World Cinema

• Denmark
• 2021
• 86min

In the late 19th century, life for fourteen-year-old Lise is full of anticipation for the next chapter of her life at school. She looks forward to leaving the farm where she grew up, and with it, her younger siblings. But as night...

• Toronto International Film Festival in Discovery

New Currents

• Iran
• 2021
• 77min

Asteroid follows Ebrahim, a poor boy who works all day to care for his mother and younger siblings, and discovers a saintly aura in his efforts. A film that joins a long line of outstanding Iranian films about children, alongside ...

World Cinema

• Romania/Luxembourg/Czech Republic/Croatia
• 2021
• 106min

Radu Jude is one of the most prominent figures in Romanian cinema, and the latest addition to his esteemed filmography is Bad Luck Banging and Loony Porn, winner of the 2021 Berlinale Golden Bear. True to its provocative and sardo...

• Golden Bear at Berlin International Film Festival

A Window on Asian Cinema

• Iran/France
• 2021
• 106min

When her husband is executed, the widow pleads that her husband was unjustly killed. The court eventually admits that her husband was mistakenly sentenced to death but indifferently says, "We’re very sorry. It was after all, god’s...

• Audience Award at Berlin International Film Festival in Competition

Open Cinema

• France/Belgium/Netherlands
• 2021
• 131min

What if Paul Verhoeven, the director of Basic Instinct (1992), Showgirls (1995), Starship Troopers (1997), Black Book (2006), and Elle (2016), adapts the novel Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (1987), ...

• Cannes Film Festival In Competition

Icons

• France/Belgium/Germany/Sweden/Mexico
• 2021
• 113min

This film begins with an American couple who arrives on Faro, a small island in Sweden where the legendary director Ingmar Bergman was inspired to build a house and shoot numerous masterpieces. Filmmakers Chris (Vicky Krieps) and ...

• Cannes Film Festival In Competition

Special Program in Focus

• China
• 2021
• 110min

From Uniform (2003) and Night Train (2007) to Black Coal, Thin Ice, Diao Yinan has drawn portraits of pitiable characters flung in front of the contradictions of life under the guise of crime thrillers. The reason we might see his...

• Golden Bear at Berlin International Film Festival

Special Program in Focus

• Iran
• 2021
• 85min

The memorable opening sequence shows a group of men each with a black chalkboard on his back. The blackboards, which should be attached to classroom walls, become the most dynamic subject in this film, moving across the Iran-Iraq ...

• Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival

World Cinema

• United States
• 2021
• 117min

Blue Bayou, the latest project by award-winning writer/director Justin Chon, is the timely story of an American family fighting for their future. Chon plays Antonio LeBlanc, a Korean adoptee raised in a small town in the Louisiana...

• Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard

World Cinema

• Poland
• 2021
• 122min

Teenager Adam lives with his mother in Poland, and longs for his father who’s gone missing following World War II. When the secret police arrive and torment his mother, he flees into a theater screening Godard’s Contempt (1963) an...