Film Catalogue

18-year-old Wellington wanders the streets of São Paulo, having just been released from juvie. The bridges of communication between himself and his parents have been burned to the ground, and he lacks the resources to rebuild his life. An encounter with the much older and more mature Ronaldo will aid him on his journey, but the passionate relationship that blossoms between them won’t be without its thorns. Queer erotic drama revolving around a relationship that goes against the odds, a story of a rough coming-of-age in the far from idyllic contemporary Brazil, or a leap of faith towards pivotal encounters with life-changing people? Marcelo Caetano’s multifaceted film answers in the affirmative to all of the above, tenderly and honestly embracing his characters in their entirety, flaws, contradictions, inalienable right to err, and all.

One of the most daring and inventive examples of social satire we've seen in cinema in recent years, Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn by Radu Jude, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, is one of the first films to incorporate into its plot the dystopia we experienced during the Covid era, almost simultaneously with the outbreak of the pandemic. Emi, a history teacher at a prestigious school in Romania, sees her professional future hanging by a thread when her personal sex tape is leaked online. Having endured a grueling day, during which she has been confronted with countless sexist and racist attitudes as well as the awkward situations that have arisen due to Covid restrictions, Emi is called upon to defend herself before a group of outraged and reactionary parents in a process resembling a monstrous mockery of an Inquisition. Launching a direct assault on the viewer’s every conservative reflex and playing with the sense of the forbidden and the sacrilegious through interpolated episodes – sometimes sarcastic and sometimes outright provocative – that interrupt the main plot, Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn reserves the most meta touch for its utterly crazy, completely unpredictable open-ended finale.

As a heat wave brings a Marseille neighborhood to the boil, three roommates gleefully meddle in the lives of their neighbors from their balcony. Until a late-night drink turns into a bloody affair... Written in collaboration with Céline Sciamma, Noémie Merlant’s follow-up to her 2021 debut is a brazen, in-your-face-foray into genre, a whimsical investigation of the hidden mechanisms of the male gaze, and a prime example of feminist horror comedy – without an agenda. Sometimes gory, sometimes playful, but always vengeful, this surprising gem allows its characters to reclaim, revise, and revolutionize their (forced) hypersexuality, slowly building a universe likened by the international critique to the early punkish but profoundly colorful films by Pedro Almodóvar. This ambitious portrait of three women on fire invites the viewer to enter a battlefield at their own risk, not to witness but to help women's anger defeat male entitlement. More than a laboratory to test different (but equally fun!) models of storytelling, The Balconettes is a testament to an era where the discussion on women's right to representation is finally open.

“We are making a film about an artist who didn’t want to be remembered”: French actress Zita Hanrot, breaks the fourth wall, staring the audience in the eye, and describes the impossible endeavor she is about to undertake. She has to portray Suzanne Césaire; a feminist from Martinique, a poet possessing a distinctive Afro-surreal idiom, a strong anti-colonialist voice taking a stand despite her limited work, an activist that marked the Négritude spiritual movement of the 1930s in Paris, a woman who was dubbed by His/tory as the wife of the famous politician, Aimé Césaire. Following her César Award, Hanrot, an up-and-coming star in French cinema, has just given birth to a baby, which she puts to sleep in between shoots, in between the cracks of “reality” that emerge, when it clashes with intergenerational desires, dreams and the trauma of races and genders, with stories that grow roots. As this unparalleled story unfolds, playfully adopting the meta-cinema format only to gradually surrender to a sultry imagery that engulfs the senses (and not just because of the selective use of 16mm film), the observation at the start is overturned; A film about a woman who was trying not only to be remembered in the future, but also in her own “here-and-now,” invests in the power of cinema to obliterate the experience of linear time, to bring another version of the story to the present, and to prompt us all to confront our responsibilities through methexis.

Walerian Borowczyk’s The Beast makes its intentions clear right from the very start, setting aside all decorum, any inhibition, every taboo. The head of a noble family in dire financial straits thinks his luck has changed when Lucy, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, agrees – for reasons of her own – to marry his son, who has physical deformities and mental disabilities. However, almost immediately after the two families first meet, and as a series of illicit fantasies strike Lucy in her dreams (are they dreams?), dark secrets of the aristocracy quickly become one with primal legends, melding the dream world with reality. Sex scenes that caused a stir, eliciting embarrassment and shock, while also beating a path for films such as Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession; an ingenious mix of gothic lore and French erotic farce; unstinting scorn for the repression of carnal desire, for stifling run-of-the-mill morality, and for the hypocrisy inherent in propriety – these are just some of the distinctions meriting a film that never fails (and never will fail) to provoke, and to trigger a reaction.

Visual artist, photographer, multimedia artist, and director Tracey Moffatt, is perhaps the most influential and nuanced voice in the artistic world of the Aborigines of Australia, while her work has been exhibited in institutions like Tate and the MoMA in Los Angeles. In beDevil, what unfolds is three stories dominated by the metaphysical element and by references to the Australian tradition. Rick, an Aborigine boy living by the marsh, is haunted by the image of an American soldier drowning in quicksand. Ruby and her family live in a house on the side of some abandoned railway lines, a site where anyone could see ghosts wandering around. A landlord is struggling to evict the tenants of an old warehouse, a couple that has been dead for years. Modern reality, the colonial past, historic traumas, legends, and doctrines intertwine in an immersive, delusional film.

Renowned author Michel Houellebecq travels to Guadeloupe to take part in a look-alike contest. Everything seems to be running smoothly at the beginning, yet, various unforeseen events push Houellebecq past his limits, placing him in the middle of a bizarre intrigue. A loony satirical comedy filmed as a pseudo-documentary, through which one of the greatest authors (and cunning provocateurs) alive makes a self-deprecating attempt at irony, readily ridiculing his image as a misanthrope and harsh cynic with radical political views. Faced -among others- with his alleged racist ideas, the creator of Atomised and The Possibility of an Island wanders as if lost in a place where everything seems both possible and impossible at the same time. A lively, out of tune road movie about reality and appearances, and the private and public truth, that unveils another side of a writer infamous for his pessimism; a very fun and easy-going one. As is typical, appearances can be deceiving.

Maria is a young, struggling actress with promise. When an emerging Italian director casts her to headline a new film alongside an American superstar, her dreams are coming true. But what seems like a big breakthrough turns out to be the start of a living hell. That movie is Last Tango in Paris. The actress is Maria Schneider. A story that exemplifies the influence of toxic masculinity in the realm of the spectacle, an anatomy of (structural) violence and the trauma that wrecked the psyche of a young actress, but mostly a daring portrait that underlines the double standards of cancel culture, as well as the burning imperativeness of the victims’ memory.

A group of scientists finds themselves at a standstill, debating whether they should issue a warning to the general public for a possible impending tragedy: a major earthquake which evidence suggest may strike Lisbon within 30 hours. However, everything is based on speculation, and if ultimately there is no earthquake, what will their culpability be in regards to the panic that will ensue? A room drama infused with the suspense of a psychological thriller, realistic filming and tense storytelling, The Best of All Worlds raises the question of what a scientist’s imperative is towards society at large, closely observing the tensions and the dynamics that emerge within a small group of experts under the unbearable pressure of a catastrophic scenario. Placing moral stances, ideological positions, and tempers under the microscope (pun intended), Rita Nunes’ second feature film calls upon the viewer to step up to the plate; What would you do if you were in their position?

The Big Feast, directed by Marco Ferreri, invites us to witness the most outrageous and debauched meal that cinema has ever seen in this vitriolic political satire that mercilessly lambasts the greed, consumerism, and spiritual estrangement of the urban elite. Above all, by making masterful use of food as both a symbol and an extension of an increasingly bestial humanity, the film brings the unspoken and innate desire for self-annihilation that plagues people in the modern day firmly to the fore. Four successful middle-aged men – who reflect key pillars of the transformation seen in the post-war European landscape and are played by four giants of the silver screen (Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, and Ugo Tognazzi) – go to stay at a villa one of them owns, where they set out on a journey of self-knowledge and self-punishment from which there is no return, determined as they are to see things through, right to the very end. Performing a tawdry suicidal ritual in which food is transformed into an instrument of lethal self-harm, they sweep us off on a binge-eating cinematic epic, on an unprecedented exercise in gluttony and immoderation that shocked critics and audiences alike, dividing opinion at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973.

Melodramatic but never campy or over the top, and with Hollywood-quality production values, Just’s films probe vulnerable, ordinarily well-armored zones of the masculine psyche like grief, same-sex love, Oedipal conflict, and spiritual desire. In Bliss and Heaven, a young man dressed in jeans and a vest walks determinedly through a wheat field under the hot, midday summer sun in an eerily quiet landscape. This scene is interrupted several times by a view of the field shot from within a noisy truck moving on a road parallel to the field. When the vehicle approaches and passes him by, the young protagonist hides in the field and watches the truck driver—an older man resembling him and dressed similarly—disappear inside the boot of the vehicle that is now parked in a parking lot of what looks like a deserted power station… A film made shortly after his graduation from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen already encapsulates the key themes and concerns he will unfold later in his work.

Within the confines of a massage parlor in Flushing, Queens, Amy and Didi navigate romance, happiness, and the obligations of family thousands of miles from home. Despite the physical and emotional toll their work extracts, the women who live at the parlor have fortified an impenetrable sisterhood. When tragedy strikes on Lunar New Year, Amy is forced to consider her own destiny for the first time ever. Despite finding solace in the company of Cheung, Amy must leave the city and prioritize her own spirit in order to survive. In an unseen part of New York, Blue Sun Palace explores the lives of transient souls trying to find a sense of permanence.