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Things get weird in Amalia Ulman’s kaleidoscopic film, a colorful comedy of errors and an imaginative send-up of millennial media. Starring Simon Rex and Chloë Sevigny, this story of a frantic search for an internet sensation is electrified by wit, subversion, and distinctively fluorescent style.

Now streaming exclusively in the US, UK, Canada and Ireland. A MUBI Release.

Mocking contemporary city life, this swift, sharp comedy from rising-star director Daniel Soares earned a special mention at Cannes. Toggling between sleek, shiny new buildings and raging scenes of destruction, these vignettes regard the Portuguese housing crisis with dark and blazing wit.

Now streaming exclusively in many countries.

A whirlwind mix of DV tapes and 16mm stock, Haley Elizabeth Anderson’s singular debut transforms the concrete jungle of New York into a delicate tapestry of emotions. Charting the four seasons of a magnetic young woman unsettled by change, Tendaberry composes an urban symphony in the key of love.

Now streaming exclusively in many territories here.

Winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes, Miguel Gomes’s transcendent travelogue sets sail for spellbinding horizons, where romance and adventure thrillingly entwine. Guided by the capricious will of the heart, this epic tale of love on the run is a movable feast for the mind and the senses.

Now streaming exclusively in many territories. A MUBI Release.

Returning to the whimsical love for fashion that shone in CAPRICE, Joanna Hogg finds an improbable protagonist in a designer handbag in this short film. Complemented by lavishly tactile, immersive imagery, the luxury item speaks with wry humor not only to the fickleness of trends, but fate itself.

Now streaming exclusively and (almost) globally.

Awarded at Sundance and SXSW, this orgiastic stop-motion short is a comic and seriously randy vision of primal urges flying in the face of propriety. Unforgettable images of non-human wooing and intimacy capture the full force of pleasure and desire, marking Phoebe Jane Hart as a director to watch.

Now streaming exclusively and (almost) globally.

Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan are arch enemies in this gripping revenge thriller, in which Ireland’s rugged landscapes echo inner torment. Pulling apart the western trope of the strong, silent type, Christopher Andrews’s hard-hitting debut feature reveals old traumas behind fresh wounds.

Now streaming in the US, UK, Latin America, Canada, Ireland, Turkey and Benelux. A MUBI Release.

Previously disrupted by the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, Raúl Ruiz's lost project was completed by Valeria Sarmiento and released on the 50th anniversary of this harrowing event. Probing the limits of revolutionary thoughts, this sardonic, hybrid film bears witness to the embers of left-wing idealism.

Now streaming in many territories, exclusively on MUBI.

Filmed on the fabled Greek island of Hydra, Paweł Pawlikowski’s playful, virtuosic short is a modern myth that dazzles in dynamic black and white. Adding flashes of high fashion to shades of early cinema, model and actor Małgosia Bela strikes the poses of a fearless muse with chameleonic style.

Now streaming exclusively (almost) globally.

After collaborating with fashion icon Virgil Abloh, rising star Djiby Kebe muses on the transactional realm of art for his astute debut short. Smudged with wavering feelings of unease, L’AVANCE adds color to the existential dilemmas of an African diasporic painter with vitality and novel style.

Now streaming exclusively and (almost) globally.

Swapping the tumult of a locked-down world for the anarchic digital hinterlands of gaming’s very own Wild West, this uproarious documentary yanks Shakespeare into the 21st century. Winner of the Grand Jury Award at SXSW, GRAND THEFT HAMLET finds community and creativity in the unlikeliest of places.

Now streaming (almost) globally. A MUBI Release.

Starring an astonishing Daniel Craig as a lovestruck sensualist, Luca Guadagnino’s audacious adaptation of William Burroughs’s infamous novel is suffused with romantic longing. Under the sway of infatuation’s exquisite pains and entrancing pleasures, QUEER travels to the mesmerizing ends of love.

Now streaming in India, Ireland, , Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, Netherlands, Italy and the United Kingdom, exclusively on MUBI.

Risking ellipses and question marks, Canadian director Kazik Radwanski traces the ambiguous forms that romance can take with MATT AND MARA. Through the surprises and genuine laughs of improvisation, the talented leads articulate a rare, real attraction for which there are, ordinarily, only clichés.

Now streaming exclusively on MUBI in many territories.

An Oscar®-nominated marvel of exquisite empathy, Magnus von Horn’s masterful vision of early 20th-century Denmark searches for tenderness and morality under fraught circumstances. Drawing on chilling true events that continue to resonate, this gothic parable is a visceral reckoning from the past.

Now streaming exclusively on MUBI in many territories. A MUBI Release.

Taking inspiration from an infamous runaway hippo, this shapeshifting adventure won Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlinale. Traveling through timelines, planes of consciousness, and dazzlingly diverse forms of experimentation, Pepe summons specters of violence with eclectic, mystical style.

Now streaming exclusively in many countries.

One of the most striking debuts in recent memory, Dea Kulumbegashvili’s feature marks the revelation of an exciting new voice in cinema. Shot in luminous 35mm long takes that boldly evoke isolation and longing, it tells a profound story of a woman’s resilience facing communal hostility and violence.

Now streaming exclusively in many territories. A MUBI Release.

Golden Globe award winner Demi Moore stars in THE SUBSTANCE.

Now streaming in many countries. A MUBI Release.

Here’s where it all started for Luca Guadagnino. The Italian director’s experimental debut film is a surreal faux-documentary on a mysterious murder. It stars the one-and-only Tilda Swinton, who would become one of the auteur’s frequent collaborators.

Now streaming in many countries.

One of the earliest surviving works of African-American filmmaking, Oscar Micheaux’s remarkable drama offers a vivid tapestry of the intricacies of the Black experience. A pioneering independent director, Micheaux’s mesmerizing vision acts as a gut-punching indictment of systemic racism in America.

Now streaming in many countries.

Marking her long-awaited return to fiction filmmaking, Andrea Arnold’s tender and surprising coming-of-age fable heralds an astounding debut from newcomer Nykiya Adams. Buoyed by spirited turns from Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, Bird leaps from overlooked fringes of life toward sky-high dreams.

Exclusively streaming on MUBI in the US, the UK, Turkey, Ireland, and Canada. A MUBI Release.

Enchanted by a child’s curious gaze, An Urban Allegory is quintessential Alice Rohrwacher. Together with street artist JR, the supernal filmmaker assembles a kaleidoscopically playful vision of art, tracing how it moves through this stage of magical light and alluring shadow we call the world.

Now streaming exclusively and (almost) globally here.

Winner of the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlinale, Mati Diop’s dynamic film brings a dazzling sense of imagination to vital issues of self-determination and restitution. Amplifying voices from beyond the walls of international museums, this spellbinding work redefines the spaces of culture and art.

Now streaming exclusively in the US, UK, Ireland, Latin America, , Turkey, Italy, India, Canada & more. A MUBI Release.

Camaraderie and fleeting joys soften harsh realities in DON'T LET THEM SHOOT THE KITE, which reemerges as a Turkish classic in this fresh 4K restoration. Capturing the profound resilience of its characters through a child’s tender gaze, Tunç Başaran’s prizewinner is a testament to enduring spirit.

Now streaming exclusively and (almost) globally.

Witches are figures of solace in this intimate documentary, which unravels the social stigmas that women have endured across centuries. Between affecting interviews and vividly illustrative film clips, Elizabeth Sankey concocts a potion that brims with courage, comion, and healing insight.

Now streaming exclusively in many countries.

Temptation knocks at commitment’s door with sounds of men, fire, and dancing in this heady early work from Julie Dash. Dynamic use of montage contrasts an ascetic life with the seductive pleasures of our persistent flesh, as the titular sister narrates her dilemma in mesmerizing, poetic voice-over.

Now streaming in many territories as part of our collection "Big Names Short Films."

Winner of Best Short Film at the Berlinale, Francisco Lezama’s idiosyncratic comedy sees life for what it is: absurd and mundane, with sporadic moments of serendipity. Twisting together diverse modern phenomena—dating apps, global finance—AN ODD TURN is alive to the present in all its surprises.

Now streaming exclusively in many territories.

No stranger to the sensual and medical contours of the body, horror icon David Cronenberg turns to 18th-century wax cadavers as his new muses for this poetic short. Sonically caressed by a chorus of pleasurable sighs, these anatomical Venuses are both alluring and uncanny in their voluptuousness.

Now streaming exclusively in many countries.

With sharp wit and cathartic intensity, Coralie Fargeat turns toxic beauty culture inside out in her mind-blowing latest feature. Powered by a career-best performance from Demi Moore, THE SUBSTANCE fearlessly bulldozes its way into the midnight-movie pantheon and the feminist canon.

Now streaming exclusively in the US, UK, Latin America, , Turkey, Canada, India and more. A MUBI Release.

As if growing pains aren’t confusing enough, the conundrums of life as a vampire add more chaos to the mix in Ariane Louis-Seize’s delightfully deadpan comedy. Approaching the gloom of death with gentle humor, this offbeat tale of love and friendship embraces the beauty of shared eccentricities.

Now streaming exclusively in the US, UK, Turkey, India, and Ireland.

This colossal work is William Kentridge’s generous invitation into his creative process. In each of the nine 30-minute episodes, the renowned artist welcomes the viewer not just into the studio itself, but into the intimacies of ideation.

Now streaming exclusively and globally. A MUBI Release.

Artist, designer, and filmmaker Susanne Deeken draws on our intimate associations with the home for this surreal trip into a haunted soul. Evocative of both children’s drawings and horror films, A PLACE WITHOUT FEAR uses analog and digital techniques to conjure a nightmarish vision all its own.

Now streaming exclusively in many territories.

In this inimitable cult classic starring a magnetic Lee Pace, singular filmmaker Tarsem crafts a magical love letter to the power of storytelling and the human imagination. Now restored in spectacular 4K, this visual feast of magnificent costumes and stunning locations rivals the wildest of dreams.

Now streaming exclusively and globally. A MUBI Release.

Weaponizing tropes to neo-feminist ends, Coralie Fargeat fires on all cylinders in this killer film. Adrenalized by the same fascination with transformation that sparks across THE SUBSTANCE, the provocateur filmmaker empowers her heroine to go from Barbie to badass with dangerous, delirious style.

Now streaming (almost) globally.

A future Paris sparkles with unnervingly beautiful people in Coralie Fargeat’s transfixing sci-fi short. Testing out a speculative self-optimization technology ten years ahead of THE SUBSTANCE, the French director won numerous awards for this electrifying descent into an image-obsessed society.

Now streaming (almost) globally.

In this mercurial queer film, both gritty and sumptuous, the nighttime is the right time to explore the porous borders of social convention. In underground spaces, from the lesbian nightclub to the porn theater, lovers and strangers live out their apparent contradictions under cover of darkness.

Now streaming (almost) globally.

Conjuring a claustrophobic vision of post-nuclear Poland, Piotr Szulkin lends his satirical eye to the weaponization of religion as a means of social control. A utilitarian triumph of ramshackle world-building, O-BI, O-BA is a hallucinatory examination of apocalyptic anxieties in the atomic age.

Now streaming in many countries.

Following a celebrated performance piece about creative evolution, Zia Anger turns narrative cinema inside out with this meta-fiction, starring Odessa Young and Devon Ross. Transforming failure into rituals of rebirth, this poignant film captures the zeitgeist and comes straight from the heart.

Now streaming exclusively in most countries. A MUBI Release.

Shot across three continents—and divided in three parts interlinked in unexpected ways—Eduardo Williams’s enigmatic feature debut takes us on a visceral journey to explore the ominous hyper-connectivity of today’s world. One of the most accomplished and refreshing films of recent years.

Now streaming globally.

Director Levan Akin centres the vital spirit of Istanbul’s trans community in this poignant story of unlikely connection. With three exquisite performances that vividly transcend generational divides, Crossing is a defiant city symphony and a comionate tale of hope, identity, and forgiveness.

Now streaming exclusively. A MUBI Release.

Surfaces appear diamond-hard in this modern melodrama, but expensive looks can be deceiving. Gliding through white middle-class America with serene sadness, actor Dina Korzun is astonishing as a detached interloper in Ira Sachs’s masterful film of betrayal, heartache, and hushed ecstasy.

Newly restored in 4K and exclusively streaming (almost) globally.

A punk spirit pervades this endearingly DIY film, which gleefully blends animation, horror, and essay-film tropes into an unpredictable mix. Thrillingly inventive and bursting with hope, Bertrand Bonello addresses with poignancy and frankness the anxieties of a young generation facing an uncertain future.

Now streaming exclusively, and (almost) globally.

For his zany feature debut, Ernst De Geer mounts a biting satire of startup culture, where authenticity is just another branded product for sale. Wreaking havoc as a modern couple on the verge of chaos, stars Asta Kamma August and Herbert Nordrum channel millennial anxiety with terrifying accuracy.

Now streaming exclusively and (almost) globally.

us for the closing night of MUBI FEST Chicago.

Featuring a live performance by U.S. Girls, Jessica Hopper in conversation with Meg Remy of U.S. Girls, and a screening of Jim Henson’s LABYRINTH, starring David Bowie.

Get tickets now and learn more at mubifest.com/chicago.

Cinema and Culture. Curated. Presented by MUBI.

With the Olympics underway, this hybrid documentary from filmmaker Julia Fuhr Mann takes aim at the rigid gender boundaries of competitive sports. Weaving a dynamic tapestry of archival footage and personal testimony, this is a rallying cri de coeur for inclusivity and progress.

Now streaming exclusively and (almost) globally.

This deeply personal short from Yann Mounir Demange is incandescent with love and vulnerability. Beautifully led by Riz Ahmed and featuring designs by fashion house AMI, DAMMI conjures a uniquely transportive vision of Paris for its dreamlike exploration of cultural identity and family ties.

Now streaming exclusively and (almost) globally.

THE RED SHOES, BLACK NARCISSUS, A CANTERBURY TALE, and so much more—Powell and Pressburger were a legendary filmmaking duo. With superfan Martin Scorsese leading viewers on a personal journey through the work of these cinematic titans, MADE IN ENGLAND is a rousing introduction to a visionary oeuvre.

Now streaming exclusively in many territories.

Transcending cultural borders and genres, Istanbul’s vibrant music scene takes the spotlight in Fatih Akin’s sonically immersive time capsule, now remastered in 4K. Thumping with an infectious energy, this movable feast celebrates the bonding power of art over political and generational divides.

Now streaming exclusively and (almost) globally.

Intimacy is brilliantly weaponized in this standout film from American rising star Kit Zauhar. Assembling a chamber drama with staggering performances and bruising humor, she twists space and sound into battle zones of emotion where closeness is at once bitter and erotic, touching and barbed.

Now streaming exclusively and (almost) globally.

All fungi are fascinating—but some more than others. This soothing short shows that collecting, sharing, and using magic mushrooms can be delicate acts of care. Softly psychedelic images, playful in-camera effects, and intimate voice-over combine in a humble perspective on man’s place in the world.

Now streaming exclusively, and (almost) globally.

Shunned by the music industry after her transition, Grammy-nominated record producer D. Smith brings a dynamic sense of rhythm to her format-defying debut. A raw and honest look at the lives of Black trans sex workers in New York and Georgia, KOKOMO CITY breaks social stigmas with a vivacious style.

Now streaming exclusively (almost) globally.

The latest slate of MUBI Releases currently in theaters, now streaming on the platform, or coming soon to audiences across the globe.

Check the notes to see where each film is playing.

• Magic Farm

  Now streaming exclusively in the US, UK, Canada and Ireland. A MUBI Release.

• Lurker

  In theaters August 22 in the US and August 29 in Canada. A MUBI Release.

• Die My Love

  Coming soon to the US, UK, , Latin America, Turkey, Canada, Netherlands, Ireland, India, Austria, Spain, Australia & New Zealand, with theatrical dates to be announced. A MUBI Release.

• Sound of Falling

  Coming soon to the US, UK, Turkey, India, Canada and more. A MUBI Release.

• Sentimental Value

  Coming soon to the UK, Latin America, Turkey, Ireland and India. A MUBI Release.

• The Secret Agent

  Coming soon to the UK, Mexico, Argentina, India, Chile, Colombia and more. A MUBI Release.

• It Was Just an Accident

  Coming soon to the UK, Latin America, , Turkey, Ireland, India and more. A MUBI Release.

• Alpha

  Coming soon to the UK, Latin America, Ireland and India. A MUBI Release.

• Sirât

  Coming soon to Italy, Turkey and India. A MUBI Release.

• The Mastermind

  Coming soon to the US, UK, Latin America, , Turkey, Canada, Netherlands, Ireland, India and more. A MUBI Release.

...plus 154 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

From the groundbreaking New Queer Cinema of the 1990s to contemporary arthouse standouts and hybrid experiments, these works are liberated from linear thinking regarding sexuality and identity.

Check out our brand new collection on MUBI now to see what's playing in your country.

• Queer
• Orlando, My Political Biography
• Shakedown
• The People's Joker
• Totally F***ed Up
• Stranger by the Lake
• Tropical Malady
• Việt and Nam
• ages
• Kokomo City

...plus 50 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

We hand-pick great films and bring them to audiences around the world. Not sure where to start? We’d love to show you around the place with MUBI 101, our guide to some of the best movies on the platform to kickstart your journey of cinematic discovery. Trailblazing dramas, gritty coming-of-age tales, game-changing documentaries: you can expect all this and more.

MUBI is offering an incredible 60 days free, exclusively for students:

mubi.com/letterboxdforstudents

• Shiva Baby
• Mysterious Skin
• Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
• Paris, 13th District
• Drive My Car
• Aloners
• Ghost World
• Terror, Sisters!
• Reprise
• Pleasure

...plus 170 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Whether they favor digital techniques or hand-drawn designs, painted cels or stop-motion puppets, the filmmakers in this collection all use animation to circumvent persistent taboos around sex and pleasure.

Stream our brand new collection "Animated Desires" now globally.

• 27
• Nun or Never!
• #21xoxo
• Toomas Beneath the Valley of the Wild Wolves
• Bug Diner
• Tram
• Desire Pie
• Asparagus
• Maurice's Bar
• Pussy

In the fight for women’s bodily autonomy, cinema has not stayed on the sidelines. Each of the films in this collection is a raised fist, an urgent call for women’s right to control their own bodies.

Focusing on different walks of life, these films see women defy societal expectations in various ways. Some unsettle the patriarchy through public acts of defiance, as activists marching for equality or workers demanding fair conditions. Others center friendships or explore alternatives to the gender binary. All understand that the personal is political.

Stream your country's selection now.

• Our Body
• Orlando, My Political Biography
• Ramona
• Swallow
• Happening
• God's Offices
• A Very Curious Girl
• The Substance
• One Sings, the Other Doesn't
• Persepolis

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Winner of the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlinale, Mati Diop’s Dahomey is a vital work of cinematic imagination. To celebrate the arrival of this prismatic hybrid documentary, the French filmmaker has curated a trio of dazzling shorts that spark a conversation with her spellbinding feature.

Check the notes to read Diop's thoughts on each of her selections in this list.

Now streaming (almost) globally.

• Dahomey

  Winner of the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlinale, Mati Diop’s dynamic film brings a dazzling sense of imagination to vital issues of self-determination and restitution. Amplifying voices from beyond the walls of international museums, this spellbinding work redefines the spaces of culture and art.

• You Hide Me

  “Shot at the British Museum in 1970, You Hide Me is the graduation film of a 26-year-old Ghanaian student. Watching this cinematic manifesto for the first time, I kept wondering how director Nii Kwate Owoo had managed to access the underground reserves of the museum––home to 70,000 African artefacts––knowing how strictly inaccessible they were. I myself would be refused access to those of the Quai Branly for the shooting of Dahomey, fifty years later. In fact, this is the film’s real tour de force: by keeping any negotiation off-screen, the filmmaker offers the spectator a space to speculate on the presence of these two Black bodies, both as real as a mirage. In the end, this cathartic performance acts on our unconscious, inviting us to transgress through the limited yet infinite channels of imagination.”

• L'avance

  “In the history of cinema, some films represent a turning point. For me, L’avance isn’t just a debut short film, but also ground zero for a new generation of Afro-descendants who are only now getting access to fields previously reserved for white people. It was in Paris, where he was born, that Djiby Kebe sketched this twenty-minute, hyper-lucid portrait of a young artist (modelled after himself) in an art world thirsty for young Black blood. A scene that particularly touched me is one in which the artist, Aliou, meets a neighborhood friend shooting a TikTok video, who asks him who he truly is. Aliou says he doesn’t know and that he will be searching for the answer for the rest of his life. L’avance marks the entry of the “Glissantien” anti-hero––named after the Martinican poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant––into contemporary French cinema."

• Atlantiques

  “Atlantiques is the first short film that I shot in Dakar. I filmed Serigne, a young man who has just been repatriated from Spain having braved the crossing from the Senegalese coast by boat. For the first time, he shared his epic journey with his two friends (Alpha and Cheikh, my cousin), who were trying hard to convince him to stay. But Serigne was already gone. Whatever the cost, he was determined to jump on a boat again. By the time I had chosen to displace my cinema from Paris to Dakar, an entire generation was escaping the country in the opposite direction (for Europe) by sea, where many of them perished. I understood much later that we were all under a spell that would not say its name.”

From acclaimed classics to hidden treasures, social critiques to genre pleasures, these films powerfully articulate the struggles, resilience, and joy experienced by the Black community all around the world.

Now showing in 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇮🇪   
Stream your country’s selection here.

• Dahomey
• Mountains
• Hale County This Morning, This Evening
• Mami Wata
• Omen
• I Am Not a Witch
• Medicine for Melancholy
• Sorry to Bother You
• Belly
• The Watermelon Woman

...plus 126 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Will they find their own way into each other’s arms, or won’t they? Tempering the intensity of desire with sweet pangs of doubt, these love stories in limbo are worth rooting for.

Now streaming.

• Matt and Mara
• The Beast
• Fallen Leaves
• Slow
• The Nature of Love
• ages
• Paris, 13th District
• Decision to Leave
• Moonlight
• Past Lives

...plus 30 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Are you dreaming of a better self? If you are enjoying THE SUBSTANCE, then you could be a good candidate for an increased intake: an exclusive set of switches, stabilizers, and activators to enhance your cinephile credentials. From cult classics to midnight movies, these films dare to venture into the twisted depths of our psyches, remaking mind and flesh. You won’t be the same after watching these films. Click through. Your next hit is just moments away.

Now streaming in many territories. Check your country's selection on MUBI.

• The Substance
• Swallow
• American Psycho
• Sick of Myself
• Titane
• Goodnight Mommy
• Antiviral
• Please Baby Please
• Knives and Skin
• The Love Witch

...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A director’s first film can provide the roap for an entire oeuvre. Our series of directorial debuts revisits the films that launched the careers of some of cinema’s finest auteurs.

Stream your country's selection here.

• Breathless
• Accattone
• Kids
• Love Is Colder Than Death
• Atlantics
• The Protagonists
• Chronicle of a Disappearance
• Corpo Celeste
• Revenge
• The Virgin Suicides

...plus 52 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

2024 was a year full of cinematic wonders. From festival award-winners and indie gems to surprising audience favorites, the films in this collection rose above the crop to astonish audiences through their imaginative artistry and emotional resonance. These are our picks of the year’s best and brightest movies. How many have you seen?

Stream your country's selection now.

• The Substance
• Dahomey
• Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
• The People's Joker
• Bird
• Evil Does Not Exist
• La Chimera
• Last Summer
• Emilia Pérez
• My First Film

...plus 48 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

From the beginnings of film history, audiences have been drawn to scary movies like moths to a flame, finding in the shadowy space of the cinema hall some of their darkest fears and suspicions come terrifyingly alive. This Halloween season, plunge into the heart of darkness with a selection of striking cinematic horrors.

Stream your country's selection here.

• The Substance
• Titane
• The Babadook
• Trouble Every Day
• Berberian Sound Studio
• Mandy
• Knife+Heart
• The Neon Demon
• Carnival of Souls
• The Loved Ones

...plus 335 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The Next Prize Collection, curated by MUBI in partnership with CHANEL, presents a selection of pioneering films from winners of the CHANEL Next Prize.

MUBI has curated an innovative cinematic experience, featuring filmmakers Eduardo Williams and Fox Maxy, who explore the world through experiments in style; game designer Sam Eng, who builds worlds through coding; and artist Ho Tzu Nyen, who blends disciplines to investigate Southeast Asian heritage. And the music of Moor Mother and the surrealist filmmaking of Rungano Nyoni delve into the profound histories of Black identity.

The CHANEL Next Prize s artists from around the world who are defining the future of contemporary culture through visual art, film, design, music, dance and gaming. The winners are selected every two years by a jury of cultural icons, including actor Tilda Swinton and artist Cao Fei.

Discover films from the 2022 and 2024 Next Prize winners, brought to you by MUBI. Watch now and discover what’s next.

• The Human Surge
• I Am Not a Witch
• Beanpole
• Guts and Glitz
• Here
• Skate Story: Shortplay Depth I
• Moor Mother: Jazz Codes

Stepping out of the celluloid closet, LGBTQ+ representations in cinema have become increasingly robust, diverse, and multidimensional. From intimate character studies to boldly experimental features, the eclecticism of queer cinema not only illuminates the richness of our collective human experience but also daringly subverts filmmaking conventions. Just like the delightfully broad spectrum of genders and sexualities, cinematic renderings of queer experiences are cultural mosaics that rise above attempts at classification and categorization. Reflecting this formal dynamism, our electric offering of LGBTQ+ cinema is a celebration of queer artistry and history, spotlighting urgent social issues and the sheer pleasure of unapologetic queer joy.

Stream your country's selection here.

• Querelle
• Happy Together
• Simone Barbès or Virtue
• Monster
• Kokomo City
• ages
• Stranger by the Lake
• Monica
• Funeral Parade of Roses
• Paris Is Burning

...plus 322 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Evocative of excellence, glamor, and glasses of rosé, Cannes is perhaps the most famous of festivals. Since 1946, the crème de la crème of world cinema have assembled annually on the French Riviera to celebrate a star-studded slate of the year’s finest films. Take a stroll with us down the Boulevard de la Croisette and enjoy a few of our favorites from past editions of this never less than glittering affair.

Stream your country’s selection here.

• Perfect Days
• Fallen Leaves
• How to Have Sex
• Monster
• Strange Way of Life
• Melancholia
• In the Mood for Love
• Mulholland Drive
• Drive My Car
• Deception

...plus 205 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Everyone could do with a good laugh. From slapstick and screwball to arthouse subversion and sharp political satire—all by way of a perfectly timed sight gag or impromptu, unexpected moment: the cinema has a long history of making people laugh, easing their troubles, and poking fun at those in power.

• The Beach Bum
• Some Like It Hot
• Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
• Dogleg
• Yannick
• Rotting in the Sun
• Funny Ha Ha
• Toni Erdmann
• All Hands on Deck!
• Almost Entirely a Slight Disaster

...plus 138 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

From the early days of cinema, female cinematographers have played a pivotal role in shaping the visual language of the medium. From sweeping epics to intimate dramas, studio projects to avant-garde experiments, their sizable impact on the seventh art extends across different countries and eras. And yet their tremendous contributions are still sorely overlooked compared to those of their male counterparts.

This collection celebrates the unsung female cinematographers who lent their powerful gaze to some of the most loved and acclaimed works in movie history. Eclectic in their span and subjects, these films beckon us not only to behold the beautiful frame, but to also honor the women behind the lens.

Stream your country's selection now.

• Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
• Bastards
• The Green Ray
• Atlantics
• Invisible Life
• The Neon Demon
• Annette
• Le Pont du Nord
• Girlhood
• Corsage

...plus 32 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

New short films by some of the best up-and-coming as well as established filmmakers and artists. 

Stream your country’s selection here

• A Short Story
• Extinction of the Species
• Jill, Uncredited
• Daydreaming So Vividly About Our Spanish Holidays
• Blank Narcissus (ion of the Swamp)
• Meet Doug
• Aribada
• Playback
• The Potemkinists
• Eye Two Times Mouth

...plus 44 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A celebration of first features that hail the arrival of exciting directors.

Stream your country's selection here.

• Medusa Deluxe
• Girlfriends and Girlfriends
• I Have Electric Dreams
• The Plains
• Aftersun
• Actual People
• Everybody Loves Jeanne
• Lamb
• Pleasure
• Friends and Strangers

...plus 42 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Just as essential and thrilling as their more famous feature-length siblings, these unmissable shorts from some of the best directors working today prove that size does not matter.

Start streaming your country's selection here.

• The Human Voice
• Tavern Man
• Blank Narcissus (ion of the Swamp)
• The Staggering Girl
• Nimic
• Caprice
• Wasp
• Peel
• A Pure Spirit
• A Day in a Life

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Exclusive restorations and revivals of classic, under-known, and once-lost films.

Stream your country’s selection here.

• Funeral Parade of Roses
• The Cow
• Rude Boy
• The Nun
• Malina
• One Way or Another
• Sambizanga
• Born in Flames
• Adoption
• Where To?

...plus 29 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Showcasing some of the most inspiring and compelling new films and restorations, fresh from cinemas and festivals. A world of bold new discoveries awaits you, exclusively on MUBI.

Start streaming your country's selection here.

• Strange Way of Life
• The Innocent
• Rewind & Play
• Queens of the Qing Dynasty
• The Beasts
• Sick of Myself
• Pacifiction
• EO
• De Humani Corporis Fabrica
• Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV

...plus 154 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Adventurous and experimental works that push boundaries and challenge the status quo. 

Stream your country’s selection here.

• Sexual Drive
• Accidental Luxuriance of the Translucent Watery Rebus
• Feast
• There Will Be No More Night
• Wood and Water
• Just Don't Think I'll Scream
• The Tale of King Crab
• Taste
• Corporate ability
• The Wild Frontier

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Distinct visions from emerging artists and rising filmmakers.

Stream your country's selection here.

• Return to Seoul
• Close
• The Five Devils
• Alcarràs
• Please Baby Please
• Titane
• Babysitter
• Love, Deutschmarks and Death
• The Girl and the Spider
• We

...plus 29 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

With AGES landing on the platform, we invited director Ira Sachs to pick some of his favorite films from the MUBI vaults. “I can’t imagine being myself without these films,” Sachs told us of his selection. “They are so much a part of me that I can’t see my own creative life as separate from them. They sit in my mind like photographs.”

Stream your country's selection here.

• ages
• Loulou
• The Innocent
• Rebels of the Neon God
• The Mouth Agape
• Portrait of Jason
• A Bigger Splash

A globetrotting survey of bold storytelling and essential perspectives on the world. 

Stream your country’s selection here.

• Rotting in the Sun
• De Humani Corporis Fabrica
• Unclenching the Fists
• Holy Spider
• The Balcony Movie
• Leila's Brothers
• The Tsugua Diaries
• Invisible Demons
• Free Chol Soo Lee
• White Building

...plus 31 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Adèle Exarchopoulos is a dynamite presence in contemporary cinema. Burning bright since an early age, the actor become the youngest winner ever of the Palme d’Or, in an incendiary moment in Cannes history. She continued to perform with fearless ion in the films that followed, drawing on deep wells of emotion to round out strikingly raw physicality. Fiercely talented, Exarchopoulos acts with such intensity that our screens start to feel flimsy when she appears: as if the line between fantasy and reality could, exhilaratingly, catch light at any moment.

Stream your country's selection here.

• The Five Devils
• Blue Is the Warmest Color
• Sibyl
• Zero Fucks Given
• Orphan
• Racer and the Jailbird
• Mandibles
• ages

New films from established masters of cinema.

Stream your country’s selection here.

• One Fine Morning
• Winter Boy
• Decision to Leave
• Vortex
• Drive My Car
• The Worst Person in the World
• Crimes of the Future
• Annette
• Memoria
• Benedetta

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

For as long as the movies have existed, women have been making them.

This collection showcases work by women auteurs spanning a diverse array of themes, styles, and genres. It’s time to reframe the conversation and focus our lens on films outside of the male-dominated canon of cinema.

Stream your country's selection here.

• Aftersun
• Both Sides of the Blade
• Atlantics
• Actual People
• Titane
• India Song
• Love After Love
• Daughters of the Dust
• Dead Pigs
• Corsage

...plus 75 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is as lauded as it is sprawling, each January presenting hundreds of film premieres from around the world. As the 2023 festival kicks off, we are proud to exclusively present a number of special gems from recent years.

Stream your country's selection here.

• Labyrinth of Cinema
• The African Desperate
• Documenteur
• The Cathedral
• Bully
• Vortex
• Corpus Christi
• Phoenix
• A Human Position
• Becoming Male in the Middle Ages

...plus 129 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

If you can’t bring the audience to the festival, bring the festival to the audience! With the Sundance Film Festival commencing this week, it’s also taking over MUBI. While dreams of hopping to Hollywood are fulfilled (or dashed), and as new indie darlings are crowned, we’ll be playing some of our Sundance favorites.

Stream your country's selection here.

• Neptune Frost
• The Cathedral
• El Planeta
• Sharp Stick
• Strawberry Mansion
• Heathers
• maɬni—towards the ocean, towards the shore
• Tangerine
• Babysitter
• But I'm a Cheerleader

...plus 117 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

These are some of our picks of the year’s best and brightest new movies. How many have you seen?

Stream your country's selection here.

• Decision to Leave
• The Worst Person in the World
• The Kingdom: Exodus
• The Cathedral
• The African Desperate
• Crimes of the Future
• The Souvenir: Part II
• Great Freedom
• Vortex
• Happening

...plus 36 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Steeped in love, lust, and melancholy, the films of Wong Kar Wai are a true cinephile’s dream. One of the great contemporary filmmakers, Wong is a master at capturing the many forms of love and courtship: from budding desire and heady infatuation to delirious heartbreak. Wong’s woozy, non-linear visions of urban loneliness traverse the specifics of their time and place to capture our hunger as humans to connect. Yet they also offer indelible portraits of place, from a densely populated, globalized Hong Kong to a rough-and-ready bedsit in Buenos Aires. His atmospheric cinematic worlds—often brought to life by regular cinematographer Christopher Doyle—shimmer with boldly saturated colors, shake to electrifying soundtracks, and judder with skittish step-printed effects. Deeply influential, the innovative director has turned generations onto arthouse cinema and ignited the independent film scene in Hong Kong.

This program includes ravishing, brand-new restorations of his beloved classics, personally overseen by the director. Whether you’re falling in love for the first time or revisiting an old flame, get ready to have your heart broken.

Now showing in 🇧🇷 🇲🇽 🇹🇷 🇲🇾 🇮🇳 🇮🇹. 

Stream your country’s selection here.

• Chungking Express
• 2046
• The Hand
• Ashes of Time
• In the Mood for Love
• Happy Together
• Fallen Angels
• Days of Being Wild
• As Tears Go By

A beguiling screen presence of both physical and emotional intensity, German actor Franz Rogowski has taken the international film world by storm, having worked with an astonishing array of formidable directors and exhibiting a striking versatility as a performer across a delightfully unpredictable multitude of genres.

To celebrate his latest triumph in Sebastian Meise’s GREAT FREEDOM (2021), our spotlight raises a glass to the man of the hour, and one of the most exciting actors currently gracing the silver screen.

Now showing (almost globally) here.

• Great Freedom
• Luzifer
• Undine
• Transit
• In the Aisles
• Figaros Wölfe
• Love Steaks

The adrenaline-pumping vibrations that musical performances elicit are at once physical and spiritual. Encoming both documentary and fiction, our music-on-film picks not only celebrate the electric magnetism of live concerts but also explore the trials and tribunals of the artists themselves.

Stream your country's selections here.

• This Much I Know to Be True
• North Terminal
• Stop Making Sense
• Amy
• The Harder They Come
• I'm Not There
• Inside Llewyn Davis
• 24 Hour Party People
• A Hard Day's Night
• Lou Reed and John Cale: Songs for Drella

...plus 45 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

“The future begins now, and Locarno will always be on the side of cinema.”

The Locarno Film Festival, taking place in a small lakeside Swiss town every August, is one of the world’s premiere venues for celebrating bold, adventurous cinema. MUBI exclusively presents a series of highlights from this brilliant festival.

Stream your country's selection here.

• Masculin Féminin
• Chocolat
• Right Now, Wrong Then
• First Cow
• L.A. Confidential
• Happy Hour
• India Song
• The Piano Teacher
• Holy Motors
• Berberian Sound Studio

...plus 99 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A series of portraits of the most influential artists of our time, whose work spans a wide range of crafts and practices. These films provide an alluring window into the creative process of these inspiring figures, who have changed our viewpoints on the world in a myriad of enchanting ways.

Stream your country's selection here.

Last updated: August 16, 2022.

• Jane by Charlotte
• Caravaggio
• David Lynch: The Art Life
• Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris
• Edvard Munch
• Finding Vivian Maier
• Moments Like This Never Last
• Beloved Sisters
• Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words
• Life

...plus 61 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Effacing the borders of gender and genre, the chameleonic Tilda Swinton embodies the infinite possibilities of cinema. Charting the electric breadth of her screen personas, our retrospective celebrates a multi-hyphenated artist who has inspired us all to step out of the box and reach for the stars.

Stream your country's selection here.

• Memoria
• Caprice
• Julia
• Orlando
• The Souvenir
• The Souvenir: Part II
• We Need to Talk About Kevin
• The Human Voice
• Suspiria
• Friendship's Death

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

This Halloween season, plunge into the heart of darkness with a selection of striking cinematic horrors.

Stream your country's selection here.

• Suspiria
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
• It Follows
• Midsommar
• Titane
• The Babadook
• The Wicker Man
• Inland Empire
• Hereditary
• Nosferatu the Vampyre

...plus 113 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The acclaimed Los Angeles-based artist Martine Syms gathers together an eclectic group of films that influenced her debut feature, THE AFRICAN DESPERATE, which streams exclusively on MUBI from October 21. From indie classics to hidden gems by major directors, and avant-garde pieces by contemporary visual artists, this exciting lineup points to the singular nature of her debut film.

Click 'Read Notes' for Syms' thoughts on each film.

• Girl 6

  “I want more depictions of the lives of creative Black women that feel as real as this does. More of the acting we know we have to do in real life on screen. More Prince. More worlds. Plus, Naomi Campbell smoking a t is a life-sustaining image.”

• Working Girls

  “An essential entry in the canon of labor films.”

• Paprika

  “Paprika delves headfirst into the quantum field. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The first time I watched it I thought I was having a stroke.”

• Happy Together

  “Submerged encounters are suspended out of time against urgent political and historical realities.”

• We Hold Where Study

  “Duets for a present that doesn’t refuse any of the gravity of the past.”

• Go

  “A sexy slackers’ trip from an era when mainstream American movies could still feel independent.”

• Belly
• Party Monster

  “Party movie slash thriller par excellence, arguably Macaulay Culkin’s finest performance. Iconic downtown scene-fueled solipsism.”

• The Mutants

  “The most mind-blowing film I watched during quarantine, recommended by my dear friend Nicole Otero.”

• Hail the New Puritan

  “I think Charlie [Atlas] called this film biomythography, but it’s fictional and documentary and I like that … He is a master of the embodied camera.”

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

It’s hard to think of another filmmaker as attuned to the avant-garde who has made such a substantial mainstream impact as David Lynch. So recognizably singular, yet defiant of categorization is his cinema that “Lynchian” has become a ubiquitous shorthand for anything that straddles the uncanny perimeters of dream and reality, resisting the marked boundaries of definition. A multidisciplinary artist whose work encomes everything from painting and sculpture to video installations and film, Lynch is a rare example of a filmmaker who has been exhibited in galleries, cinemas, online and on television, without compromising the integrity of his sui generis vision.

Lynch’s art, across multiple media, appears to manifest itself as an eruption of his subconscious. His feature films may flirt with traditional storytelling methods, such as plot and character development, but they’re invariably untethered, adrift in a slipstream of dream logic and psychological quicksand. The dozens of short films Lynch has made across his career testify to his tireless creative process. Some are simple sketches, others fully-formed miniatures, but all refuse to be wrangled by reductive interpretation. Fascinated by the darkness that lurks beyond the diaphanous, apple-pie facades of the American psyche, the alluring nightmares of David Lynch oscillate between beauty and chaos, collectively forming an ecstatic body of work unlike anything else in modern cinema.

Now showing in 🇧🇷 🇩🇪 🇫🇷 🇮🇳 🇮🇹 🇲🇽 🇲🇾 🇹🇷. Stream your country’s selection here.

• Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
• Lost Highway
• Eraserhead
• The Amputee
• Darkened Room
• Six Men Getting Sick
• Out Yonder — Neighbor Boy
• Lamp
• Intervalometer Experiments
• Industrial Soundscape

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Keep your friends close.

LURKER. Alex Russell's parasocial, paranoid directorial debut arrives in US theaters on August 22 and Canada on August 29.

Starring Théodore Pellerin, Archie Madekwe, Zack Fox, Havana Rose Liu, Wale Onayemi, Daniel Zolghadri and Sunny Suljic. A MUBI Release.

This year’s Carrosse d’Or winner on his singularly uncompromising career.

By Michael Koresky

This interview, part of our Cannes 2025 coverage, was originally published in the Notebook Special, a limited-edition print publication distributed at the Cannes Film Festival.

One could be forgiven for feeling a bit wistful celebrating Todd Haynes’s extraordinary career in 2025. The 64-year-old American director is about to receive the Carrosse d’Or at the Directors’ Fortnight, the festival’s version of a lifetime achievement award, and it’s a reflective moment to honor an artist whose films, from the start, so provocatively confronted the evils of the times in which they were made. With epochal experiments like Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), Poison (1991), and Safe (1995), Haynes broke out against a backdrop of extreme crisis—the AIDS epidemic and the political iniquity carried out in its wake—and any consideration of his filmography remains inseparable from these sociopolitical realities. 

Upon release, Poison became a central pawn in the “culture wars” of the early 1990s, held up by grandstanding conservative congressmen as evidence of the gay agenda they believed was being partly funded by the NEA. Now that federal dollars are being squashed at every turn, and anything with a whiff of radicalism is being tagged as treasonous, we might look back with fondness at the bravery of Haynes’s filmography, which came to prominence at a time when daring independent filmmakers were rigorously subverting the social order, not only in subject matter but also through the aesthetics of film itself. In the face of a newly emboldened authoritarianism at home and abroad, in which the scapegoating of queer people for political gain has become de rigueur, contemporary artists have yet to figure out how to respond. 

It’s safe to say that Haynes’s daring and continual deconstruction of film form has continued unabated throughout his career, in projects of all shapes and sizes. It appears that he is congenitally unable to make a movie that doesn’t function on multiple intellectual levels at once, while maintaining a thrilling narrative ingenuity (his gutting May December, 2023, being only the most recent example). That’s entertainment, folks. Even as Haynes juggles projects that flirt with the mainstream, he has never yielded his dedication to questioning power structures and the systems that define and constrict us. For Haynes, cinema has always been and always will be the shadow version of reality, where there is meaning beyond and behind our first perception.

Continue reading on the Notebook here.

First clip from Joachim Trier's SENTIMENTAL VALUE. An intimate and moving exploration of family, memories, and the reconciliatory power of art, starring Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, and Elle Fanning. Premiering in Competition at Cannes 2025. Coming soon to the UK, Latin America, Turkey, Ireland and India. A MUBI Release.

MY FATHER’S SHADOW. A powerful and poetic look at fatherhood, identity and memory from first-time feature filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr, starring Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù and introducing Godwin Egbo and Chibuike Marvellous Egbo.

Premiering in Un Certain Regard at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and coming soon to North America, the UK, Ireland and Turkey. A MUBI Release.

THE MASTERMIND. The latest from acclaimed director Kelly Reichardt stars Josh O'Connor and Alana Haim.

Premiering at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Coming soon to the US, UK, Latin America, , Turkey, Canada, Netherlands, Ireland, India and more. A MUBI Release.

Joe Wright's MUSSOLINI: SON OF THE CENTURY stars Luca Marinelli as Benito Mussolini. Adapted from Antonio Scurati's bestselling trilogy, the series explores the rise of one of history's most notorious figures.

Coming soon to the US, Latin America, Turkey, India, Canada and more.

Based on Deborah Levy’s acclaimed novel and set on the sun-soaked Spanish coast, HOT MILK sees tensions simmer as a mother and daughter’s bond is tested by the arrival of a mysterious stranger in Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s directorial debut. Starring Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw, and Vicky Krieps.

In cinemas July 4 across the UK, Latin America, and more. A MUBI Release.

Leos Carax reveals himself in this moody, mesmerising self-portrait in the style of the late master Jean-Luc Godard. Carax turns the camera inward through a collage of his past works, photos, newsreels and intimate home footage.

Now streaming in UK, Latin America, , Turkey, Netherlands, Ireland, India, Australia and more here.

In this second installment of three short video commentaries, filmmaker Miguel Gomes takes us behind the scenes of his sumptuous, continent-spanning travelogue GRAND TOUR.

GRAND TOUR is now streaming in the US, UK, Latin America, , Turkey, Canada and more here. A MUBI Release.

Fashion illustrator Richard Haines visited Posteritati in New York City to share his unique artistic interpretation of iconic movie posters — spanning from Luis Bunuel’s BELLE DE JOUR (1967) to Toshio Matsumoto’s FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES (1969) and more.

MUBI Picks at Posteritati is a series where we bring special guests to the prestigious movie art gallery in New York City to discuss their favorite movie posters of all time.

Desire gets a bold, animated twist in this playful, provocative collection of erotic shorts. Specially curated with a focus on women and LGBTQ+ voices, these pioneering films go beyond the limits of live-action to explore fantasy, identity, and liberation in bold and brazen strokes.

"Animated Desires" is now streaming (almost) globally here.

“With friends, there was always this strong feeling of invincibility.”

By Haley Elizabeth Anderson

Haley Elizabeth Anderson’s Tendaberry is now streaming on MUBI.

Tendaberry was named for the Laura Nyro song “New York Tendaberry.” The end titles are timed to the song, but we weren’t able to get the rights in time. Over the last year, I keep trying to find a single point of genesis for the project. It’s fairly impossible because there are many—one thing folds into another, which leads to another. 

Continue reading here.

In this first installment of three short video commentaries, filmmaker Miguel Gomes takes us behind the scenes of his sumptuous, continent-spanning travelogue GRAND TOUR.

GRAND TOUR is now streaming in the US, UK, Latin America, , Turkey, Canada and more here. A MUBI Release.

Cherry-picked from Sundance, Haley Elizabeth Anderson’s lyrical debut feature TENDABERRY offers an unflinching look at resilience and identity in modern America. In Coney Island, an adrift young woman must navigate an uncertain path alone after her boyfriend returns to war-torn Ukraine.

TENDABERRY is now streaming (almost) globally here.

From the visionary minds of David Lynch and Mark Frost, the iconic series TWIN PEAKS (1990) follow FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle McLaughlan), as he investigates the murder of a young woman - Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) - in the idiosyncratic town of Twin Peaks. As the investigation progresses, several other mysteries and conspiracies are uncovered, all linking back to Laura's murder.

TWIN PEAKS Seasons 1 & 2. Streaming from June 13 in the US, UK, Latin America, , Turkey, India, Netherlands, Italy and more.

To celebrate Elaine May’s birthday, a personal reflection from MAGIC FARM filmmaker Amalia Ulman on choosing to invest one’s intelligence in something other than seduction.

By Amalia Ulman

I have been dreading writing this essay because it means itting to myself and to the world something very unfortunate: I am a loser brunette.

It was 2017, and my then husband suggested we watch A New Leaf (1971) because there was a new Blu-ray restoration, which was exciting. But as I watched Walter Matthau as Henry Graham arrogantly reckoning with the fact that he had run out of money, making teary-eyed farewell visits to his Upper East Side tailor and racket club, I thought of the man sitting next to me and was shocked by the similarities. “He’s just like you,” I said to my husband, who likewise maintained emotional relationships with the institutions that validated his sense of sophistication. Surprisingly, he didn’t bother denying it, just agreed and chuckled. The nerve! I guess it was too late in the game to pretend otherwise. I was already drowning in debt after ing his life of leisure for years. As I watched the rest of the film, I wondered how I had managed to get swindled so badly. The nerve! My then husband regarded his appreciation for the finest of things as a sort of talent, which he applied to correcting my feral ways, just as Henry cleans Henrietta of crumbs each morning before going to work at the university. And just like Henrietta (Elaine May herself), or like Lila Kolodny (her daughter, Jeannie Berlin) in The Heartbreak Kid (1972), I thought those corrections were a sign of care. I know better now, but my affinity for Elaine May’s sweet but tragic, nerdy characters has remained.

The naturalistic tenderness of these women’s loserdom tells me that they were written by a woman, very possibly from her own lived experience. May’s characters are brainy, vivacious, funny, and good-looking, but for some reason they can’t really fit in. Men are cruel to them because they’re too smart for their own good. Too intense, too enthusiastic, too assertive, too clumsy, too much. It’s the same reason I love Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Elaine on Seinfeld (1989–98). On paper, she’s an attractive woman with a good sense of humor. In reality, she’s a weirdo who’s bad at dancing, an opinionated feminist who can’t keep her mouth shut, and most importantly, a woman who is too comfortable with her sexuality to be sexually enticing to the men around her.

Continue reading here.

Starring Caleb Landry Jones, HARVEST is a spellbinding and thrillingly distinctive period piece from Athina Rachel Tsangari (ATTENBERG). Coming to theaters in May 22 and the UK, Ireland, Mexico and Chile July 18. Streaming August 8 in the UK, Ireland, Latin America and more. A MUBI Release.

Martin Scorsese has long talked about his love of the Powell and Pressburger films. In this exclusive video essay by Ben Porro, the great American director leads us on a spiritual journey through one of the most dazzling filmographies in cinema history.

With Antony Balch, the Beat novelist applied his Surrealist writing method to the moving image.

By Mark Asch

Luca Guadagnino’s Queer is now showing on MUBI in many countries.

Anyone visiting William S. Burroughs in Paris while he edited his third novel would have found a scene closer to a bustling film-production office than a lonely writer’s retreat, with a storyboard on the wall and several collaborators beetling away. Burroughs composed Naked Lunch as a series of loosely related, nonchronological “routines”; the story was found in the edit as he rearranged these pieces into their final order. He had the help of friends such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and the painter and poet Brion Gysin, who later recalled, “The raw material of Naked Lunch overwhelmed us. [...] Burroughs was more intent on Scotch-taping his photos together into one great continuum on the wall where scenes faded and slipped into one another than occupied with editing the manuscript.”1

Gysin—having accidentally discovered what he and Burroughs would come to call the “cut-up” method when slicing through the old newspapers protecting a countertop workspace and becoming intrigued by the juxtaposition of scraps of stories from different editions—was by now applying a similar technique to audiotape recordings. With Gysin’s inspiration and collaboration Burroughs would develop variations on cut-ups across the 1960s, particularly in the novels The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express, using techniques such as slicing pages into quadrants and rearranging them like tangrams, or folding a page lengthwise and placing it atop another with the lines of text aligned. The composite page, featuring prose from earlier or later in the book, could then be inserted anywhere in the manuscript, simultaneously flashback and flash-forward. “Any narrative age or any age of poetic images is subject to any number of variations, all of which may be interesting and valid in their own right,” according to Burroughs, whose approach to prose in this period bears some resemblance to Soviet theories of montage, in which modular units of meaning are arranged and rearranged. “Cut-ups establish new connections between images.”2 The physical labor of the cut-ups, often involving cutting with a blade and resplicing with tape, is also analogous to analog film editing.

Burroughs backed into filmmaking, developing a cinematic method for the production of prose works, and only later applying it to the production of actual moving images. In 1960, he met Antony Balch, a British expat in Paris, a colorful figure frequently described by his acquaintances as “camp.” Balch had been interested in filmmaking and film exhibition from an early age, projecting his work in the family living room as a child and selling tickets to his own parents. He was working in commercials and subtitling when he fell into Gysin’s orbit.3 Balch and Burroughs collaborated on a handful of films informed by Burroughs’s prose experiments; that the cut-up method was essentially cinematic is borne out by the fact that the Burroughs–Balch films fit so snugly within an experimental filmmaking zeitgeist characterized by collage and lysergic imagery. As well, Towers Open Fire (1963) and The Cut-Ups (1966), especially, align with other movements percolating in the artistic underground of the 1960s: revolutionary politics, sexual permissiveness, and esoteric spiritual and pharmaceutical practices. The cut-up films are liberatory in their implications, tuned into invisible currents. Per Burroughs: “Cut-ups put you in touch with something you know but don’t know that you know.”4

Continue reading here.

MAGIC FARM. A shape-shifting new gem from Amalia Ulman. Led by a stellar ensemble including Chloë Sevigny, Alex Wolff and Simon Rex.

In theaters in the US on April 25, Canada on May 2, and the UK & Ireland on May 16. A MUBI Release.

By Phoebe Jane Hart

“Then came the animating—my god, the animating.”

Related Images invites readers behind the scenes and into the sketchbooks of working filmmakers to learn more about their creative processes.

Phoebe Jane Hart’s Bug Diner is now showing on MUBI in many countries here.

I made Bug Diner (2024) in my last year of my MFA in Experimental Animation at CalArts, with the of my mentors Kangmin Kim, Pia Borg, Janie Geiser, and Stephen Chiodo. It was a wild and intense ride, strapped tight into a freaky roller coaster for the nine months it took to create this world and bring it to life. 

Continue reading here.

MUBI FEST 2025 is here.
A global celebration of cinema.

See extraordinary films.
conversations with leading cultural voices.
Eat great food, drink nice drinks, and maybe have a dance.

Coming to a weekend near you.
In 11 cities across the globe.

MUBI FEST.
Cinema and culture, curated.

MUBI FEST is a curated experience of contemporary culture, with great cinema at the heart of it.
-------------
MUBI FEST Chicago, April 26-27
MUBI FEST Mexico City, July 4-6
MUBI FEST Rio de Janeiro, August 2-3
MUBI FEST İstanbul, August 21-24
MUBI FEST Bogotá, September 11-14
MUBI FEST Berlin, October 3-5
MUBI FEST Paris, October 10-12
MUBI FEST Buenos Aires, October 16-19
MUBI FEST Santiago, October 23-26
MUBI FEST Rome, November 14-16
MUBI FEST Glasgow, November 28-30

From Grand Theft Auto deer cams to feminist interventions in World of Warcraft, this new video essay by Matt Turner and Amos Levin explores the history of artists using online video games as a site for protest and performance.

GRAND THEFT HAMLET is now streaming exclusively and globally <a href=": mubi.io/grand-theft-hamlet">here.

A cinema of taste, smell, and touch has been a recurrent fantasy of modernity, for both commercial artists and the avant-garde.

By Tom Gunning

“Are You Experienced?” is the spring 2025 edition of the Notebook Insert, a seasonal supplement on moving-image culture.

Why was cinema invented? Screenwriting manuals and certain film theorists have a ready answer: to tell stories in a dynamic modern form. This answer avoids the thorny thicket of film’s origins. As my friend and colleague André Gaudreault established, at the end of the nineteenth century the new technology of moving images did not have a single, dominant purpose; rather, it was employed in a diverse variety of what he calls “cultural series,” such as photographic exhibitions, journalistic reports, and magic shows.1 Theorist of technology Gilbert Simondon reminds us that technology continually reinvents and redefines its uses.2 Initially, moving photographic images supplied a precision tool that could record bodies in motion, allowing careful scientific analysis (the chronophotography of Étienne-Jules Marey, Eadweard Muybridge, and others). But moving images soon emerged from the physiological laboratory and were proclaimed as the latest innovation in photography, the logical next step after the snapshot, which froze action, often in ungainly postures. Now, photos could move… 

The early machinery of moving images became an attraction in itself: Edison’s Kinetoscope and Biograph’s Mutoscope were single-viewer peepshow devices installed in arcades, often coin-operated and showing risqué films. In addition to aiding scientific inquiry and providing sexual stimulation, early films made current events come alive: Newly elected presidents, diplomatic visits by world leaders, and sporting events appeared on the screen as a living newspaper. Film offered stage magician Georges Méliès a new way to create visual magic through in-camera techniques and by splicing the film strip, which would make objects and people magically appear, disappear, or transform. ments for Dewar’s Whiskey or the latest brand of bicycle were projected onto billboards in New York City and other metropolises. Some of the earliest films also told stories: brief gags featuring young boys’ mischief with garden hoses (most famously, the Lumières’ L’Arroseur arrosé, 1895) or explosions caused by pouring kerosene in the kitchen stove, which blasted an astonished maid into heaven (as in George Albert Smith’s Mary Jane’s Mishap, 1903). Such stories—rather than developing characters or situations—are delivered more like a joke, with a sudden visual punch line.

Decades later, historians stressed two aspects of the first films: their “realism,” and what theorist Christian Metz called a natural drive toward storytelling, which destined the new medium to become the twentieth century’s dominant vehicle for narrative.3 The realistic effect of seeing people and animals and vehicles in motion was celebrated by film’s first commentators as well: “This is life itself,” one critic responded to the Lumières’ first projections. But the desire to use cinema to tell stories as we usually understand them, creating characters living in a fictional world, came later. Rather than seeing cinema as inevitably taking the royal road to narrative, Gaudreault and I hold that the first movies were less interested in telling stories than in grabbing the viewer’s attention with what we call “attractions.”4 By 1906 or so, narrative dominated commercial filmmaking (although ments, educational films, porno, musical numbers, and crazy cartoons coexisted alongside fictional feature films as “added attractions,” they were relegated to the beginning of film programs and sometimes driven underground). Cinema never abandoned its primal mission of addressing its viewer through new technological means, folding attractions into storytelling to create the “movies” as we know them. As much as narrative, it was the sensual address of attractions that made the movies internationally popular, while cinema’s inherent visual fascination—its direct address to our senses—also created a radical cinematic avant-garde.  

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directors Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane at Shakespeare’s Globe as they break down the daring, unconventional filmmaking behind GRAND THEFT HAMLET, their audacious take on the Bard.

GRAND THEFT HAMLET. Now streaming exclusively and globally here.

Special thanks to Shakespeare’s Globe for their generous and for providing an iconic setting to discuss the filmmaking behind GRAND THEFT HAMLET.

Actors need to touch things.

By Elena Gorfinkel, John David Rhodes

From The Prop, by Elena Gorfinkel and John David Rhodes, published by Fordham University Press, the first in its Cutaways series of small-format books guided by a single motif or formal device.

Beth is a beleaguered young lawyer who drives four hours away from her regular job to teach education law in a small town called Belfry, Montana. In a scene set in a diner, Jamie, with no food of her own to distract her, watches as Beth eats a meal of burger and fries. Jamie, played by Lily Gladstone, is a ranch hand who has shown up for Beth’s evening class. Beth, played by Kristen Stewart, in this seemingly throwaway moment, performs a bit of prop-business both subtle and disarming in neo-neo-realist filmmaker Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women (2016). The scene begins with Beth having already sliced her burger in half. Beth takes a bite, then picks up what food-service workers sometimes call a “roll-up,” or what patrons of a diner like this might call a “place setting”: flatware tightly wrapped inside a paper napkin. Beth clearly must have already withdrawn the knife from the napkin in order to cut the burger, but she goes on to do something that is both prosaic and bizarre: She uses the roll-up as if it were an unfolded napkin. She presses the napkin, which still contains spoon and fork, to dab daintily the corner of her mouth. This prop—the roll-up—is quotidian, familiar, banal—something found in any greasy spoon. This tiny but arresting gesture is repeated a few moments later, as Beth chews, talks, and explains the duress of her long commute. Jamie, we begin to realize, is smitten with Beth. In her handling of this ordinary object, Stewart (as Beth) makes conspicuous this prop via what seems to be an improvisational gesture. The roll-up announces the modest customs of middle-American foodways and allows the opportunity for the performer to articulate something about the character she plays. Beth must make haste; she needs to keep moving, and her impatience is communicated through her strange handling of what would otherwise be a generic, forgettable prop, something that might ordinarily escape notice entirely. Beth cannot entertain Jamie’s offer of friendship to her momentary companion. The tightly bound confection of paper napkin and industrial flatware stands in for the emotional tenor of this nascent relationship between two strangers. What pressures—temporal, psychic, material— make unrolling a napkin and using it appropriately a seemingly impossible task? This minor scene is emblematic of Vsevolod Pudovkin’s notion of the “expressive object.” Stewart’s fugitive moments of prop play offer deeper insight into Beth’s character, as well as into Stewart’s peculiarly diffident, slouchy performance style. Pudovkin insists on the power of inanimate objects in the cinema when he argues that “an object, linked to an actor, can bring shades of his state of emotion to external expression so deeply as no gesture or mimicry could ever express them conditionally.”1 Undemonstrative and mundane, the roll-up—this tightly wrapped bundle of serviceware—unwraps a view of film performance’s entwinement with the cinematic prop’s necessity. 

The relationship of props to the embodied performer, the integral role they play in the gestural labor of the actor, is threaded through our entire discussion, but it is worthwhile here to tease out the investments and entrenched relations between performance and prop value. Cinema’s foundational fascination with bodily movement entails a frequent lingering on the prop and the role of objects; this preoccupation is noticeable across the history of cinema, from pre-cinematic motion studies and early cinema’s development as a narrational medium, all the way through actor training exercises in various schools of performance, including The Method and its multiple tributaries and variants. In numerous attempts to for the essence of cinema, theorists suggest that the capture of corporeal movement entails a grappling with things that is central to the prop’s circulation through the diegesis, and thus to the unfolding of the diegesis itself. As plot vector, currency, relational mediator, agent of memory, appendage or illuminator of character, and dramatic catalyst, the prop buttresses and expands the very energies of cinematic narration and the articulation of character. The hands that hold and grab props set fields of activity in motion and generate horizons of narrativity. The prop’s status as an expressive resource is bound up with the performer’s bodily activity. In his of film acting, James Naremore suggests that “actors need to touch things” by necessity, and this necessity of handling the prop world is a vital means of producing screen presence, key to the construction of a coherent fictional self. He further notes that “part of the actor’s job is to keep objects under expressive control, letting them become signifiers of feeling.”2 Concerned with how the border between prop and performer breaks down or becomes porous, Naremore points to elements of screen performances, from Charlie Chaplin’s cane to Barbara Stanwyck’s subtly wielded handkerchief in the tearful ending of Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937), as examples of how acting techniques extend from an intensified relation between prop and character. In their different generic s Chaplin’s comedic hyperbole and Stanwyck’s melodramatic realism demonstrate how prop work generates the gestural flow between action and expression. 

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MUBI Picks at Posteritati is a series where we bring special guests to the prestigious movie art gallery in New York City to discuss their favorite movie posters of all time.

In this episode of MUBI Picks at Posteritati, the one-of-a-kind filmmaker Paul Schrader graciously welcomed us into his New York City apartment for a close-up look at highlights from his personal poster collection. We dive into Schrader’s memories of watching his first Bresson in Los Angeles, working with Eiko Ishioka on Mishima, starting his poster collection at Larry Edmunds Bookshop, and many more illustrative stories from a life in cinema.

A gritty revenge thriller starring Barry Keoghan and Christopher Abbott, from award-winning debut filmmaker Christopher Andrews.

BRING THEM DOWN is now streaming exclusively on MUBI in the US, UK, Latin America, Canada, Turkey, Benelux and Ireland. A MUBI Release.

We return this week with a special episode on the wild history of "Hamlet" on screen.

Grand Theft Hamlet is now streaming exclusively on MUBI worldwide.

Grand Theft Hamlet (2024) tells the radical tale of a band of artists who stage a virtual production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet inside the online video game Grand Theft Auto. But it’s hardly the first time filmmakers have messed with Shakespeare’s great Dane.

Host Rico Gagliano learns the history of Hamlet on screen, with help from the movie’s cocreators, Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane, director Michael Almereyda (Hamlet, 2000), and Rico’s own playwright father.

Listen to the special episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Exploring Luca Guadagnino's filmmaking methods in an exclusive video essay, Ben Porro charts the ionate dynamics of desire and ardent longing for connection that sizzles across his cinema.

Luca Guadagnino's QUEER is now streaming exclusively on MUBI here in the UK, Ireland, Latin America, , Canada, India, Austria, Spain and more. Coming soon to the Netherlands and Italy. A MUBI Release.

The Oscar-nominated THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE is inspired by the grim, gripping true story of one of Denmark's most infamous criminals. Director/co-writer Magnus von Horn tells guest host Anna Bogutskaya about recreating the horror of a century ago, and how it might not be all that different than right now.

Follow & listen to the show on your preferred podcast app here.

THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE is now streaming here on MUBI in North America, UK, Ireland, Latin America, , Austria, Italy, Turkey and India.

“Different worlds were merging as the boundaries between them seemed to dissolve.”

By Pinny Grylls, Sam Crane

Related Images invites readers behind the scenes and into the sketchbooks of working filmmakers to learn more about their creative processes.

Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane’s Grand Theft Hamlet is now showing exclusively on MUBI.

Grand Theft Hamlet began in January 2021, a time of global anxiety yet also remarkable community resilience.

Walking with our children on the Hackney marshes, we discovered the creative potential of online game spaces and found the inspiration for our film.

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Dive deeper into the screenplay for THE SUBSTANCE. The backbone of Coralie Fargeat's incomparable film.

Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself?
You. Only better in every way.
You've got to try this new product.
It changed my life.

Now streaming exclusively here in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Latin America, , Netherlands, Turkey, India and more.

GRAND TOUR by Cannes Best Director winner Miguel Gomes is a breathtaking odyssey of romance, escape, and pursuit. In 1917 Burma, a British civil servant abandons his fiancée—only to find her relentlessly chasing him across Asia. A playful yet melancholic reimagining of the pursuit film, blending luminous 16mm black-and-white cinematography with archival footage.

In select theaters March 28 and streaming exclusively on MUBI April 18. A MUBI Release.

THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE writer-director Magnus von Horn discusses his spellbinding latest with Robert Eggers.

Now nominated for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards®. Streaming here exclusively in the US, UK, Latin America, , Turkey, Italy, Canada, India & more. A MUBI Release.

For their first project together since last year's steamy hit CHALLENGERS, director Luca Guadagnino (CALL ME BY YOUR NAME) and writer Justin Kuritzkes tackle another story about a sensuous 1950s romance of desire and longing: an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' novel QUEER. The pair tell host Rico Gagliano about why they vibe, how they make audiences feel the heat, and how their films are like a MAD MAX movie.

Follow & listen to the show on your preferred podcast app here.

A conversation between friends, the Chinese documentarian and the Korean critic, in English for the first time.

By Jung Sung-il, Jawni Han

We are pleased to present this conversation between Wang Bing and Jung Sung-il in English for the first time, translated and introduced by Jawni Han.

After the fall of the military dictatorship in South Korea in 1988, the country entered a period of wholesale political, social, and cultural transformation. At the heart of its newly blooming cinephile culture was Jung Sung-il, who remains one of Korea’s most prominent film critics. Jung founded the generation-defining film journal KINO in 1995, known for erudite film criticism that drew influence from Lacanian psychoanalysis, critical theory, French philosophy, and the writings of Shiguéhiko Hasumi. On the occasion of the journal’s seventh anniversary, Bong Joon-ho, one of its most avid readers, contributed a Se7en-inspired comic strip.

Jung’s first encounter with Wang Bing was at the 2003 International Film Festival Rotterdam, where the nine-hour cut of Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks premiered. He came out of the screening a new convert. In the inaugural issue of Nang, Jung praised the lengthy shots taken from a moving freight train that bookend the film:  

In the current century ... we are witnessing a second beginning of cinema—this time on the other side of the world. I think of Wang Bing as the Lumières and Apichatpong Weerasethakul as Méliès.

Since then, Jung has consistently championed Wang’s work, and the two have struck up a friendship. In 2009, Jung ed Wang in Yunnan Province, where the director was making Three Sisters (2012) and ’Til Madness Do Us Part (2013) at the same time. Jung’s own documentary Night and Fog in Zona (2015) documents Wang at work, the film’s form often mirroring the meditative style of its subject; at 235 minutes long, it is close in length to Wang’s 228-minute Madness. Reflecting on what he learned from Wang, Jung remarks: “Not the question of what to shoot, but of what not to shoot and when to stop shooting and leave the location.”

The following is Jung’s most recent interview with Wang, conducted at the Busan International Film Festival in 2022. Initially published in the Korean film magazine FILO, it is also the concluding chapter of Jung’s new book on the director, My Auteurism (2024). Jung maintains that an interview is the highest form of criticism; a director’s insights often withstand the test of time in a way that most prose reviews cannot. Their discussion revolves around Wang’s monumental 485-minute Dead Souls (2018). In 2005, Wang began interviewing the survivors of Jiabiangou Labor Camp in northwestern China, where those branded as “Rightists” were interned during the Great Leap Forward in the 1950s. Over the next few years, he recorded testimonials from 120 people, accumulating nearly 600 hours of footage. Jung writes elsewhere in his book that Dead Souls, one of four Wang films to engage with the history of Jiabiangou, bears witness to “history made of flesh and blood.”  

The interview was conducted with an interpreter, and Wang's responses in Mandarin were translated into Korean for print publication. This is the first time the text has appeared in English.

Read the conversation here.

Looking to the scraggy edges of society, Andrea Arnold’s cinema finds stubborn seeds of life. In this new video essay, Beyza Meşe and Laura Staab cast an eye toward the director’s outsiders, whose curiosity and desire flourish in the scrublands of austerity.

Andrea Arnold’s latest BIRD is now streaming exclusively in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland and Turkey here. A MUBI Release.

The directorial debut from Rebecca Lenkiewicz, starring Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw and Vicky Krieps, HOT MILK is a vivid journey of self-discovery set against a sun-drenched, Spanish summer.

In UK and Irish theaters May 30, from May 29 and coming soon to theaters across Latin America, Italy & more. A MUBI Release.

Stars Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson bring to life a rare and authentic connection in MATT AND MARA—Canadian director Kazik Radwanski's exploration of the unpredictable nature of romance.

MATT AND MARA is now streaming exclusively and (almost) globally here.

Now nominated for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards®, Magnus von Horn's THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE is a spellbinding dark fairy tale. Streaming exclusively in the US, UK, Latin America, , Turkey, Italy, Canada, India & more. A MUBI Release.

QUEER. A lush, sensuous adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ novel from applauded filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, featuring a magnificent performance from Daniel Craig. Now streaming on MUBI in the UK, Ireland, Latin America, , Canada, India, Austria and more. Coming soon to Netherlands, Spain and Italy. A MUBI Release.

A gritty revenge thriller starring Barry Keoghan and Christopher Abbott, from award-winning filmmaker Christopher Andrews.

BRING THEM DOWN comes to theaters starting February 7 in the US, UK, Mexico, Canada and Ireland. Coming soon to streaming. A MUBI Release.

MUBI Picks at Posteritati is a series where we bring special guests to the prestigious movie art gallery in New York City to discuss their favorite movie posters of all time.

As MATT & MARA arrives on MUBI, we welcomed the film’s director Kazik Radwanski and lead actor Deragh Campbell to Posteritati to discuss Kieślowski, Kiarostami, how their new project fits within the pantheon of Niagara Falls-set movies, and more.

Reuniting after their transfixing ANNE AT 13,000 FT, the Canadian trio of Radwanski, Campbell, and co-star Matt Johnson (BLACKBERRY) trace the ambiguous forms that romance can take with the finely tuned indie rom-com MATT & MARA.

MATT AND MARA is now streaming exclusively and (almost) globally here.

A Charlie's Angels reunion.

Academy Award nominee Demi Moore sits down with Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu to discuss THE SUBSTANCE. A MUBI Release.

Reflections on the adolescent drive to seek out graphic imagery, from early-’00s shock sites to the films of the New French Extremity.

By Philippa Snow

This piece was originally published in Issue 6 of Notebook magazine as part of a broader exploration of the cinema of youth. The magazine is available via direct subscription or in select stores around the world.

The first time I watched somebody die—really die—on film, I would have been about fourteen, surfing the web on the clunky, Frankensteinian experiment of a desktop computer that my father, an IT guy, had made for me out of spare parts he had harvested from work. I can’t how I first came across a recording of the former Pennsylvania Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer taking his own life on television in 1987, but I do with surprising clarity exactly how I felt in the immediate aftermath of watching him, in the middle of a live press conference, put a bullet through his brain. I felt that something irreversible had happened: that there had been a moment in which I was still a person who had never watched a man die, and then, bam, another moment in the wake of it in which I had become somebody else.

In 2022, I published a book about the use of self-inflicted injury in art and entertainment, and the conversations that I had with fellow-millennial readers at promotional events often turned to the website Rotten.com—a shock site whose stock in trade was violent videos, crime-scene images, hideous medical photography, and miscellaneous (sometimes mocked-up) gore, and which was one of several places that hosted the video of Dwyer.1 The site, which was created in 1996 by a pseudonymous web developer going by “Soylent,” functioned like an electronic game of chicken: its front page, a sparse white design studded with no-nonsense hyperlinks with titles like “Meat Grinder II” and “Celebrity Morgue,” alongside a brief, provocative content description, dared s to click through.2 There has always been a market for depictions of the violent and grotesque; the tape of Dwyer’s suicide re-aired on several news stations on the day he died, and it has been digitized and recirculated endlessly since. The advent of the internet, however, made finding such material child’s play, and for a time in the late ’90s and the early 2000s—before many parents had wised up to the existence of auto-censoring filters—it also made seeking it out a popular adolescent hobby. Still, nobody I talked to about Rotten.com during that promotional cycle could explain exactly why they browsed the site in their teens. Was it curiosity? A desire for catharsis? An attempt at psychological self-harm? Perhaps they were all seeking the same sense of horrible transformation I experienced when watching that video of Dwyer—hoping to propel themselves over the line into adulthood, leaving childhood innocence behind. Sickness, death, injury, cruelty: These were things we had been told to expect from adult life, and the ability to look directly at them without flinching could be seen as proof of our burgeoning maturity.

Then again, perhaps the sick, cheap thrill of it all was enough. Red Rooms (2023), an intelligently spooky film by the Canadian director Pascal Plante, interrogates the impetus to look at extreme content on the web without ever settling on an explanation as to why we feel the urge to do so. It is nominally a thriller but is far more intriguing when viewed as a character study of a woman who appears to have no character at all. Our “heroine” Kelly-Anne, a statuesque and blank-faced professional model, is attending the weeks-long trial of an alleged child-killer and online snuff-pornographer named Ludovic Chevalier, sleeping outside the courtroom to ensure herself a prime seat for the action. “Asking human beings to watch these kinds of videos,” the prosecutor says of the evidence she has assessed, “is inflicting something on them.” About halfway through the film, we learn that Kelly-Anne has chosen to inflict this horror on herself: Having obtained two of the videos in question on the dark web, she has watched them enough times to have memorized the action.

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