Following up Happy as Lazzaro and La Chimera, Alice Rohrwacher is now shooting her next feature Three Incestuous Sisters, which brings together the major ensemble of Dakota Johnson, Saoirse Ronan, Jessie Buckley, Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher, and Mick Jagger.

Based on The Time Traveler’s Wife author Audrey Niffenegger’s 2005 novel, the script was written by Ottessa Moshfegh and Alice Rohrwacher, following three sisters (Johnson, Ronan, Buckley) pining after a lighthouse keeper’s son, with Jagger playing the lighthouse keeper and O’Connor his son. It’s now revealed to be primarily, if not all, a silent film, with rumors swirling that the Hélène Louvart-shot feature may be in black-and-white.

Variety also reports Rohrwacher has already lined up her subsequent feature, set to shoot in the back half of next year: an adaptation of Italo Calvino’s coming-of-age fable The Baron in the Trees, published in 1957. The story follows a 12-year-old baron named Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, “who, after a dispute with his father, climbs up a tree and remains there for the rest of his life.” Backed by Our Films, it’s looking like we’ll get back-to-back Rohrwacher films in 2027 and 2028.

“Do you know where my friend is?”

“In prison. All strangers go to prison.”

This brief exchange, in––of all things––Robert Siodmak’s 1944 adventure programmer Cobra Woman is all too applicable to contemporary American life. Cobra Island is ruled by a high priestess, Naja (Maria Montez), who has bent all other forms of governance to her will, establishing her whim as law. If that sounds familiar now, one doesn’t have to extend the imagination much further to see its resonance in 1944, from the German Siodmak’s home country. The notion of “the stranger” as an inherent enemy whose natural destination is prison is just that prevalent, and Cobra Island’s isolation mirrors the ways dictatorial countries wall themselves off from the world.

Far from an incidental note, this thread is one component of how this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival theme––“The World Comes to Hollywood”––found myriad forms. Production notes were one of the more obvious, spotlighting many works directed by and starring immigrants. Cobra Woman, with its German director, Dominican star, and Indian supporting player (Sabu), was one of the more diverse titles on display. Many films by other German emigres––including Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble in Paradise, Lady Windermere’s Fan), Josef von Sternberg (Blonde Venus), Michael Curtiz (Captain Blood), and Douglas Sirk (There’s Always Tomorrow)––were also presented, and in one case, explicitly anti-Nazi. Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt has an ostentatious scenario, following a big-game hunter who sneaks into Germany to kill Adolf Hitler, that is lent credence by the threats following his failed attempt. This particular figure may be fantastic, but the machine constructed to defeat him isn’t.

Cobra Woman

Even more credible is Anatole Litvak’s Confessions of a Nazi Spy from 1939. Litvak was born in Kiev, later moved to St. Petersburg as a teenager, and left to work in Berlin in the 1920s, seeking greater artistic opportunities. When Hitler came to power, he fled first to France, then Hollywood. Nazi Spy was based on events from 1938, including Nazi meetings in the U.S. and the FBI’s pursuit of a German spy. It was the first explicitly anti-Nazi film from a major studio; even by its May release, Germany had not yet invaded Poland. It was a considerable risk for both the studio and its players––many in its cast had escaped Germany, but appeared uncredited to prevent retaliation against family members still living there. Watching it in a modern context, I was struck by an urgency far beyond its many contemporaneous procedurals that tend towards the languid in their depiction of routine; Nazi Spy is a thrilling chase film filled with distinct characters and a desperation to make its voice heard.

Another sort of propagandistic tack is taken in H.C. Potter’s 1947 feature The Farmer’s Daughter, shown on explosive nitrate first thing in the morning (the best part of waking up is fire-safety instructions). Loretta Young plays a Swedish immigrant who journeys from farm to city to study nursing, but along the way loses her money and has to work as a maid to a congressman (Joseph Cotten). Turns out she has quite a knack for politics herself, and goes on to run for a seat herself. Its original title, Katie for Congress, more fervently put this at the center, but the spirit of it remains in the film, a last-ditch effort to remind America of the immigrant-driven socialist movement that pulled them through the Great Depression before capitalism would conquer all. An outsider type does similar good in Tammy and the Bachelor, where Debbie Reynolds’ swamp-raised title character finds herself navigating polite society and pining for a strapping young Leslie Nielsen while teaching his stuck-up parents a thing or two about plain talk.

I saw two films that flipped the theme––Hollywood goes to the world––and proved that when America receives outsiders, we flourish, but when we assert ourselves elsewhere, everyone suffers. 1962’s Mutiny on the Bounty (shown on spectacular 70mm) is a classic tale of hubris at multiple stages, a zealous captain’s overreach quickly countered by the pride of the one man who could stand up to him and (almost) get away with it. That they manage not to destroy Tahiti in the process is but good fortune. Morocco (and the culture of good taste) fares less well in Elaine May’s landmark Ishtar, in which two bumbling singers stumble into a CIA-driven conflict and ruin everything. That played as part of a tribute to songwriter Paul Williams, who appeared in person for an extremely lively Q&A. Beyond their thematic ties, the two films shared poor responses in their times—each directly countered by the festival audience’s warm reception. At every TCM Fest, the world does indeed come to Hollywood to remind us how much fun it can all be.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Dead Man’s Wire (Gus Van Sant)

Gus Van Sant returns with Dead Man’s Wire, a movie shot in the same late-70s hues as Kelly Reichardt’s recent gem The Mastermind, and likewise concerned with unlawful men and the paradox of a decent criminal. Van Sant’s movie, however, is far more willing to deliver on genre tropes than Reichardt’s marvelous subversion. Bill Skarsgård eats great swathes of scenery as the very real Tony Kiritsis, a man who kidnapped his mortgage broker in 1977 after failing to make payment on a potentially lucrative plot of land. Van Sant imagines this tale in a way that echoes Dog Day Afternoon: an unhinged and stranger-than-fiction fable about good intentions gone wrong. It’s kind of a hoot. – Rory O. (full review)

Where to Stream: Netflix

Fuze (David Mackenzie)

David Mackenzie gets the opening credits out of the way as soon as we sit down to watch his latest film Fuze. A majority of the 98 minutes which follow are akin to a feature-length cold open surging at breakneck speed to its own climax. When the discovery of a WWII ordinance during construction in a residential English community sends everyone running around, it takes half that time before there’s even a brief pause in the action. – Jared M. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Kontinental ‘25 (Radu Jude)

“The id grows tedious,” art critic Jackson Arn wrote recently, “when left to speak too freely.” The Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude keeps his in check by grounding flourishes in pure mundanity. Near the end of Kontinental ’25, an ex-professor, Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), and her former student, Fred (Adonis Tanța), sit by an anti-communist resistance monument in Cluj and watch a horrific video of a drone attack on a Russian soldier. Having found the dead body of a man she evicted earlier that day, Orsolya, who now works as a bailiff, is looking to blow off some steam. They move uphill and Fred––whose delivery bag is plastered with Romanian flags, so as not to be confused with immigrant gig workers––serenades her. Next, they have sex in the bushes. The film up to this point has been awash with ideas and vaguely apocalyptic images: Roman ruins, a robot dog, a dinosaur park, zoomed-in footage of the Hindenburg disaster, a scene from Robert Aldrich’s atomic-era nightmare Kiss Me Deadly. This should all be a lot, but somehow Jude keeps it together. – Rory O. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

The Last Viking (Anders Thomas Jensen)

“The world is full of people,” states the anonymous narrator of Anders Thomas Jensen’s The Last Viking as an opening, hand-drawn animation tells a rather disturbing tale: there once was a viking prince who lost his arm in battle; his father, the king, decreed that everyone’s right arm also had to go. A quirky myth where disability becomes the norm sets the tone for what is now the sixth film directed by the Oscar-nominated Danish screenwriter, promising a wholesome arc to his typical brand of dark comedy. The animation is just a detour, the scene quickly shifting to the aftermath of a heist thriller with Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) stashing a bag of money in a locker and asking his shy younger brother Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen) to swallow the key. Minutes later, police sirens drown out the frightened screams of their sister Freja (Bodil Jørgensen from The Kingdom: Exodus) amidst the tons of clutter the three siblings call their home. – Savina P. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

The Moment (Aidan Zamiri)

The Moment finds Charli xcx at a unique moment in her career. After years toiling as a niche artist with a devoted fanbase, the album brat catapults her to global stardom. But with her brat summer tour over, what’s the next move? Charli’s team, which seems to be growing by the day, all seem to have separate answers. Does she try continuing brat summer indefinitely, cashing in at the risk of damaging the brand she spent so long cultivating? Some tell her she would be dumb not to. These evergreen artistic questions—LCD Soundsystem wrote a song about this—are pondered earnestly throughout The Moment. But as a proper mockumentary from a mostly British team, a bevy of jokes and inspired gags keep the proceedings from ever feeling too self-indulgent. – Caleb H. (full review)

Where to Stream: HBO Max

One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Like all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, his tenth feature One Battle After Another is a rich text. A deeply-layered narrative that’s as funny as it is moving, the movie jumps from the U.S.-Mexican border to Baktan Cross—and from drama to comedy and back again—with breakneck speed. The story itself is fairly straightforward, especially compared with the other entries in Anderson’s filmography: Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, an ex-revolutionary who must protect his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) after an old nemesis (Sean Penn) reappears. Read Cory Everett’s full feature.

Where to Stream: Prime Video

Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa)

When Donbass arrived in 2018, sandwiched between the start of the 2014 Russian-backed conflict in the titular eastern Ukrainian region and full-scale invasion of the country four years since its release, the world Sergei Loznitsa trained his camera on was a surreal, decaying wasteland. It’s not that the film was necessarily prophetic about the atrocities that would later spread across Ukraine. But it spoke to concerns that now feel especially of-the-moment, the same that have long served as a cornerstone of the Belarus-born, Kiev-raised director’s oeuvre. While Donbass was a work of fiction, its preoccupations with the way truth can be manipulated also haunt the archive-based documentaries for which Loznitsa is arguably best known. From Blockade (2006) to The Kiev Trial (2022), the director hasn’t exhumed USSR-era footage as a sort of time machine, but a means to reappropriate history from the regime’s official narratives. Which is why to salute Two Prosecutors as the filmmaker’s “return to fiction,” as the Cannes Film Festival did upon welcoming Loznitsa’s latest to its Official Competition, is both technically accurate and somehow misleading. – Leonardo G. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Two Women (Chloé Robichaud)

If, by and large, American cinema has taken a puritanical view on sex, leave it to our neighbors up north to craft a refreshingly frank, hilarious comedy of manners about seeking erotic pleasure when life has hit a dead end. Scripted by Catherine Léger from her own stage play Home Deliveries, itself inspired by Claude Fournier’s 1970 feature Two Women in Gold, Canadian director Chloé Robichaud’s Two Women is playful, raucous, and wholly heartfelt, a film not afraid to explore the dark corners of life when it comes to depression, infidelity, and the dullness that can set in during new motherhood. Its comedy-first approach comes with a comforting sense of tenderness and fleetness, shot on 35mm with a lively warmth by cinematographer Sara Mishara. – Jordan R. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Also New to Streaming

Apple TV

Propeller One-Way Night Coach

Fandor

Death Does Not Exist

Kino Film Collection

Legend of the Mountain
Macunaíma

Netflix

Ferrari

VOD

Desert Warrior
Over Your Dead Body

In a summer movie season severely lacking major comedies, David Wain and Ken Marino are here to save the day. Their latest collaboration, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, brings together Zoey Deutch, Jon Hamm, John Slattery, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Ben Wang, Joe Lo Truglio, and Sabrina Impacciatore. Ahead of a July 10 release from Sony Pictures Classics, the Sundance and Tribeca selection has now debuted its first trailer.

Here’s the synopsis: “Small town hairdresser Gail Daughtry is engaged to her devoted high school sweetheart, Tom. Her life takes a turn when a trip to a book signing leads to Tom meeting – and sleeping – with his “celebrity pass”. Reeling from the betrayal, Gail impulsively joins her friend Otto on a trip to Los Angeles, where a psychic convinces Gail that the only way to save her marriage is to “even the scales” with her own celebrity pass: Jon Hamm. Thus begins an epic journey through Tinseltown as Gail and Otto join forces with a talent agency assistant, a paparazzo, and actor John Slattery, all in the search for Hamm. Along the way, they collide with celebrities and are hunted by a group of Italian assassins as they get ever closer to finding the elusive star.”

Kent M. Wilhelm said in his review, “As the world continues fermenting its vile culture, the gang behind The State and Wet Hot American Summer is back to save you from the merciless onslaught of bad news. At least for 90 minutes. The dynamic duo of director David Wain and screenwriter Ken Marino are now in their third decade of bringing a unique brand of irreverent comedy to cinema. In the wake of their MTV sketch comedy show The State, Wain and co. premiered their cult hit Wet Hot American Summer at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. This year, they return once more with Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, a hilarious Hollywood farce in their signature absurdist voice.

See the trailer and poster below.

After getting much buzz on the festival circuit last year, the first-ever stop-motion feature film produced in Mexico is coming soon. Directed by Arturo Ambriz and Roy Ambriz, who worked under Guillermo del Toro, the fantasy tale I Am Frankelda will now arrive on Netflix beginning June 12. Ahead of the release, the new trailer and poster have arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “In 19th-century Mexico, Frankelda is a gifted writer whose dark tales are ignored and dismissed. Forced to suppress her voice, she refuses to give up, even as many try to silence her. But when she is thrust into her subconscious, the very monsters she created come to life. Guided by Herneval, a tormented prince trapped between dreams and nightmares, she must restore balance between fiction and reality before both realms collapse. Meanwhile, the sinister writer Procustes and his conspirators plot to seize control. As Frankelda and Herneval grow closer, their bond becomes both a strength and a curse. To rewrite their fate, she must confront a love that defies existence and reclaim her power as a storyteller—before dark forces consume her imagination and reveal horrors beyond her creation.”

Jared Mobarak said in his review, “More than the similarly mythologized Monsters, Inc., the first stop-motion feature produced in Mexico (courtesy of the Cinema Fantasma studio) recalls an old childhood favorite from the ’80s: Little Monsters. Just like that Fred Savage vehicle, writers-directors Los Hermanos Ambriz (Arturo and Roy) have created a means to connect reality to nightmare so a human might embrace the latter’s mischief, mystery, and terror that the former rejects. The 19th-century-set I Am Frankelda is thus born from a young woman’s mind (Mireya Mendoza’s Francisca Imelda) as a manifestation of her aspiration to become a horror writer––a dream met with major pushback from publishers, society, and family alike.”

See the trailer below.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film Forum
A centennial of Marilyn Monroe brings films by Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Henry Hathaway, and more.

Roxy Cinema
Tenet plays on 35mm Friday and Sunday while a a 16mm Peter Hutton program shows Saturday; a 20th-anniversary screening of The Favor is presented on Sunday.

IFC Center
4K restorations of Mulholland Dr., Terminator 2, Mysterious Skin screen daily, with Gregg Araki presenting the latter; Bound, Aliens, The Warriors, Pusher, True Lies, and The Blair Witch Project play late.

Nitehawk Prospect Park
Bicycle Thieves and a print of The Master play early Saturday and Sunday.

Museum of Modern Art
To coincide with the programming of Mr. Scorsese, Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity and Maggie’s Plan screen on 35mm.

Metrograph
What Time Is It There, The Road Warrior, Cujo, The Thing, and Dream of Light play on 35mm; Maybe If You Smile starts while Hotel Europa, The Dog Dies, Thrust It, and The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters continue.

Looking for what to see in theaters? Our feature, updated weekly, highlights our top recommendations for films currently in theaters, from new releases to restorations receiving a proper theatrical run.

While we already provide extensive monthly new-release recommendations and weekly streaming recommendations, as distributors’ roll-outs can vary, this is a one-stop list to share the essential films that may be on a screen near you.

Backrooms (Kane Parsons)

The opening five minutes serve as an ideal primer for anybody unfamiliar with Parsons’ Backrooms web series, and who maybe need a little extra convincing that a 20-year-old YouTuber has some juice: a found-footage recording of a researcher lost in the endless liminal space who gets chased by some unseen force of evil. Even when seen in the extremely low resolution of period-appropriate early-1990s camcorders, there’s something immediately disquieting about the uncanny production design (courtesy of Perkins’ regular collaborator Danny Vermette), where signs appear as their mirror image, various objects of furniture have melted into the floor, and the only living souls are seagulls. It’s an uncomfortable space to be in before the echoes of footsteps begin gathering speed behind our cameraman, and as this tape ends in offscreen devastation, we flash forward approximately ten days to meet Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a failed architect and owner of the fabulously named furniture store Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire. – Alistair R. (full review)

Blue Film (Elliot Tuttle)

“Provocation” has become watered-down in recent times. All it takes to provoke someone is tossing off a bunch of half-assed offensive statements or aiming your cannon at every divisive mainstream issue on a quest to push people’s buttons. Getting a reaction out of people is easy; actually making them consider things is another matter entirely. Blue Film, by that token, is provocative in the truest sense of the term. Elliott Tuttle’s film seeks to unsettle, question, and, yes, provoke you. But his masterful two-hander wants, more than anything, to extend understanding to both men at the center, asking you to see them as flawed humans with depth and complexity, even if we’d rather not. – Devan S. (full review)

Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari)

Blue Heron, Romvari’s feature debut, once again mines the director’s own history, following a Hungarian family of six as it settles in a nondescript stretch of suburbia outside Vancouver. The opening line, “I struggle now to remember much of my childhood,” belongs to the youngest child, Sasha (Eylul Guven), the film to her older stepbrother Jeremy (Edik Beddoes), a sullen, taciturn adolescent with a history of self-destructive behavior no one has learned how to deal with, much less address. Yet Romvari refuses to write him off as a troubled child. Yes, the kid is most certainly not all right, but he traverses Blue Heron as its most mysterious, elusive character, and that impenetrability is a measure of Romvari’s empathy. Rather than pathologizing his pain––a tendency his own parents succumb to––she invites us to sit with it and bask in his drawn-out silences, in the gaps between the words and imperfect memories that grown-up Sasha (Amy Zimmer), in the film’s second half, will try piecing together. – Leonardo G. (full review)

The Currents (Milagros Mumenthaler)

A selection at TIFF, NYFF, San Sebastian, and more, Milagros Mumenthaler’s acclaimed, mysterious character study The Currents is now in theaters. Jourdain Searles said in her NYFF review, “Writer-director Milagros Mumenthaler paints an intimate portrait of a woman trying to reckon with her fractured identity, trying not to fall into the grip of madness. Mumenthaler understands that motherhood requires an element of performance that reminds the mother that her life is no longer hers alone. Though the love for her daughter is still there inside, she cowers from it, preoccupied with inspecting the current shape of her life. In therapy, Lina expresses a fear of water’s power and the strength of a current that could wash her away. It’s as if she now knows the fragility of her existence, and that the confidence that once governed her was washed away when she jumped off the bridge. Despite the eccentricity of her fears, the emotions behind them are painfully relatable to any woman who feels that the inertia of her life has taken over.”

Forastera (Lucía Aleñar Iglesias)

It starts as a gag. Pepa (Núria Prims) rings to apologize to her mother and believes it is she who picks up the phone. Her teenage daughter Cata (Zoe Stein) plays along, pretending to answer as she assumes her grandmother would, until her mother finally catches on and says her name. When it happens again, however, Catalina (Marta Angelat) has died. But instead of telling the hairdresser this news, Cata once again pretends to be her grandmother to cancel the appointment and assure the woman that she’ll ring soon for a touch-up. – Jared M. (full review)

The Last One for the Road (Francesco Sossai)

It doesn’t take long to work out where you are in The Last One for the Road––for the backroads of Veneto, Italy, Francesco Sossai’s delightful new movie has the unmistakable specificity of a life spent there. What you instead start to wonder is the when of it all. The protagonists are a pair of rogues in their 50s––one of whom, Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla), wears a shirt the color of a tobacco stain, the other, Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano), a style of bushy mustache I’ve rarely seen onscreen since Bruno Ganz sported a similar one in The American Friend. Only after stumbling into a group of Gen Z students––the most visible dressed in the headgear of an Egyptian goddess––late at night along a Venice canal do we realize that our heroes exist in the here and now. If it wasn’t for their innate knack for catching last orders, regardless of the watering hole, you’d almost call them men out of time. – Rory O. (full review)

I Love Boosters (Boots Riley)

A parody of dialectical materialism (you’ll understand what this means when you see the film), superficial economies, and the cult of fast fashion, I Love Boosters—the second feature from rapper, activist, and filmmaker Boots Riley—proves a spirited and hilarious comedy in its first two acts before falling back on action-comedy tropes in its finale. Perhaps there’s no way to fully sustain the gonzo energy delivered in its set-up, which initially offers a sharp critique of capitalism as biting as Riley’s debut feature Sorry to Bother You. – John F. (full review)

Obsession (Curry Barker)

Even if he hadn’t recently landed the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, you’ve likely heard the name Curry Barker. He’s the latest in the recent spate of former sketch comedians/YouTubers turning to horror-directing with an online feature under his belt. Obsession—his theatrical debut—fully lives up to both his promise and the title. For whatever familiarity lies within it, there’s a strong seed just begging to flourish into something great. – Devan S. (full review)

Our Land (Nuestra Tierra) (Lucrecia Martel)

Before Our Land (Nuestra Tierra), there is a solemn parade of quiet production logos. This is often the case with films of political and historical importance. The stories that are the most vital are often the most difficult to tell and almost always arrive at a delay. In 2018, a local landowner named Dario Amin and two retired police officers, Luis Gomez and Eduardo Sassi, were finally tried for the murder of Javier Chocobar, an elder member of the indigenous Chuchagasta community in northwest Argentina’s Tucumán Province. The events leading up to the murder, which occurred in October 2009, were caught on video. Yet it took 9 years for the Argentinian government to recognize the Chuchagasta community’s pleas for justice. – Jourdain S. (full review)

Pressure (Anthony Maras)

Can you make an engaging film about predicting the weather? Pressure, directed by Anthony Maras, answers this question in the affirmative. Set mere days before D-Day is set to commence, General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) needs an accurate forecast to ensure the operation will go as planned. The film’s stark opening minutes portray the vicious aftermath of Operation Tiger, a D-Day training exercise gone horribly wrong only months earlier. Hundreds of American soldiers were killed by friendly fire after some deadly miscommunication. We find Eisenhower steadfast but shaken, surrounded by British generals who believe they can do a better job leading the Allied Expeditionary Force (AEF) to victory. Damian Lewis represents this feeling in his outsized portrayal of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, commander of all D-Day land forces. – Dan M. (full review)

Silent Friend (Ildikó Enyedi)

Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi is best known for her 2017 Golden Bear-winning film On Body and Soul, where an unlikely pair of characters met in a dream and, as deer, fell in love. This remarkably tender Berlinale winner is, in many ways, the precursor to Enyedi’s newest film, notwithstanding the fact that in-between came The Story of My Wife (2021), a period drama of an obsessive love affair starring Léa Seydoux. Not to say the latter is irrelevant: the English-language debut allowed Enyedi to expand the details of her singular worlds beyond language and cement herself as a European auteur to whom actors flock. While Silent Friend stars the indomitable Tony Leung (and also Seydoux in a small role), the real star of this film is a ginkgo tree. If On Body and Soul was fauna, Silent Friend is flora. – Savina P. (full review)

Two Seasons, Two Strangers (Sho Miyake)

Two Seasons is the third in a wonderful recent run by Miyake, joining Small, Slow But Steady (2022) and All The Long Nights (2024). With each he has shown a remarkable ability for mixing porcelain-like levels of craft and detail with stories of comparatively messy human compassion––a cinematic mix that never fails to delight. Despite racking up some awards for those films, his work plays at the kind of modest register that often keeps filmmakers of his ilk relatively below-the-radar or, at the very least, just shy of name recognition. Winning the Leopard might be the push that elevates him to auteur status and perhaps (with respect to Locarno) the biggest of the big competitions, where I feel he belongs. – Rory O. (full review)

With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari)

While there are no documentaries in the world that can give true justice to the pain experienced by the Palestinian people, Kamal Aljafari’s With Hasan in Gaza is one of the most poetic and profound to arrive thus far. Rory O’Connor said in his review, “The new documentary With Hasan in Gaza––a poignant, meditative portrait of a city now fighting for its life––works as both a travelogue and time machine. In 2001, the filmmaker Kamal Aljafari journeyed to Palestine in the hopes of finding Adder Rahim, a friend he made while serving seven months in the juvenile section of Israel’s Naqab Desert prison when he was 17 years old. During filming, Aljafari met Hasan, a guide who agreed to drive him the length of the country, down its coastal strip, during which time the director documented what he saw: children playing, rows of cars and buildings, bustling city streets.”

More Films Now Playing in Theaters

• In the Grey
• The Last Viking
• Magic Hour
• Power Ballad
• Renoir
• Tuner
• The Wizard of the Kremlin

Read all reviews here. For our NYC-specific repertory round-ups, including many films that will tour the country, bookmark NYC Weekend Watch.

Following Ida and Cold War, Paweł Pawlikowski returned to Cannes this month with Fatherland, a drama starring Sandra Hüller and Hanns Zischler, which earned him a Best Director prize. Ahead of a fall release from MUBI, the first trailer and poster have now arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “FATHERLAND centers on the relationship between the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller) – actress, writer and rally driver. Set at the height of the Cold War, father and daughter embark on a challenging and emotional road trip in a black Buick taking them across a Germany in ruins – from US dominated Frankfurt to Soviet controlled Weimar. For the first time since the war, Mann returns to his native Germany, having made the difficult decision to flee for the safety of the US.”

Luke Hicks said in his review, “For how accessible Pawlikowski’s previous two features were, Fatherland feels like it’s made by someone else. The trademark black-and-white cinematography (so elegant it almost feels marbled) from regular collaborator Łukasz Żal points to Pawlikowski, as does the tight 82-minute runtime and squarish, 1.37:1 aspect ratio. In a way, Fatherland is also the third in what amounts to a World War II trilogy. But the subject, flow, and approachability combine for the coming of a new Pawlikowski in heady academic form—an auteur in the shape of a wizened professor, much like Mann.”

See the trailer and poster below.

A slippery character study and staggering sensory experience, Milagros Mumenthaler’s The Currents was one of my favorite discoveries of last year’s New York Film Festival. It opens on an Argentinian designer named Lina (Isabel Aimé González Sola), who survives a leap off a bridge while visiting Switzerland, and her life is altered as the pressures of marriage, motherhood, and career weigh down on her psyche. Exploring all these topics with an elusive, subtle touch, Mumenthaler’s portrait of such a spiral rewards repeat viewings.

As Jourdain Searles said in her NYFF review, “Writer-director Milagros Mumenthaler paints an intimate portrait of a woman trying to reckon with her fractured identity, trying not to fall into the grip of madness. Mumenthaler understands that motherhood requires an element of performance that reminds the mother that her life is no longer hers alone.”

Ahead of The Currents‘ U.S. opening, I had a brief chat with the Argentinian director, who was raised in Switzerland, about crafting her TIFF and NYFF selection, being guided by emotion, what her scripts look like, the pressures of motherhood, the intricate sound design, and more.

The Film Stage: The Currents is guided by emotion more than narrative, placing the viewer in a very specific psychological headspace. Can you talk about this approach to storytelling?

Milagros Mumenthaler: Generally, I am set off by an image, a sensory image, an image charged with emotion. And so that image is the starting point, and then that image gives me the push to write. And yes: the story, the narrative, maybe comes into a second place. So in those emotional images, the story remains, the story is there, but there’s always this game, this play. There’s a play between the images and what’s being told, narrated. And then we work on linking these elements into a chain. But I would say that during the editing process, during the montage, I think these sensory images that I was telling you about, they prevail. One more thing that is also important: those emotional images, they come from a character. So that character carries those emotions, and I have that character very well thought out since the very beginning.

Milagros Mumenthaler. Photo by Sean DiSerio, courtesy of Film at Lincoln Center.

What does your script-writing process look like? Because so much of the movie is about these things you can’t put into words, per se, with striking imagery and use of close-ups. Does it look like a conventional script, or is it something that’s more expressive?

Well, like I was saying before, it’s a fusion between the narrative and the images. I would say the script is a solid, ironclad script—very conventional, very descriptive. For example, when you were talking about close-ups, yes, the size of the shot will be written out. And also, we write what sound, right? So, you know, [I write] “steps are being heard”––very, very descriptive, especially for the things that are outside the shot. So it is very important to have a very well-written script because a well-written script is what’s going to help you to get funding. It is very important to have an ironclad, very consistent, solid script. And whenever I talk to my DP or the art director or my actors, the script is the most solid tool they have to work with.

I saw the film at NYFF almost back-to-back with If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and both vividly explore these pressures of motherhood and losing oneself in a certain psychological state. Have you seen that film? And were you influenced by any other work exploring these issues that often go overlooked in society?

Honestly, I did not see that movie, but yes: with The Currents, even though motherhood is not a plot line or a main [part of the film], it is there, it is present, maybe on a second [layer]. And because you have this character, and if this character were not a mother, then it would be a very different story. It is precisely the fact that she is a mother, that she has a daughter, that puts her in check. So I think the film talks about this relationship with her own mother. There is a story of abandonment from her own mother and she does not want to repeat the same with her own daughter. And there is not a single movie that I can say that it was like an inspiration; I wouldn’t be able to tell you.

But talking about motherhood for all of us who are moms, we have this lived experience that is very near and dear to us. And yes: motherhood is the greatest act of love, but at the same time it means that you are not the center anymore. You move away from the center and you take a different place. So I have seen this shift; I have noticed this difference between the people who are mothers and the people who aren’t. It’s just different. Your priorities change, and I think that this creates tension and conflict. And in the process of making this movie, it took many years—several years—and throughout that time I submerged myself; I soaked myself in literature, and especially books written by women about women. So I think there’s a huge baggage or identification—I feel identified with these stories of women and the point of view of the female writers.

The sound design is extremely important, especially in the opening, which is mostly wordless. What was your approach to the aural landscape and getting those details right to convey the character’s psychological headspace?

You know, at first I hadn’t realized that the first seven minutes of the movie go without dialogue. But since the very first shot, it’s told from Lina’s subjective point of view. The sounds are at the beginning; they’re very subtle. It’s almost like a fan going with this metallic dirt to it. Both the sound and the image are thought of like it’s her perception: what she is listening to, what she is hearing, where she chooses to pay attention both in her gaze and the way she wants to be seen. So from the very beginning, we were constantly trying to portray her subjectivity. We’re in this very old city and there are barely any sounds. And this is thought out in a way to convey her perception of this city, not the reality. If I have to imagine Lina’s internal state, I would think of an altered state. I would think there’s a storm inside of her, and it’s very noisy. So how do you portray those internal strong sensations? How do you translate that to sound?

 I’ll give you an example with the lighthouse. In the script it said, “the sound of the beam of light.” And well, how do you make that sound, because a lighthouse does not make a sound? So we worked a lot on that sound, the sound of the beam of light. How would it sound like? So I thought it should sound like a fairy tale, and that’s why we added little bells to it. And also, Lina is in this active drift state, and I think that also invites a certain play and enjoyment to it.

You were born in Argentina but raised in Switzerland, and you set the film in both places. What elements of the film may speak to viewers who know more about the history or societal constraints of those places? 

Well, you know, the Switzerland part is just a few minutes. But I think that the character going through a crisis—that’s a universal character that anyone can identify with. This character has a body, and this body speaks, and it puts her in danger. And also in Switzerland, this character lives through a very particular moment, a very extreme moment, and I think there was somewhat of a surprise [for viewers that know Switzerland] that this was shot in an old city. It was a way of portraying the old city—well, at least those were some of the comments that I got—and then in Argentina, it seems like it was more understood, or there was a bigger understanding of this huge city. I think some people identify with the oppression that Lina feels. She goes through this oppressed state. In a way it has to do with the city that she lives in—the city takes on a certain importance throughout the movie—and I think once the movie was done, I could see, especially some women, who were somewhat emotional because I think they felt seen.

The Currents opens in limited release on Friday, May 26.

It starts as a gag. Pepa (Núria Prims) rings to apologize to her mother and believes it is she who picks up the phone. Her teenage daughter Cata (Zoe Stein) plays along, pretending to answer as she assumes her grandmother would, until her mother finally catches on and says her name. When it happens again, however, Catalina (Marta Angelat) has died. But instead of telling the hairdresser this news, Cata once again pretends to be her grandmother to cancel the appointment and assure the woman that she’ll ring soon for a touch-up.

Why? Because Cata isn’t ready to let her grandmother go. The two were very close thanks to summers spent at her beach house in Mallorca. They share the same name and people constantly tell her how much they look alike. It’s such a problem that Pepa requests she not wear any of Catalina’s clothes around the property just in case her grandfather Tomeu (Lluís Homar) sees her. He’s taking this tragedy very hard—talking about how her spirit remains. Catching a glimpse of Cata in one of his wife’s dresses might just confuse him more.

What Pepa doesn’t realize, though, is that Cata needs that confusion to prevent herself from having to deal with reality. She’s the one who found her grandmother face down on the stone stairs. She’s the one enduring a PTSD episode when seeing a drunk co-ed lying on the sand. If Cata can trick her grandfather into acting as though she is Catalina, then the rest of this summer can continue like normal. There’s even a sense of healing in the make-believe as far as finally getting Tomeu out of the house, but one of them must eventually wake up.

Lucía Aleñar Iglesias’ Forastera follows Cata wading through this new reality amidst the backdrop of what had been a consequence-free vacation with Swedish tourist Max (Nonni Ardal Hammarström) and her usual antics with her grandparents. Suddenly, grandma is gone, mom has arrived, and the arguments and emotions she and her younger sister Eva used to ignore become so unbearable that Cata starts playing matriarch just to stay sane. She’s correct in many instances, too—enough that her elders stop demanding she watch her tone.

Because it’s hard on them all. None of them quite understand what they should feel, since they are often too busy worrying about how everyone else feels. Tomeu wants to sulk in the present day’s malaise. Pepa wants to take control and make plans for the future. And Cata hopes to stop time and return to the past. Tensions rise as a result of these contrasts and they each begin to resent the other’s perspective rather than sit down and listen. If this family has a singular genetic trait, it would be stubbornness.

What makes the drama truly captivating, though, is that Cata’s need to allow herself to be possessed by her grandmother’s spirit isn’t solely driven by intent. Yes, she puts herself into situations that would make any mother worry about boundaries with a grieving man, but there is both a sweetness to many moments and an inability to prevent them. Cata doesn’t seek out the exact traumatic experience that made it so Catalina never swam in the Mediterranean again. It simply finds her with an identical dose of senseless brutality.

Forastera is thus very much a coming-of-age story, despite its unconventional trigger through the sorrow of death. By embodying her grandmother, Cata seemingly matures overnight to no longer let her grandfather’s chauvinism or her mother’s selfishness stand. She takes the role of steward once Pepa hires a caretaker to help around the house and rejects the role of lustful teen wasting time kissing boys and drinking alcohol. This summer becomes a key turning point for Cata to recognize the preciousness of life and complexities of love.

It’s a beautifully shot film, with exotic vistas augmented by the terrace’s recently installed glass railings for an unencumbered view of the sea. Iglesias infuses a couple of scenes with imaginative visuals that allow room for some supernatural manifestations via ants on the ceiling and reflective ghosts made of light. And the performances all teeter on the edge of coming undone so the tiniest bit of pushback can jog them awake to their own poor behavior. The distance between frustration and contrition is never far.

Homar wonderfully portrays Tomeu’s grief with a desire for isolation he knows isn’t healthy. It’s why he needs Cata’s game to wean him off the black hole of despair that comes from an unexpected death. She, knowingly or not, holds his hand to guide him past it, and in so doing, Stein provides Cata the strength to do too much and the space to accept when it’s gone too far. It’s a fantastic breakthrough role of layered emotions as she becomes a vessel for a ghost born from her grandmother’s memory and love that remains within.

Forastera opens in theaters on Friday, May 29.

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2025 TIFF coverage. The film opens in theaters on May 29.

The new documentary With Hasan in Gaza––a poignant, meditative portrait of a city now fighting for its life––works as both a travelogue and time machine. In 2001, the filmmaker Kamal Aljafari journeyed to Palestine in the hopes of finding Adder Rahim, a friend he made while serving seven months in the juvenile section of Israel’s Naqab Desert prison when he was 17 years old. During filming, Aljafari met Hasan, a guide who agreed to drive him the length of the country, down its coastal strip, during which time the director documented what he saw: children playing, rows of cars and buildings, bustling city streets.

These images are collected here as a recollection and document, a work that echoes the best travelogue films in its admirable restraint and transportive powers (Chantal Akerman’s From the East, as always, comes to mind) while carrying the significance of evidence. Hasan offers some of the most vital images I’ve seen recently of a time when our current reality was still relatively inconceivable. Aljafari’s movie is also a poem about memory, coming about serendipitously when he found three MiniDV tapes in his archives––footage he had either thought lost or had largely forgotten. Aljafari eventually covered the story of his imprisonment in his 2006 film The Roof. For Hasan in Gaza, he repurposes the footage as a kind of found art.

One of Aljafari’s most affecting choices is to present the footage with no additional material. There is no mention of the current situation in Gaza nor the tens of thousands who have been slaughtered by the Israeli military in the last two years, but those lives of course linger just outside the frame. Instead, via onscreen text, the director offers recollections of his time in prison––the taste of bread and sugar, watching the Berlin wall fall on TV, the Red Cross worker who gave him a cigarette and book by Franz Fanon. These thoughts play over familiar scenes of daily life: men playing cards and watching basketball, bakers preparing flatbread, busy street traders. In-between, whether witnessing mortar fire or conversing with locals––some of whom are eager to tell their story, some of whom are more anxious about the idea––Aljafari’s film confronts the Israeli aggression of an earlier time.

To call With Hasan in Gaza a personal work would be an understatement, but its message is as clear as it is universal. At time of writing, the film is set to play at 35 international festivals in the coming months; we can only hope there’s still time for it not to be a eulogy. Aljafari’s one direct flourish to suggest the political present comes through Simon Fisher Turner’s score, which blends nostalgic Persian pop music with atonal sounds that only occasionally skew towards the ominous. The composer is best-known for his work on Derek Jarman’s Carravagio and Blue, but I couldn’t help noting echoes of Mica Levi’s jagged work on The Zone of Interest here—and similar to Glazer’s, this is a film that says what needs to be said by saying nothing at all.

With Hasan in Gaza screened at TIFF 2025.

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2026 Sundance coverage. The film opens in theaters on May 29.

“Will your oceans be made of our glaciers?” Icelandic poet Andri Snær Magnason asks in the narration that plays over Time and Water, the beautiful new documentary from Fire of Love director Sara Dosa. Driven by Magnason’s family archives and some truly captivating footage of glaciers, it’s a melancholic ode to a world we are losing more and more of each day. Iceland is a nearly treeless country. It sits on tectonic plates that are pulling apart, resulting in an abundance of lava that prevents soil from getting to the depths needed for trees to grow in any quick way. There were once many trees, but the Vikings cut them all down for their ships and the like over a thousand years ago. It’s a place where some still believe in magic, which the breathtaking vistas make easy to understand why.

Iceland is full of rich history for which its people are very proud. The glaciers are a key part of that history, and they are melting at an exponential rate, thanks to climate change. This is not new information, though the speed at which they’re disappearing is constantly increasing and alarming. Time and Water is framed as a time capsule to be discovered by whoever survives the great, tragic changes to come. Dosa is a master of tone in the documentary space. It’s one of the key elements of her last documentary Fire of Love, a romance surrounded by dangerous volcanoes that earned an Oscar nomination a few years ago.

There is so much joy and sadness at the same time in Time and Water. Memories of family underlined by those who are no longer there. At one point, Magnason speaks of the passing of a relative as though that person just disappeared. For so long, he was there—”and then, he’s gone.” Consider this against his observation of a melting glacier: “I often think about the unsettling quiet of a glacier’s death.” This link between generations of family and the nature we’ve taken for granted is both obvious and poignant. We’re treated to beautiful Icelandic hymns and a lovely, understated score from composer Dan Deacon. Patient frames show us living glaciers, offering every possible shade of blue (the bluer the ice, the longer it’s been alive, we are told).

Photos and video from the past remind us of what was and what will never be again. Yet Time and Water often feels like a celebration, a reminder of what’s right in front of us. Whether it be glaciers or grandmas or flowers or children, there is love somewhere nearby. In lesser hands, this all may play a bit cloying. Luckily, Dosa is deft in her ability. Magnason’s words and images play with each other perfectly, building a bittersweet gnawing at the heart that will resonate with most everybody. Despite its lost memories and lost glaciers and change ecosystems, there is so much optimism here. Life goes on, after all. Until it doesn’t.

Time and Water premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.