The Weekly MUBI Digest | 16th September
David Farnor | On 16, Sep 2017
This weekend, MUBI explores a decade in the life of the acclaimed Berlin School, an exhilarating movement of German cinema spearheaded in the early 1990s by directors like Christian Petzold and Angela Schanelec, and attracting new attention with Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann.
It also continues its Maurice Pialat retrospective – a love letter to a filmmaker who didn’t want to be loved – and is still streaming its transcendental new Western, Mimosas, after its cinema release. (You can read our interview with Mimosas director Oliver Laxe here – and catch up with his debut below too.)
What’s new, coming soon and leaving soon on the subscription service? This is your weekly MUBI Digest:
This week on MUBI
The City Below – 16th September
MUBI completes a Berlin School double-bill with Christoph Hochhäusler’s 2010 German drama, which follows a man and a woman at an art exhibition, who share a fleeting moment of attraction that neither can act upon. Days later, a chance second meeting leads to an innocent coffee and the two strangers – both married – toy with their unexplainable fascination with each other.
Hello Destroyer – 17th September
A young junior hockey player’s life is shattered by an in-game act of violence. In an instant his life is abruptly turned upside down; torn from the fraternity of the team and the coinciding position of prominence, he is cast as a pariah and ostracised from the community.
A Nos Amours – 19th September
In a revelatory film debut, the dynamic, fresh-faced Sandrine Bonnaire plays Suzanne, a fifteen-year-old Parisian who embarks on a sexual rampage in an effort to separate herself from her overbearing, beloved father. À nos amours is one of Maurice Pialat’s greatest achievements, continuing MUBI’s retrospecive season.
Other new releases on MUBI
The State I Am In
MUBI begins its Berlin School double-bill with Christian Petzold’s razor-sharp debut, co-written with Harun Farocki and marking the director’s move from TV to the big screen. A couple with a criminal past have been living on the run with their 15-year-old daughter. When their money is stolen, they must return secretly from Portugal to their native Germany, a journey during which Jeanne’s teenage development coincides with the violent disintegration of the family cell.
Mimosas
MUBI exclusively presents Mimosas simultaneously with cinemas. Laxe’s latest film finds the director entering genre territory and pushing its boundaries. A spiritual western, a desert odyssey and a daring invitation to jump into the unknown. Read our interview with Oliver Laxe.
The Mouth Agape
MUBI’s Maurice Pialat retrospective continues with his third film, where he dissects human selfishness and vulnerability with a surgeon’s precision. Monique is dying. Around her gather her unfaithful husband, her son, who is like his father, and her daughter-in-law. We observe them playing with life as she dies.
Palo Alto
Based on the novel by James Franco, Palo Alto sees Franco play a soccer coach who hits on one of his young students. Gia Coppola’s film, though, opens up the ensemble drama to create an affecting, sincere portrait of youth in California, with a cast that includes Jack Kilmer, Nat W
The Graduation
A plunge into one of today’s most prestigious schools of cinema: La Fémis in Paris.
You All Are Captains
A European director is making a film with children from a social centre in Tangiers. Because of his methods, his relationship with the children during shooting degenerate and transform the evolution of the project.
Graduate First
The world sometimes seems divided into two camps: those who recall their teenage years as having been an exhilarating dream, and those who remember them as having been an infernal, nightmarish hell…
Peggy Sue Got Married
Peggy Sue faints at a high school reunion. When she wakes up she finds herself in her own past, just before she finished high school.
The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers
Oliver Laxe’s debut is described by MUBI as a “beguiling collaboration with Ben Rivers —half behind-the-scenes of Laxe’s Mimosas, half delirious journey into the abyss of creation”.
We Won’t Grow Old Together
MUBI begins its close-up on Maurice Pialat’s work and a celebration of his uncompromising vision with this portrait of an on-again, off-again affair: Jean (Jean Yanne) and Catherine (Marlène Jobert) are a couple whose every move charts an advancement deeper into an internal war zone. Theirs is the classic and the tragic case of an emotional abuse centred around a perplexing, but powerful, interdependency.
La Leon
This visually stunning feature debut perfectly captures the misty waterways and solitary lives of a Northern Argentinean community. Armed with sumptuous black-and-white photography and an affectionate and sensual sensibility, Santiago Otheguy’s film is a key work from the New Argentine Cinema.
Stockholm My Love
Fresh from its theatrical release, MUBI presents the first foray into fiction of Mark Cousins, who teams up with cinematographer Christopher Doyle and singer Neneh Cherry for a city symphony that delves into grief and trauma. Read our full review.
La Soledad
MUBI & ICA join forces to release Jorge Thielen Armand’s vibrant and vital film, which captures the lives of real people in Venezuela’s current social and political climate. The movie follows José, a young father who discovers that the dilapidated mansion he occupies is soon to be demolished. Desperate to save his family from homelessness, José begins a search for a cursed treasure that has long said to be buried in the house.
Hostel
Decried as gratuitous torture porn upon release, Eli Roth’s Hostel has outlived those reactionary assessments and stands today as a critique of American exceptionalism.
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Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon
La Sentinelle
Available until end of: 16th September
My Sex Life… Or How I Got into an Argument
Available until end of: 17th September
Ostende
Available until end of: 18th September
Dog Lady
Available until end of: 19th September
Abouna
Available until end of: 20th September
Three Lives and Only One Death
Available until end of: 21st September
At Ellen’s Age
Available until end of: 22nd September
Layla Fourie
Available until end of: 23rd September
Hostel
Available until end of: 24th September
About Twelve
Available until end of: 25th September
Damiana Kryygi
Available until end of: 26th September
Moana with Sound
Available until end of: 27th September
Love Torn in a Dream
Available until end of: 28th September