMA T2
Wednesday, April 106:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
The Day I Met YouAndré Novais Oliveira, 2023, Brazil, 71mPortuguese with English subtitlesNew York PremiereThis micro portrait of two individuals finding comfort in each other’s company offers a refreshing reprieve from the daily grind. Set in the vicinity of Belo Horizonte, the capital of the mountainous Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, the film follows Zeca (Renato Novaes), whose job, body, and mind have all gone out of whack. The weight of setbacks is lifted when he spends a few impromptu hours with Louisa (Grace Passô), his colleague at a local school, and the two even find joy in poking fun at their shared misery. Combining a chic sense of pace and magical long takes, returning ND/NF director André Novais Oliveira (Long Way Home, ND/NF 2019) makes the most unassuming encounter infinitely cool and full of hope.
Saturday, April 612:30pm, MoMA T2
Sunday, April 76:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Dreaming & DyingNelson Yeo, 2023, Singapore/Indonesia, 77mMandarin, English, and Singlish with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereHigh school reunions are invariably awkward, all the more so when only three people show up. At midlife, those three (Peter Yu, Doreen Toh, Kelvin Ho), two married to each other, appear in a peculiar love triangle, unclear if they are grappling with unresolved desires from the past or repressed yearnings of the present. Their romantic entanglement is given a middle-age-appropriate treatment; mysteries of the adult heart find subtly comical expression through a merman, a talking fish, and various surreal scenarios. Channeling Hong Sangsoo’s razor-sharp and at times offbeat gaze, as well as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s affinity for fantasia and nature, Singaporean director Nelson Yeo’s debut feature, winner of the Locarno Film Festival’s Filmmaker of the Present award, combines reality and magic to provide three troubled souls with a moment to dream.
Thursday, April 116:00pm, MoMA T2
Friday, April 126:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Exhibiting ForgivenessTitus Kaphar, 2024, U.S., 111mNew York PremiereTitus Kaphar creates powerful work that is multidisciplinary in nature and profound in historical meaning, often incorporating multiple layers and sculptural dimensions to his canvases. Kaphar brings the same sense of profoundly felt dynamism to his startlingly accomplished cinematic debut, Exhibiting Forgiveness, a wrenching work of emotional depth and visual flair starring the magnificent André Holland in one of the actor’s greatest screen roles so far. Painter Tarrell Rodin (Holland) is a loving and grounded husband to singer Aisha (Andra Day) and father to young Jermaine (Daniel Berrier), but he’s violently haunted by nightmares of his childhood. While preparing for a new gallery show, Tarrell finds his life upended by the sudden return of his father, La’Ron (John Earl Jelks). His mother, Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), has forgiven La’Ron for the abuse and addiction of their family’s troubled past, but Tarrell cannot bring himself to do the same. While working on his large-scale canvases, Tarrell journeys to his past, wondering if he can alter the pain of his present. Kaphar’s film—as provocative in its depiction of unresolvable familial crises as it is about the meaning and co-opting of Black voices in the contemporary art scene—wrestles with difficult, personal questions without settling on easy answers.
Friday, April 58:30pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Titus Kaphar)
Saturday, April 612:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Titus Kaphar)
Explanation for EverythingGábor Reisz, 2023, Hungary/Slovakia, 152mHungarian with English subtitlesNew York PremiereUnder intense pressure from home and school to pass his graduation exams, Budapest high school senior Abel finds himself distracted and ultimately derailed by his own nerves as well as his crush on a fellow classmate. However, the simmering anxieties of teenagehood boil over into something far greater than Abel ever could have intended when a minor confrontation between the boy and a teacher becomes a talking point in an escalating generational and political conflict. Gábor Reisz’s scintillating drama keeps a firm grip on its audience as it unfolds an intricately structured screenplay that’s as tuned in to tiny gestures between people as it is to the grand statements about a contemporary climate in which we are often encouraged to take definitive sides. While Explanation for Everything is specific in its portrait of a contemporary Hungary wrestling with its own political past and nationalist legacy, its diagnoses are universally relevant, and endlessly compelling.
Friday, April 58:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Saturday, April 62:30pm, MoMA T2
Foremost By NightVíctor Iriarte, 2023, Spain/Portugal/France, 109mSpanish with English subtitlesNew York PremiereSpanish artist and curator Víctor Iriarte’s debut feature unfolds across four epistolary chapters, following middle-aged Vera (Lola Dueñas) as she emerges from a years-long search for the biological son whom she gave up for adoption at birth, and whose identity and whereabouts were rendered all but untraceable by a callously negligent bureaucracy. When Vera’s letters reach teenaged Egoz (Manuel Egozkue) and his adoptive mother Cora (Ana Torrent), the three of them converge on the banks of Portugal’s Douro River for a long-delayed reunion—and a shared reckoning with the intimate legacies of Spain’s political history. Deceptively airy and noir-inflected, Iriarte’s unhurried, methodical gaze lingers over bodies and structures, interpolating velvety 16mm compositions with tactile close-ups of maps, floor plans, and microfiche newspaper clippings to evoke the textural and symbolic traces of a family discovering itself.
Saturday, April 68:15pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Víctor Iriarte)
Monday, April 88:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Víctor Iriarte)
Good OneIndia Donaldson, 2024, U.S., 90mNew York PremiereA seemingly small incident has monumental implications in the extraordinary feature debut of India Donaldson, a film of expertly harnessed naturalism and restrained emotional intensity. Seventeen-year-old high school senior Sam (a revelatory Lily Collias) has agreed to join her father Chris (James Le Gros) and his longtime buddy Matt (Danny McCarthy) on a camping trip in the Catskills, though she’d rather be hanging with her friends for the weekend. Affable and wise, Sam at first seems to enjoy the intergenerational bonding experience with the two divorced dads, yet the men’s own festering, middle-aged resentments begin to change the emotional tenor of the trip—until something happens that alters Sam’s perception of the men and her place in their orbit. Amidst the lush beauty and contemplative forest atmosphere in upstate New York, Good One asks provocative questions about the dynamics of family, friendship, and what it means to engage in or avoid conflict. A Metrograph Pictures release.
Thursday, April 46:00pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with India Donaldson and cast)
Saturday, April 66:15pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with India Donaldson and cast)
A Good PlaceKatharina Huber, 2023, Germany, 108mGerman, English, and Italian with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereEconomic yet expansive, at once intricately engaged with present-day anxieties and steeped in a sparingly realized speculative future, the debut feature from Katharina Huber (who has worked largely in animation until now) radically reimagines the hangout film against an apocalyptic backdrop. A Good Place follows the daily routines and companionship of two young women, Güte (Clara Schwinning) and Margarita (Céline De Gennaro), who eke out a living in a remote, sparsely inhabited farming village as radio broadcasts describe an unfolding global crisis and count down to the launch of a spacecraft that might save humanity. With an incomparable sense of atmosphere and style, Huber—who wrote, directed, edited, and produced the film—filters and displaces her characters’ fears and comradery onto an enigmatic narrative about survival and isolation. Winner of the awards for best emerging director and best performance (for Schwinning) in the 2023 Locarno Film Festival’s Filmmakers of the Present section.
Thursday, April 48:15pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Katharina Huber)
Sunday, April 71:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Katharina Huber)
GraceIlya Povolotsky, 2023, Russia, 119mRussian, Georgian, and Karachay-Balkar with English subtitlesNew York PremiereA father and daughter duo traverse the vast, winding, and seemingly vacant backroads of rural Russia in a rusted, rambling van that serves as both home and transport for the adolescent and her living parent (mom travels with them in the form of ashes in an urn). Clandestine DVD sales, fleeting sexual encounters, and checkpoint-avoiding detours signal the outlaw lifestyle these two share as they slowly, inevitably drift apart. The “road movie” is about as familiar a genre as any in motion pictures, which is what makes Ilya Povolotsky’s debut fiction feature, which premiered at the 2023 Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, such a discovery. Echoes of Tarkovsky quiver in the frosty landscapes as we sense the possibility of escape, of individuality.
Tuesday, April 98:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Wednesday, April 105:45pm, MoMA T2
Hesitation WoundSelman Nacar, 2023, Turkey, 84mTurkish with English subtitlesNew York PremiereThe unwelcome intrusion of law and society in affairs of the heart, so remarkably limned of late in Anatomy of a Fall, is a story grippingly told in Hesitation Wound, following 24 stressful hours in the life of a Turkish criminal lawyer torn between her allegiances to her client, a murder suspect; her mother, who convalesces in a hospital; and the judge, a man of questionable principles. A Dostoyevskian thriller laced with moral anguish, Hesitation Wound places writer-director Selman Nacar in the company of his compatriot Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Thursday, April 46:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Selman Nacar)
Friday, April 56:00pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Selman Nacar)
InterceptedOksana Karpovych, 2024, Canada/France/Ukraine, 93mRussian and Ukrainian with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereIn the two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Security Service of Ukraine has intercepted, recorded, and made public thousands of cell phone calls between Russian soldiers on the front line and their mothers, wives, and girlfriends back home. For her sophomore feature, Ukrainian-Canadian documentarian Oksana Karpovych charted a photojournalistic course across the country in the occupation’s wake to construct a fraught dialectical juxtaposition of sound and image, pairing fragments of those overheard conversations with arresting filmic compositions that capture the unsettled aftermath of invasion. Karpovych’s keen editorial sensitivity produces startling contrasts, drawing out the inherent tension between the soldiers’ casual accounts of looting and violent displacement (coupled with their family members’ muddled and distorted perception of geopolitical realities) and the camera’s deceptively tranquil tableaux of destruction and waste. The result is a document of astonishing discursive power, at once a stark reflection of the Russian imperial project’s callous disregard for civilian lives and a testament to the insidious efficacy of its propaganda machine.
Friday, April 128:15pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Sunday, April 1412:30pm, MoMA T2
A Journey in SpringWang Ping-Wen and Peng Tzu-Hui, 2023, Taiwan, 90mTaiwanese Hokkien and Mandarin with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereWith their feature debut, filmmaking duo Wang Ping-Wen and Peng Tzu-Hu have composed a lyrical family vignette of quiet transcendence, poised on the cusp between past and future, city and countryside, life and death. Aging married couple Khim-Hok (Jason King) and Siu-Tuan (Yang Kuei-Mei) share a modest home perched high in the wooded hills outside Taipei, where they bicker, gripe, and commiserate, inhabiting the familiar rhythms of a well-trod daily routine—until a sudden death throws their world into a state of muted disarray and brings the abrupt return of their estranged son. Luminous Super 16mm photography and an intricately textured soundscape cast a mesmerizing, melancholic spell, giving way to a delicate, understated meditation on the before-and-after of loss, and the intractably lingering traces of love.
Saturday, April 133:45pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Wang Ping-Wen and Peng Tzu-Hui)Sunday, April 143:45pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Wang Ping-Wen and Peng Tzu-Hui)
Lost CountryVladimir Perišić, 2023, Serbia/France/Luxembourg/Croatia, 105mSerbian with English subtitlesNew York PremiereSerbian filmmaker Vladimir Perišić evokes a seismic moment in his nation’s past from the vulnerable perspective of a teenager in the riveting and personal drama Lost Country, which he based on his own experiences. Fifteen-year-old Stefan (Jovan Ginić, winner of the Rising Star Award at Cannes last year) begins to notice a harrowing chasm opening between the way he idealizes his mother (Jasna Đuričić) and how many of his fellow classmates and citizens have begun to see her in her role as the public spokesperson for Slobodan Milošević, the Serbian president ultimately convicted of war crimes committed during the Balkan Wars. Set amidst the 1996 protests that saw university students and opposition party members speaking out against electoral fraud conducted by Milošević’s Socialist Party, Perišić’s film functions as both a brutal reckoning with a historical moment that has clear parallels to today, and a compelling coming-of-age story under circumstances that young Stefan is only starting to comprehend.
Thursday, April 116:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Friday, April 128:45pm, MoMA T2
MaluPedro Freire, 2024, Brazil, 103mBrazilian Portuguese with English subtitlesNew York PremiereA blistering performance by Yara de Novaes, volatile, and poignant all at once, is the magnetic centerpiece of Brazilian filmmaker Pedro Freire’s passionate and intensely moving feature debut. Novaes stars as Malu Rocha, a free-spirited actress approaching middle age and constantly at odds with the world and herself. Living with a conservative, religious mother (Juliana Carneiro da Cunha) who fears that Malu’s anti-authoritarian, bohemian approach to life is indicative of a mental breakdown, and reconnecting with a grown daughter (Carol Duarte) who has returned from a stint in France and is also pursuing an artistic life, Malu has idealistic plans to transform her modest home into an arts center for poor local kids. Yet Malu’s erratic behavior and recurrent, explosive battles with her brittle mother leave her vulnerable to a confusing, sometimes cruel world. Based on the life of the director’s mother, Malu is a profoundly felt study of a woman with an all-consuming, unstable love, directed with an intense force to match its unforgettable protagonist.
Thursday, April 118:15pm, MoMA T2
Saturday, April 133:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
MeezanShahab Mihandoust, 2023, Canada/Iran, 72mFarsi and Arabic with English subtitlesU.S. PremiereFilmmaker Shahab Mihandoust’s 16mm-shot portrait of the fishing industry in Iran’s Khuzestan province—home to Abadan, the first oil company town in the Middle East and a site of mass destruction and migration during the Iran-Iraq War—is at once an immersive process film about labor and a rich, sensorial account of a former combat zone reorganized by decades of industrialization. Across three distinct chapters, an inquisitive camera and intricately detailed sound design (by Ernst Karel) closely attend to both the individual and collective in the environments that dictate daily life and the scale of production operating along the margins of a petro-capitalist landscape: from the fishermen trawling Abadan’s temperamental coast, to an arduous bartering system on a Bahrain wharf, to a remote shrimp processing-packaging plant operated by women shuttled in from nearby villages. Winner of the 2023 Montreal International Documentary Festival New Vision Award.
Saturday, April 1312:45pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Sunday, April 143:00pm, MoMA T2
Of Living Without IllusionKatharina Lüdin, 2023, Germany, 110mGerman, Italian, and Norwegian with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereEmbodying the mercurial nature of romantic relationships in all their contradictory facets—hope and despair, joy and cruelty—writer-director Katharina Lüdin’s penetrating feature debut interrogates love and art with a singular expressiveness. At the same time that she’s rehearsing an emotionally difficult play, in which she’s co-starring with her ex-husband, middle-aged Merit (Jenny Schily) is navigating heartbreaking terrain in her everyday life: a rapidly deteriorating relationship with her girlfriend Eva (Anna Bolk), whose feelings of rejection and unrequited love are beginning to consume her. Lüdin further widens the frame to take in the complicated lives of those who are affected by the disillusionment of these two women, including Merit’s increasingly alienated son and his wife. Moving between unnerving restraint and full-throated feeling, Of Living Without Illusion is an unusually perceptive film reminiscent of the work of fellow German director Angela Schanelec in its abstracted visual approach, yet with a direct, almost Bergman-like intensity as it illustrates the sometimes unbridgeable divides between lovers—and between reality and pretense.
Sunday, April 73:45pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Monday, April 85:45pm, MoMA T2
OmenBaloji, Belgium, 2023, 95mEnglish, French, Swahili, and Lingala with English subtitlesNew York PremiereThe sense of dread that often accompanies being around blood relatives with whom you share no real connection is brought into vivid focus in Belgian rapper Baloji’s debut feature, Omen. Having been banished to Europe as a baby after a birthmark convinced his mother that he must be a sorcerer, Koffi (Marc Zinga) and his white Belgian fiancée Alice (Lucie Debay) embark on a family reconciliation trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The kinetic chaos of the return––missed airport transfers and traffic, bloody noses, family gatherings and judgments––sets the stage for a visceral reimmersion tale. Winner of the New Voice Prize at Cannes and selected as Belgium’s entry for the 96th Academy Awards, Omen melds the modern and the mystical in mesmerizing fashion. A Utopia release.
Friday, April 56:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Baloji)
Saturday, April 66:00pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Baloji)
Otro SolFrancisco Rodríguez Teare, 2023, Chile/France/Belgium, 85mSpanish and Italian with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereIn 1978, a Chilean thief named Alberto Candia entered the grand Cádiz Cathedral in southern Spain, and, it is believed, stole priceless ancient artifacts before being tracked down and killed. In Chilean filmmaker Francisco Rodríguez Teare’s form-defying feature debut, the maybe-true tale of Candia provides the unstable center of an absorbing inquiry into mythmaking, following a pair of young thieves across the Atacama Desert as they meet a community of local prospectors digging for gold. Through stories that seem to be real and others that can only be fantasy, Teare’s inventive film constantly shifts the borders between truth and fable, while presenting to the viewer the staggering, vast beauty of the mountains, beaches, and rivers of Atacama and Andalusia.
Sunday, April 75:00pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Francisco Rodríguez Teare)
Monday, April 86:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Francisco Rodríguez Teare)
The Permanent PictureLaura Ferrés, 2023, Spain/France, 94mCatalan and Spanish with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereWho said time heals all wounds? Shot in her hometown of El Prat de Llobregat (located in the southwestern periphery of Barcelona) with an impressive cast of nonprofessional actors, Catalan writer-director Laura Ferrés’s alternately tender, clever, and mysterious debut feature mixes realism with melodrama in the story of a fiftysomething casting director who—while on an assignment to find “normal-looking people” for a left-leaning political party’s campaign video—unwittingly befriends the woman who gave birth to and abandoned her as a teenager in Andalusia. The Permanent Picture is a reunion film unlike any other: a strange yet genuine inquiry into familial love, estrangement, and image-making across generations, and whose thorny references to the legacy of Francoist Spain belie its endlessly generative charm and sense of humor.
Tuesday, April 96:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Wednesday, April 108:45pm, MoMA T2
The RimAlberto Gracia, 2024, Spain, 90mSpanish and Galician with English subtitlesU.S. PremiereTold in elliptical fashion and moving to a surreal rhythm all its own, director Alberto Gracia’s grimy and dazzlingly dissonant vision takes place in the port city of Ferrol in Galicia, the northwestern region of Spain. Damian (Alfonso Míguez), unkempt and barely scraping by, has returned to his hometown after his father dies. Most recently a failed game show contestant, he becomes the inexplicable victim of mistaken identity when everyone starts referring to him as “Cosme”—who happens to be a tour guide who has already disappeared from the movie’s parallel narrative. Both compelling and confounding, The Rim is both an existential portrait of the limits of individual agency and a depiction of a community’s economic struggle.
Saturday, April 68:45pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Sunday, April 72:30pm, MoMA T2
Short Films:
Shorts Program I (99m)Via DolorosaRachel Gutgarts, 2023, France, 11mHebrew with English subtitlesNew York PremiereInspired by early photographic techniques, Via Dolorosa is an immersive animation documentary that takes us through Jerusalem’s local punk scene, where director Rachel Gutgarts spent her youth. Hoping to find atonement, Gutgarts depicts instead a permanent state of war hovering over tales of violence, addiction, sexuality, religion, and racism as told by teenagers approaching adulthood.
Goodbye First LoveShuli Huang, 2024, U.S., 13mMandarin with English subtitlesU.S. PremiereDirector and cinematographer Shuli Huang visits his first love in Frankfurt on a dark, rainy day during a work trip in Europe. In a small studio, two men share loving and contradictory memories of their past relationship in Beijing, pointing to tales of what could have been in weary, melancholic silences.
Shimmering BodiesInês Teixeira, 2023, Portugal, 23mPortuguese with English subtitlesU.S. PremiereAs she walks by her high school, Mariana is surprised by Pedro’s invitation to spend the weekend at his parents’ house away from the city. Inês Teixeira offers a tender, delicate portrait of young love, shyness, and the shape-shifting experience of sexual awakening by giving oneself to another body yearning for affection.
Nos ÎlesAliha Thalien, 2023, France, 23mFrench with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereAs Aliha Thalien’s camera takes us deep into Martinique’s landscape—nature, beaches, ghostly urban spaces, a rock in the ocean where an old slave ship ran aground—young friends discuss their heritage and identity amid the island’s colonial history and political memory, a desire for independence, and a complex relationship with mainland France.
The Voice of OthersFatima Kaci, 2023, France, 30mFrench and Arabic with English subtitlesNew York PremiereA Tunisian interpreter working for asylum services struggles to refuse emotional connections when translating stories of survival and abuse from people seeking another life in France. With rules favoring suspicion against personal tragedies, Fatima Kaci films an institutionalized mistrust of others and a character’s quest for empathy in the choice of words that carry the weight of a nation’s colonial past.
Saturday, April 63:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Sunday, April 712:00pm, MoMA T2
Shorts Program II (71m)Break no. 1 & Break no. 2Lei Lei, 2024, China, 18mChinese with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereAn assemblage of still images and video work, both real and imagined, Break no. 1 & Break no. 2 explores the fragility of human memory as it relates to the moving image and the unconscious. In Break no. 1, a silent narrator deals with the fallout of a friend’s suicide through dreams after photographs of the two of them together mysteriously disappear. In Break no. 2, the narrator floats through the endless corridors of a video hall, where the imposition of government censorship affects the ways in which the videotapes advertised there are consumed and remembered.
The night of the minotaurJuliana Zuluaga Montoya, 2023, Colombia, 11mSpanish with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereIn a fantastic tale spun from archival material, Juliana Zuluaga Montoya explores the origins of pornographic cinema in Colombia, sparked by Luz Emilia García. In early-20th-century Colombia, in a small village surrounded by enigmatic wilderness, García becomes the master of ceremonies presiding over the debaucherous Night of the Minotaur.
Kill ’Em AllSebastian Molina Ruiz, 2023, Mexico, 19mSpanish with English subtitlesNorth American PremiereIn this coming-of-age story, teenagers Mila and Carolina are close confidantes who live on opposite sides of Mexico City. They exchange diaristic videos that document their experiences growing up and their feelings toward the obligations, both familial and personal, they each face. Eventually, they decide to meet in person.
The Porn SelectorLou Fauroux, 2024, France, 13mWorld PremiereLou Fauroux’s The Internet Collapse project asks: is there life after the Internet? The first installment in this series, The Porn Selector, follows former porn star turned porn producer Kasey Warner, who aims to corner the post-Internet market on pornography by selecting, downloading, and preserving different types of porn before they disappear. Innovatively using a variety of digital production techniques, Fauroux guides us through the ethical quandaries and quagmires of the Internet as we know it––in all its unrelenting, omnipresent glory.
Digital Devil SagaCameron Worden, 2024, U.S., 35mm, 11mNorth American PremiereSTROBE WARNING FOR PHOTOSENSITIVE VIEWERSA dizzying blend of .jpg, GIF, and .mov images scoured from every corner of the Internet are set, one image for each frame, to a soundtrack featuring heavy hitters from Chicago’s drill rap scene. Printed and presented on archival-grade 35mm ESTAR Base film stock, Cameron Worden’s film ensures that the not-so-blessed digital imagery of the 21st century will be preserved for decades to come.
Monday, April 88:30pm, MoMA T2
Wednesday, April 108:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Films Schedule By Date and Venue
All, or Nothing at All (124m)Thursday, April 118:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Jiajun “Oscar” Zhang)Friday, April 125:45pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Jiajun “Oscar” Zhang)
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry (110m)Saturday, April 131:00pm, MoMA T2Sunday, April 146:15pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Blaga’s Lessons (114m)Tuesday, April 98:30pm, MoMA T2Sunday, April 141:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Cu Li Never Cries (92m)Tuesday, April 96:00pm, MoMA T2Wednesday, April 106:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
The Day I Met You (71m)Saturday, April 612:30pm, MoMA T2Sunday, April 76:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Dreaming & Dying (77m)Thursday, April 116:00pm, MoMA T2Friday, April 126:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Exhibiting Forgiveness (111m)Friday, April 58:30pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Titus Kaphar)Saturday, April 612:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Titus Kaphar)
Explanation for Everything (152m)Friday, April 58:30pm, FLC Walter Reade TheaterSaturday, April 62:30pm, MoMA T2
Foremost By Night (109m)Saturday, April 68:15pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Víctor Iriarte)Monday, April 88:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Víctor Iriarte)
Good One (90m)Thursday, April 46:00pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with India Donaldson and cast)Saturday, April 66:15pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with India Donaldson and cast)
A Good Place (108m)Thursday, April 48:15pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Katharina Huber)Sunday, April 71:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Katharina Huber)
Grace (119m)Tuesday, April 98:30pm, FLC Walter Reade TheaterWednesday, April 105:45pm, MoMA T2
Hesitation Wound (84m)Thursday, April 46:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Selman Nacar)Friday, April 56:00pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Selman Nacar)
Intercepted (93m)Friday, April 128:15pm, FLC Walter Reade TheaterSunday, April 1412:30pm, MoMA T2
A Journey in Spring (90m)Saturday, April 133:45pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Wang Ping-Wen and Peng Tzu-Hui)Sunday, April 143:45pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Wang Ping-Wen and Peng Tzu-Hui)
Lost Country (105m)Thursday, April 116:00pm, FLC Walter Reade TheaterFriday, April 128:45pm, MoMA T2
Malu (103m)Thursday, April 118:15pm, MoMA T2Saturday, April 133:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
Meezan (72m)Saturday, April 1312:45pm, FLC Walter Reade TheaterSunday, April 143:00pm, MoMA T2
Of Living Without Illusion (110m)Sunday, April 73:45pm, FLC Walter Reade TheaterMonday, April 85:45pm, MoMA T2
Omen (95m)Friday, April 56:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Baloji)Saturday, April 66:00pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Baloji)
Otro Sol (85m)Sunday, April 75:00pm, MoMA T2 (Q&A with Francisco Rodríguez Teare)Monday, April 86:00pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater (Q&A with Francisco Rodríguez Teare)
The Permanent PictureTuesday, April 96:00pm, FLC Walter Reade TheaterWednesday, April 108:45pm, MoMA T2
The Rim (90m)Saturday, April 68:45pm, FLC Walter Reade TheaterSunday, April 72:30pm, MoMA T2
Shorts Program I (99m)Films are listed in the order that they will screenVia Dolorosa Goodbye First Love Shimmering Bodies Nos Îles The Voice of Others Saturday, April 63:30pm, FLC Walter Reade TheaterSunday, April 712:00pm, MoMA T2
Shorts Program II (71m)Films are listed in the order that they will screenBreak no. 1 & Break no. 2The night of the minotaur Kill ’Em All The Porn Selector Digital Devil Saga Monday, April 88:30pm, MoMA T2Wednesday, April 108:30pm, FLC Walter Reade Theater
FILM AT LINCOLN CENTERFilm at Lincoln Center (FLC) is a nonprofit organization that celebrates cinema as an essential art form and fosters a vibrant home for film culture to thrive. FLC presents premier film festivals, retrospectives, new releases, and restorations year-round in state-of-the-art theaters at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. FLC offers audiences the opportunity to discover works from established and emerging directors from around the world with a passionate community of film lovers at marquee events including the New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films.
Founded in 1969, FLC is committed to preserving the excitement of the theatrical experience for all audiences, advancing high-quality film journalism through the publication of Film Comment, cultivating the next generation of film industry professionals through our FLC Academies, and enriching the lives of all who engage with our programs.
Film at Lincoln Center funding for New Directors/New Films is provided in part by Film at Lincoln Center’s New Wave Membership Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. American Airlines is the official airline of Film at Lincoln Center. Travel support provided by German Films; Unifrance; and Taipei Cultural Center in New York, Ministry of Culture, ROC (Taiwan). For more information, visit filmlinc.org and follow @filmlinc on X and Instagram.
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ARTThe Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Film marked its 80th anniversary in 2015. Originally founded in 1935 as the Film Library, the Department of Film is a dedicated champion of cinema past, present, and future. With one of the strongest international collections of motion pictures in the world—totaling more than 30,000 films between the permanent and study collections—the Department of Film is a leader in film preservation and a discoverer of emerging talent.
Through The Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center, a state-of-the-art storage facility in Hamlin, Pennsylvania, MoMA restores and preserves films that are shown across the world and in many of the Museum’s diverse programs, most notably in To Save and Project: The Annual MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation. The Department of Film engages with current cinema by honoring films and filmmakers that will have a lasting historical significance through its annual Film Benefit, which raises funds for the continued maintenance and growth of the collection, and The Contenders series, an annual series of the year’s best movies, as selected by MoMA Film curators from major studio releases and top film festivals.
Always looking to the future, the Department of Film is constantly unearthing emerging talent and providing a venue for young filmmakers through programs such as New Directors/New Films and Documentary Fortnight. Playing an essential role in MoMA’s mission to collect, preserve, and exhibit modern and contemporary art, the department was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 1978 “for the contribution it has made to the public’s perception of movies as an art form.”
Film at MoMA is made possible by CHANEL. Additional support is provided by the Annual Film Fund. For more information, visit moma.org and follow @MoMAFilm and @MuseumModernArt on X and @themuseumofmodernart on Instagram.