Directors New Films at Lincoln Center and MOMA
What Is the Future of FIlm?
By: Susan Hall - Mar 27, 2025
MOMA and Film at Lincoln Center are presenting their annual festival of new directors and new films.
Three films we saw have special promise. Blue Sun Palace is a singular take on sex workers in massage parlors in Queens. It is a quiet film, beautifully rendered in both performance and cinematography.
Lost Chapter takes place in Caracas, Venezuela. If Larry McMurtry (bookstore owner and novelist, Lonesome Dove) had set one of his stories in his four warehouses in Archer City. Texas, it might have had as many books as this film does. Yet the dry, flat plains of Archer City are at the opposite end of the lush setting of the Venezuelan book seller’s home. His daughter has returned from Madrid for a visit. Bougainvillea, palm trees, bright sunny skies peaking through green-laden branches and rainy days like Andrei Tarkovsky’s abound.
The Assistant is based on a novel by Robert Walser, who wrote ironic comedies during the lead up to World War I. Renowned painter Wilhelm Sasnal, joined by his wife Anka, direct. This a tale addressing social class with a different twist on the servant and master of Joseph Losey's The Servant, script Harold Pinter.
In all three films light is particularly important. The dark blues and greys of the massage parlor suggest both its economic advantages and its perils. It is the books that shine in Lost Chapter. In The Assistant, the electricity is turned off in an ambitious but failed inventor's large home. Getting light becomes an inventive process, until the final switch off to darkness.
Citizen Kane may be the most famous first film by a director. A story told by a docent at the Art Institute in Chicago suggests the importance of light to the young Orson Welles. As a highschool student he traveled to the museum and studied the tiny rooms and houses commissioned by Mrs. Narcissa Niblack Thorne. All the homes are lit naturally. Up until then, films made in studios were lit on a set without a ceiling. Light was generated from above. Welles saw that natural light could be used in film, and this style informs his masterpiece.
When he received an Academy award he was asked what the major contribution to his film was. He replied, "Thorne." The interviewer thought he meant the thorns of Rosebud. But he was referring to Mrs.Thorne’s rooms. Wes Anderson still visits them.
Here is the schedule and a brief synopsis of the films which will be screened form April 2 to April 13.
The complete 2025 New Directors/New Films lineup:
The Assistant dir. Wilhelm Sasnal, Anka Sasnal
Blue Sun Palace dir. Constance Tsang
Cactus Pears dir. Rohan Parashuram Kanawade
CycleMahesh dir. Suhel Banerjee
Drowning Dry dir. Laurynas Bareiša
Familiar Touch dir. Sarah Friedland
Fiume o morte! dir. Igor Bezinovi?
Grand Me dir. Atiye Zare Arandi
The Height of the Coconut Trees dir. Du Jie
Holy Electricity dir. Tato Kotetishvili
Invention dir. Courtney Stephens
Kyuka Before Summer’s End dir. Kostis Charamountanis
Lesson Learned dir. Bálint Szimler
Listen to the Voices dir. Maxime Jean-Baptiste
Lost Chapters dir. Lorena Alvarado
Lurker dir. Alex Russell
Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo) dir. Joel Alfonso Vargas
No Sleep Till dir. Alexandra Simpson
Sad Jokes dir. Fabian Stumm
Stranger dir. Zhengfan Yang
Two Times João Liberada dir. Paula Marques
The Village Next to Paradise dir. Mo Harawe
The Virgin of the Quarry Lake dir. Laura Casabé
Landscapes of Longing dir. Alisha Tejpal, Mireya Martinez, Anoushka Mirchandani
You Can’t See It From Here dir. Enrique Pedráza-Botero
Shorts Program II
Life Story dir. Jessica Dunn Rovinelli
Crushed dir. Camille Vigny
Maidenhair dir. Julia Sipowicz
In Retrospect, dir. Daniel Asadi Faezi, Mila Zhlutenko
The Inhabitants dir. Maureen Fazendeiro
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World dir. Kevin Walker, Irene Zahariadis
What We Ask of a Statue Is That It Doesn’t Move dir. Daphné Hérétakis
Tickets will go on sale to the general public on Thursday, March 13 at noon ET, with early-access opportunities for MoMA and FLC Members on Tuesday, March 11 at noon ET. Tickets are $18 for the general public; $15 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $13 for MoMA and FLC Members. Opening Night tickets are $25 for the general public; $22 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $20 for MoMA and FLC Members.
Complete your ND/NF experience with a VIP Pass, which includes two tickets to every film and two tickets to Opening Night film and the Opening Night Party, for $400 for the general public and $350 for FLC and MoMA Members. Learn more at newdirectors.org
New Directors/New Films is presented by The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center.
Film at MoMA is made possible by CHANEL. Additional support is provided by the Annual Film Fund. Leadership support for the Annual Film Fund is provided by Debra and Leon D. Black, with major funding from The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), and The Young Patrons Council of The Museum of Modern Art. For more information, visit moma.org and follow @MoMAFilm and @MuseumModernArt on X and @themuseumofmodernart on Instagram.
Rolex is the Official Partner and Exclusive Timepiece of Film at Lincoln Center.
Film at Lincoln Center funding for New Directors/New Films is provided in part by Anne-Victoire Auriault and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. American Airlines is the Official Airline of Film at Lincoln Center.
FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS
Films will screen at either The Museum of Modern Art’s Titus 1 / Titus 2 Theaters (11 W. 53rd Street) or Film at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater (165 W. 65th Street)
Please note the screening location for each film below.
Familiar Touch
Sarah Friedland, 2024, U.S., 91m
New York Premiere
Octogenarian Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant) has been living independently, but cracks have started to emerge: toast is placed to dry in the dish rack, confusion rests on her face, the dead are spoken of in present tense while the living (such as a son right before her) go entirely unrecognized. Her entrance into an assisted-living facility begins the strange, transcendent journey that is Familiar Touch, Sarah Friedland’s feature debut, which earned three awards in the 2024 Venice Film Festival Orizzonti Competition, including the Lion of the Future, Best Director, and Best Actress for Chalfant’s astonishing turn. Friedland builds her drama through sharp honesty, and tough as its material may be, few films are so tonally flexible, so able to turn on a dime: stray moments of tenderness, humility, even absurdity poke through, with a love and care for Ruth shown by characters and creators alike. Familiar Touch portends the arrival of major directorial talent. A Music Box Films release.
Wednesday, April 2
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Sarah Friedland, Kathleen Chalfant
8:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Sarah Friedland, Kathleen Chalfant
Friday, April 4
6:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Sarah Friedland, Kathleen Chalfant
Closing Night
Lurker
Alex Russell, 2025, U.S./Italy, 100m
New York Premiere
In Alex Russell’s irresistible, screw-turning thriller for the influencer age, Los Angeles clothing store clerk Matthew (Théodore Pellerin, Genesis) contrives his way into the entourage of up-and-coming musician Oliver (Archie Madekwe, Saltburn)—and once insinuated into the inner circle, refuses to give up his position without a fight. Lurker thrives on Pellerin’s remarkable turn—one rarely sees actors write such rich psychology in the flick of their eyes or curl of a smile—and Madekwe’s deft oscillations between affability and stone-faced detachment. A writer/producer on award-winning series The Bear and Beef, Russell helms his feature debut with a steady hand that captures the whirlwind rush of stardom and the unsettling chill of obsession as the line between friendship and fandom begins to blur beyond recognition. A MUBI release.
Saturday, April 12
7:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 1 – Q&A with Alex Russell
Sunday, April 13
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Alex Russell
The Assistant / Cz?owiek do wszystkiego
Wilhelm Sasnal, Anka Sasnal, 2025, Poland/U.K., 124m
Polish with English subtitles
North American Premiere
“I was just a button hanging by a thread that no one was willing to sew back on again.” So we’re introduced to Joseph, freshly fired from a menial job and stepping into a world that doesn’t want him. His fortunes seemingly reverse when he’s brought into the employ of Mr. Tobler, an inventor whose no-nonsense protocol sets in motion this riveting character drama from Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal, adapted from a 1908 Robert Walser novel. Buoyed by a star-making turn from Piotr Trojan, stunning pastoral locations, lush cinematography, a transfixing electronic score (to say nothing of its expertly deployed Smiths cue), and supreme fashion sense, The Assistant is a visually and sonically opulent film about the bonds that constrain us all.
Saturday, April 5
8:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
Sunday, April 6
6:15pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Blue Sun Palace
Constance Tsang, 2024, U.S., 116m
Mandarin, English, and Min Nan with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
For more than 30 years the Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng has forged an indelible, inimitable creative partnership with Tsai Ming-liang. Lee makes as big an impression in Constance Tsang’s Blue Sun Palace, which relocates him to working-class Queens. When wayward Taiwanese immigrant Cheung (Lee) finds his life of part-time work and light extramarital affairs shattered by violence, he connects with workers at a small Queens salon, victims themselves to the indignities forced upon strangers in a strange land. But Blue Sun Palace is no misery showcase. Intimacy and warmth co-exist with economic anxieties and deep grief that are articulated with uncommon intelligence and understanding of how adults endure any given day. In this debut feature, awarded the French Touch Prize by the jury at the 2024 Cannes Critics’ Week, Tsang shapes an immigrant’s tale, a relationship drama, a workplace comedy, and a great New York story in one. A Dekanalog release.
Saturday, April 5
5:30pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 1 – Q&A with Constance Tsang
Sunday, April 6
5:45pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Constance Tsang
Cactus Pears / Sabar Bonda
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, 2025, India/U.K./Canada, 112m
Marathi with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Western India’s stunning, cascading landscapes background Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s debut feature of familial bereavement and queer longing that earned Sundance’s World Cinema Grand Jury Prize. A family consecrates the loss of its patriarch with a 10-day mourning period that strands Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) in the countryside he long ago deserted for Mumbai. Grief’s common phases (poring over old photos, sharing beloved memories) coexist with local rituals, all while Anand’s hidden desires materialize in a rekindled friendship with childhood companion Balya. Through these experiences, sensual discoveries, and Bhushaan Manoj’s ever-measured performance, Cactus Pears emerges as an exquisite character piece perfected by its heartrending finale.
Tuesday, April 8
6:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Wednesday, April 9
8:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
CycleMahesh
Suhel Banerjee, 2024, India/U.K./Canada, 61m
Odia, Marathi, and Hindi with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Just how far would you go to reach home? When the COVID-19 lockdowns left him stranded on the other side of India, delivery boy Mahesh became a national sensation by peddling 1,700 kilometers in seven days. It’s a story good enough for a movie, one that director Suhel Banerjee has broken apart and rendered a trancelike travelogue that combines fiction and nonfiction. CycleMahesh (winner of IDFA’s Best First Feature) guides us through breathtaking terrain—wheat fields, river valleys, and raging fires complemented by gorgeous sunrises and sunsets—on an alternately hyperactive and contemplative journey that, in just 60 minutes, compresses enough formal distinction and compelling ideas for a film three times its length.
Wednesday, April 9
6:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Thursday, April 10
9:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
Drowning Dry / Ses?s
Laurynas Bareiša, 2024, Lithuania/Latvia, 88m
Lithuanian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
It starts with a kick to the head. Mixed martial arts competitor Lukas has just handily defeated his opponent and celebrates with his wife, child, and friends backstage, setting the scene for a nimble combination of communal bonding and looming horrors. Writer-director Laurynas Bareiša, an ND/NF veteran for his debut feature Pilgrims, takes us on a non-linear journey through the experiences and recollections of those who survived tragedy (and those who didn’t), shot with unceasing patience and formal rigor. Drowning Dry was the second of Bareiša’s films selected as Lithuania’s entry for the Best International Feature Academy Award. Winner of Locarno’s Best Director and, in recognition of its indispensable ensemble of four, Best Performance awards. A Dekanalog release.
Thursday, April 3
8:45pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Sunday, April 6
12:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
Fiume o morte!
Igor Bezinovi?, 2025, Croatia/Italy/Slovenia, 112m
Croatian, Italian, Fiuman with English subtitles
North American Premiere
The past is present and fact made fiction in Igor Bezinovi?’s Fiume o morte!, a high-energy hybrid documentary about early-20th-century Italian warrior-poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. A model for Mussolini who ruled Rijeka, Croatia, with an iron fist, D’Annunzio’s 16-month reign left such a legacy that current denizens (street-cast in a brilliant montage) are more than a little willing to play-act as his soldiers. Bezinovi? elaborately restages Rijeka’s strange, bloody era in a duet between filmmaking and history that melds Wes Anderson, Straub-Huillet, and Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up while holding an uneasy mirror to contemporary fears of fascism. Winner of the top prize at the 2024 International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Friday, April 4
8:45pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
Saturday, April 5
3:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Grand Me
Atiye Zare Arandi, 2024, Iran/Belgium, 80m
Farsi with English subtitles
North American Premiere
People are complicated and families are hard—two truisms that collide with tremendous force in Atiye Zare Arandi’s feature documentary debut, Grand Me. At 9 years old, Melina is of age to bring forth a legal case for her guardianship. The problem: neither of her divorced parents is especially interested in taking their daughter home. Melina might be cinema’s most independently minded youth this side of Antoine Doinel, but in looking closely at the circumstances, Zare Arandi—Melina’s aunt—discovers the hurt only children are capable of experiencing. Bracing but never overbearing, and with a Kiarostami-esque car ride brilliantly anchoring its narrative in contemporary Iran, Grand Me is a shining vision of both selfishness and resilience. Winner of the Next:Wave Award at CPH:DOX.
Saturday, April 12
2:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Sunday, April 13
1:15pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
The Height of the Coconut Trees / ?????
Du Jie, 2024, Japan, 100m
Japanese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Chinese cinematographer-turned-
Tuesday, April 8
8:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Du Jie
Thursday, April 10
6:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Du Jie
Holy Electricity / Tsminda Electroenergia
Tato Kotetishvili, 2024, Georgia/Netherlands, 95m
Georgian with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Winner of the Golden Leopard in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente section, Tato Kotetishvili’s debut feature is suffused with tenderness and danger alike. When young Gonga and his bookie-pressured cousin Bart find a bag of rusty crosses, they decide to fashion them into neon crucifixes and, something like Paper Moon transposed to Tbilisi, sell them door-to-door. Holy Electricity contains nary a clichéd or predictable image, nor one scenario Kotetishvili doesn’t exploit for all its comedic, dramatic, and emotional potential. It’s rare to see a film of such formal confidence assume so many new shapes and sizes (with a hilarious documentary parody for good measure), surprising us all the way to its final, ecstatic shot.
Saturday, April 12
5:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
Sunday, April 13
3:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Invention
Courtney Stephens, 2024, U.S., 72m
New York Premiere
Personal anguish and noirish mystery are inextricably bound in Invention, wherein Callie Hernandez (who co-conceptualized the film, and plays a cross between herself and some other vision) seeks the truth about her father—an inventor of devices boasting untapped power—whose death is not what it seems. Traversing a backwoods America of oddballs, cretins, estate vultures, and even the occasional sweetheart, Hernandez’s journey is a constant reminder of how much our loved ones hide from us in life and death alike. Courtney Stephens’s years in experimental documentary cinema help turn this Super 16mm–shot investigation narrative on its head, while a commanding performance confirms Hernandez (winner of a Best Performance Prize in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente) as a captivating screen performer and artist.
Saturday, April 5
6:15pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Courtney Stephens
Sunday, April 6
4:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Courtney Stephens
Kyuka Before Summer’s End / Κιο?κα Πριν το τ?λος του καλοκαιριο?
Kostis Charamountanis, 2024, Greece/North Macedonia, 105m
Greek with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Babis takes his twin children Konstantinos and Elsa (among the best-sketched, most-charming sibling duos in recent memory) sailing through the Greek isles, engaging in all the affection and jousting common to single parents and teenage offspring. It’s a seemingly standard trip laced with secret intent: Babis is en route to finally introduce the mother who abandoned Konstantinos and Elsa in infancy, a meeting that will dredge up difficult pasts and untreated hurt. Kostis Charamountanis’s feature debut is nevertheless a constant pleasure, its complexity and detail placed against piercingly blue seas, verdant flora, and glowing sunsets. Festival favorites Aftersun or Murina may come to mind, yet Kyuka moves at a speed all its own—peppered by hypnotic documentary interludes and tense, dazzlingly edited exchanges—up to Charamountanis’s perfectly orchestrated climax.
Sunday, April 6
8:45pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
Monday, April 7
5:45pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Lesson Learned / Fekete pont
Bálint Szimler, 2024, Hungary, 119m
Hungarian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Palkó has been transferred to a new school, and finding new friends and battling tough teachers are making his adolescent life all the more complicated. Meanwhile, Juci (Anna Mészöly) is a young teacher staring down the other end of the barrel at myopic superiors, bullying parents who can’t fathom why their child is struggling, and fellow teachers whose cruelty crosses boundaries. From these intersecting strands Bálint Szimler, in just his second feature, captures all the intricacy and pleasure of a campus novel—from the shame-tinged tedium of detention lessons to a dazzling school-play sequence. Photographed on deeply textured 16mm, Lesson Learned is refreshingly frank about how kids act amongst themselves, the way teachers wield power (emotional and physical) to mask their insecurities, and what happens when clueless parents are brought into the fold. It’s hard to imagine a viewer who won’t recognize much of their own schooling experience moment by moment, or find themselves moved by Szimler’s roundly empathetic worldview. Winner of a Best Performance prize and Special Mention in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente.
Thursday, April 10
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
Friday, April 11
5:45pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Listen to the Voices / Kouté vwa
Maxime Jean-Baptiste, 2024, Belgium/France/French Guiana, 77m
French and Guianese Creole with English subtitles
New York Premiere
The relationship Melrick has forged with his grandmother is refreshingly candid and egalitarian: meals are cooked together, relationships discussed, feelings vented. The young boy has little choice in light of a tragedy that took his father, an event we witness only through a brilliantly abstract lens rendered by Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s feature debut, winner of a Special Jury Prize and Special Mention from the First Feature Jury in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente. Through ecstatic musical performances, close-quarter journeys through the beautiful streets of French Guiana, and dreamlike visions of the jungle, Jean-Baptiste has crafted a vision of trauma and recovery that, like too few films, understands life as distinct blocks of experience strung across one barely linear path.
Saturday, April 5
4:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
Sunday, April 6
1:45pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Lost Chapters / Los Capítulos Perdidos
Lorena Alvarado, 2024, Venezuela, 67m
Spanish with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
When a letter nestled deep inside her father’s library details the writing of an unknown author, the young, ambitious bibliophile Ena sets off to find his work. Is the fabled book real? Did the author even exist? Where most movies might use this to kick off a treasure hunt, Lost Chapters opens a door to Venezuela’s rich cultural history and troubled present. A master class in composition and sound design that leaves no detail to chance, Lorena Alvarado’s feature debut recalls the intellectual obsessiveness of Roberto Bolaño while achieving a remarkable sense of equanimity and emotional warmth from her real-life sister, father, and grandmother, whose on-screen naturalism never once lapses into mannerism.
Thursday, April 3
8:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
Saturday, April 5
1:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)
Joel Alfonso Vargas, 2025, U.S., 101m
English and Spanish with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Rico is going to be a father. The problem: he’s only 19, barely has a job, is astonishingly immature, and is barely concerned with Destiny, the girl he got pregnant. When Destiny moves in with Rico, his no-nonsense mother, and a sister enjoying this upheaval way too much, the young man finds these new responsibilities are far more than he bargained for. In his feature debut, Joel Alfonso Vargas looks to the side of New York—and the New Yorkers—in which cinema has distressingly little interest to carve a thriller of quotidian tension. Extended, electrifying dialogue sequences allow Vargas to sketch harsh dynamics, every fight and passive-aggressive gesture tightening the screws on Rico and his bad choices. It’s hard to take your eyes off the slow-motion wreckage of Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo), a work that veers from pathos to agitation and back again.
Friday, April 4
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Joel Alfonso Vargas
Saturday, April 5
8:30pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Joel Alfonso Vargas
No Sleep Till
Alexandra Simpson, 2024, U.S./Switzerland, 93m
New York Premiere
The slice-of-life indie is alive and well in Alexandra Simpson’s feature debut, recipient of a Special Mention from the jury at the 2024 Venice Film Festival Critics’ Week. While a looming hurricane spells doom for a sleepy Florida town, citizens carry on: two friends pull pranks and ponder life; another pair captures terrifying footage of the storm; a young woman harbors a deep crush. Through this fleet exploration Simpson keeps audiences on their feet, no two stories told at the exact same tempo and no composition easily anticipated. And backgrounding it all is a sun-soaked, palm tree–lined Florida that has seldom looked as beautiful as it does in No Sleep Till.
Wednesday, April 9
8:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Alexandra Simpson
Friday, April 11
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Alexandra Simpson
Sad Jokes
Fabian Stumm, 2024, Germany, 96m
German, English, Italian, and Swedish with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Joseph—a gay filmmaker and father to a young child whose work-life balance inspires little confidence—is writing a comedy. “What kind?” his therapist asks. In lieu of a good answer, Joseph stammers about his filmography’s move from “naturalistic” to “absurdist”—a confusion that perfectly captures the enlivening, unpredictable paths taken by Sad Jokes. As writer, director, and star, Fabian Stumm blends intense strife with hilarious slapstick so effortlessly it’s hard to tell where one stops or another starts, brilliantly paying off character relationships and conflicts in a tight frame. A refreshingly honest film about the trials of directors, the foibles of hookup culture, and realizing your therapist is crazier than you, replete with the flights of fancy that only artists are capable of experiencing, Sad Jokes won the Munich International Film Festival’s German Cinema New Talent Award for Best Director.
Friday, April 11
8:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Fabian Stumm
Saturday, April 12
4:30pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Fabian Stumm
Stranger
Zhengfan Yang, 2024, U.S./China/Netherlands/Norway/
New York Premiere
A woman confesses on her livestream. Two men get interrogated by increasingly agitated police. Wedding photos are taken while the groom indulges a major secret. These and other scenarios unfold in Zhengfan Yang’s Stranger, which investigates China’s social, political, and economic identity through long takes that continually evolve, surprise, and dazzle. But Stranger is more than a bravura display to recall Chantal Akerman or Béla Tarr—its command of space and movement set the stage for an actor’s showcase and master class in narrative delineation that confirms Yang as one of China’s most exciting up-and-coming cinematic talents.
Sunday, April 6
2:45pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Zhengfan Yang
Tuesday, April 8
8:45pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Zhengfan Yang
Timestamp / Strichka Chasu
Kateryna Gornostai, 2025, Ukraine/Luxembourg/
North American Premiere
The three years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have found humanity at its bravest and basest alike, conflicting energies given full display in Timestamp. A school day proceeds apace until air sirens send young children into an underground shelter. Just 18 kilometers from the front, others walk amidst classrooms turned to rubble. Adolescents train in a “patriotic military game” treated with seriousness that belies any sense of play. A combat vet bluntly informs a packed classroom that the front lines brought “nothing good.” Danger hovers over every moment of Timestamp—every expression of love, anger, friendship, and freedom. In this patchwork approach to a conflict no single film could sufficiently capture, director Kateryna Gornostai (whose previous fiction feature, Stop-Zemlia, was in ND/NF 2021) has achieved something grand, cutting through the noise and partisanship to put us in the shoes of a brave, battered populace. Winner of the Eurimages New Lab Outreach Award at CPH:DOX.
Saturday, April 12
7:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
Sunday, April 13
12:15pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Two Times João Liberada / Duas Vezes João Liberada
Paula Tomás Marques, 2025, Portugal, 70m
Portuguese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
There are so many movies about movies that one might wonder what’s left to say. Yet self-reflecting cinema finds new form in Two Times João Liberada, which charts the production of a biopic about Liberada (a gender-nonconforming nun who faced persecution during the Portuguese Inquisition) and its star, João, who’s conflicted about the job when not outright haunted by Liberada’s ghost. This is one of many bold, brilliant gestures Paula Tomás Marques makes with this feature debut that, in 70 minutes, tackles a flabbergasting number of concerns: the psychology of acting and directing, an abstract trans history, a contention with who tells what story, failed artistic ambition, and art as the means to make sense of ourselves. Two Times João Liberada forms a tapestry that’s as grand as it is intricate, with a lead performance from June João that makes emotional sense of intellectual complexity.
Monday, April 7
8:30pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Tuesday, April 8
6:15pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
The Village Next to Paradise
Mo Harawe, 2024, Austria/France/Germany/
New York Premiere
A news broadcast announces the U.S. drone strike that’s killed an Al Qaeda associate in a “remote area” of Somalia. When that story ends, The Village Next to Paradise begins: Mamargade is the hardworking civilian for whom burying this terrorist leader is but one way to provide for his family in a world of strivers and cheats. This deeply moving, brutally honest vision of Somali life probes economic and familial anxieties with a brilliance that recalls great works of Italian neorealism. In his feature debut, the first Somali film to be an Official Selection at Cannes, Mo Harawe has created a film of stirring music, rich colors, and fine textures, one that grants a better understanding of our planet and a deeper love for those on it.
Thursday, April 3
6:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Saturday, April 5
1:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
The Virgin of the Quarry Lake / La Virgen De La Tosquera
Laura Casabé, 2024, Argentina/Mexico/Spain, 90m
Spanish with English subtitles
New York Premiere
It’s 2001 and the sun is hitting Argentina hard enough to cut power on the internet café from which Natalia (Dolores Oliverio) messages Diego, a local boy to whose looks and charm she’s entirely susceptible. The problem: her friend is also into him, Diego’s into an older woman, and his feelings toward Natalia never extend past friendship. From this no-win scenario director Laura Casabé extracts all the pleasures, anxieties, and frenzy of teenage life. Based on short stories from Mariana Enríquez’s acclaimed The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, The Virgin of the Quarry Lake should please coming-of-age enthusiasts with its nostalgia-inducing details, but most remarkable is Casabé’s skill for pivoting to horror—and some of the most startling violence in recent memory—like the flip of a switch. None of this would be possible without Oliverio, whose lead performance brings Natalia to life in full frightening capacity.
Thursday, April 3
6:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Laura Casabé
Friday, April 4
8:30pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Laura Casabé
ND/NF 2025 Shorts Program I (89m)
Films are listed in the order that they will screen
Landscapes of Longing
Alisha Tejpal, Mireya Martinez, Anoushka Mirchandani, 2024, India, 14m
Hindi and English with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Three generations of women explore their connections and differences through a family archive of photographs, music, and storytelling in an intimate search for their identity and roots, bringing memories to life via the ever-evolving, dissociative experiences of longing and migration.
You Can’t See It From Here / No se ve desde acá
Enrique Pedráza-Botero, 2024, Colombia/U.S., 19m
Spanish and English with English subtitles
New York Premiere
The state of the American Dream is assessed through a series of vignettes that follow the opportunities available to Latin American immigrants of disparate social and economic status arriving in modern-day Miami. Questions of identity, economic opportunity, and cultural assimilation play out against the bureaucracy of immigration, as archival footage underscores the nation’s obsession with American individualism.
In Retrospect / Rückblickend betrachtet
Daniel Asadi Faezi, Mila Zhlutenko, 2025, Germany, 14m
German with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Inaugurated in 1972, Munich’s Olympia mall was built by Gastarbeiter (“temporary workers”). In 2016, a mass shooting motivated by xenophobic, far-right extremism occurred in its vicinity. In Retrospect expertly uses archival footage, current images, and Sohrab Shahid Saless’s Addressee Unknown (1983)—about an affair between a white German woman and a Turkish architect—to offer a chilling reflection on our political present.
The Inhabitants
Maureen Fazendeiro, 2024, France/Portugal, 41m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
The co-director of The Tsugua Diaries (2021) draws inspiration from Chantal Akerman’s News from Home (1977) to blend images of the tranquil Parisian suburb of her upbringing with letters from her mother, one of the few women who defiantly assists the commune’s newest inhabitants: a Roma community.
Tickets here.