David Farnor | On 11, Sep 2021

MUBI continues its partnership with Curzon this week, with the exclusive streaming release of Magnus von Horn’s Sweat.

The streamer also shines a spotlight on Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, who made more than 40 films during his life. A winner of the Cannes 50th Anniversary Award for lifetime achievement, his works explore the ideas of nationalism, what it means to be Egyptian, and the need for a tolerant and just society.

For MUBI Go subscribers, there’s a free cinema ticket available (in participating UK cinemas) for Herself.

Meanwhile, it’s your last chance to stream Tigerland and The Watermelon Woman.

What’s new, coming soon and leaving soon? Read on for your weekly MUBI Digest.

 

This week on MUBI

The Unbelievable Truth – 11th September

Charting a new generation lost amid the tides of corporate America, Hal Hartley’s witty, unpredictable debut follows the college-bound Audrey, a young woman who is preoccupied with the threat of nuclear destruction and falls in love with a handsome and mysterious ex-con who is rumoured to have murdered the father of his high school sweetheart.

Dona Flor and her Two Husbands – 13th September

Dona Flor’s passionate yet irresponsible husband Vadinho drops dead while dancing in the streets. Seeking a stable life, the widowed Dona remarries a respectable pharmacist shortly after. However, when her new love life turns out to be less than satisfying, the ghost of her late husband returns. Made during Brazil’s military dictatorship, Bruno Barreto’s magic realist feature propelled Sônia Braga from soap star to national deity.

Downstream to Kinshasa – 14th September

Over six days in June 2000, the city of Kisangani was the scene of deadly violence between the Ugandan and Rwandan armies. Victims of the war have fought for recognition and compensation since. Now, they take a long journey down the Congo River to voice their claims and seek justice in Kinshasa.

Our Defeats – 15th September

In 2018, Jean-Gabriel P?riot collaborated with 10 students in a film class at a high school in the suburbs of Paris on a project that unites cinema with politics. The students restaged scenes of strikes, resistance, and labour disputes from films made post May 1968. Our Defeats assembles the results.

Youssef Chahine: The Blazing Sun – 16th September

Ahmed, a young agricultural engineer, helps the farmers produce a superior sugar cane crop. Taher Pasha, a wealthy land owner, feels threatened by his recent production prosperity. Ahmed is in love with Pasha’s daughter, but due to their fathers’ rivalry, he is compelled to hide their relationship.

Sweat – 17th September

The “perfect” life of a Polish fitness influencer comes under scrutiny in Magnus von Horn’s gripping and stylish drama.

 

Other new releases on MUBI

New Order

In contemporary Mexico City, a lavish high society wedding is interrupted by violent rioters who take the house by siege. It soon becomes apparent that this seemingly random attack is part of a violent, nationwide uprising, as one political system collapses and a more harrowing replacement arises. Fresh from cinemas, Michel Franco’s latest is released exclusively by MUBI online.

Genus Pan

Lav Diaz’s winner at Venice’s Orrizonti sidebar in 2020 sees three gold mine workers leave their jobs to travel home through the unforgiving wilderness of the mythical island of Hugaw. When they arrive at the end of their arduous journey, they see that a tragic event has shaken their village. As buried histories emerge, a sense of psychosis invades the scene.

Wife of a Spy

Winner of Best Director at the 2020 Venice Film Festival, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s drama is set in 1940, when the population of Japan is divided over its entry into World War II. Satoko, the wife of a fabric merchant, is devoted to her husband, but is beginning to suspect he’s up to something. Soon she allows herself to be drawn into a game in which she enigmatically conceals her intentions.

Knight of Cups

Rick, a disillusioned screenwriter, reflects upon his privileged life and complex relationships with his family and with women in a Hollywood devoid of meaning. He is addicted to success but simultaneously despairs at the emptiness of his life.

Song to Song

Set against the Austin music scene, two entangled couples—struggling songwriters Faye and BV, and music mogul Cook and the waitress whom he ensnares—chase success through a rock ‘n’ roll landscape of seduction and betrayal.

Mama

Selected for the 2020 Venice Film Festival, Li Dongmei’s debut follows 12-year-old Xiaoxian, who remembers what happened over seven days in her village in rural China during the Summer of 1992. During those seven days, she witnesses three deaths and two births, including the death of her own mother who dies giving birth to her fourth sister.

Fucking with Nobody

Hannaleena Hauru’s comedy premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2020. It follows Hanna, who teams up with her sister to create a parody Instagram romance with a young actor and raise awareness on how hungry society is for romantic narratives. Once her love story begins, however, Hanna finds herself tangled up in the unresolved past with her “you were never my boyfriend” friend Lasse.

Holy Motors

From dawn to dusk, a few hours in the life of Monsieur Oscar, a mysterious man who journeys from one life to the next, while being chauffeured around Paris in a limousine by a loyal driver. He is, in turn, assassin, beggar, monster, family man. He seems to be playing roles—but where are the cameras?

Yellow Cat

Ex-con Kermek and his beloved Eva want to leave their crime-infested lives on the Kazakh steppes behind. He has a dream: building a movie theater in the mountains. Will Kermek’s love of Alain Delon be strong enough to keep them out of the violent clutches of the mafia?

Visit, or Memories and Confessions

The director, Manoel de Oliveira, is in the Porto house where he has lived for decades, preparing to leave due to mounting debts. He addresses the audience directly, discussing family history, cinema, and architecture, sharing home movies, and reenacting his run-in with the military dictatorship.

Only God Forgives

Ryan Gosling impresses in Nicolas Winding Refn’s indulgent piece of Bangkok gothic.

Lions Love (… and Lies)

Warhol superstar Viva floats into a ménage à trois with James and Gerome, the two creators of the rock musical Hair, as they live in a rented house in the sun-soaked Hollywood hills. They delight in one another’s bodies while musing on love, stardom, and politics.

Grand Central

Gary starts working at a nuclear power plant looking for easy money. Karole is the fiancée of longtime plant employee Toni, one of the many who are exposed to deadly radiation levels. Soon Gary and Karole fall in love, and their romance poses a growing threat to the staff’s tight-knit bonds.

The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears

A woman disappears. Her husband investigates the strange circumstances surrounding her disappearance. Has she left him? Is she dead? As he proceeds with his inquiries, his apartment becomes more of and more of an an abyss which seems to have no way out…

Metropolis (1927)

In a highly stylised city, a wealthy utopia exists above a bleak underworld where mistreated workers live. When privileged youth Freder discovers the grim scene below, he sets out to help the workers and befriends the rebellious teacher Maria. One of the most iconic films ever made, Fritz Lang’s dystopian sci-fi classic is as thrilling today as it was on release in 1927.

Brother

Danila returns from his army service and is unemployed. On his mother’s advice, he leaves for St Petersburg where his older brother Viktor has been making good money. However, when he finds him, Viktor turns out to be a contract killer. Soon, Danila agrees to carry out an assignment for him.

Purple Sea

As the way to Europe remained blocked for Syrian artist Amel Alzakout, she decided to cross the Mediterranean Sea with smugglers. However, just before reaching the coast of Lesbos, the overcrowded boat she was on capsized. With a waterproof camera strapped to her wrist, Amel recorded the events.

Open Hearts

Cecilie and Joachim, a young couple in love, are soon to be married. But all of a sudden everything is turned upside down when Joachim is paralyzed in an accident, and Cecilie falls in love with the husband of the woman who caused the accident.

When You’re Strange: A Film About the Doors

The chemistry of four artists made The Doors one of America’s most influential rock bands. With previously unseen footage shot from their formation in 1965 to Jim Morrison’s death in 1971, the film follows the band through their career, providing insight into the revolutionary impact of their music.

Black Panthers

A film shot during the summer of 1968 in Oakland, California around the meetings organised by the Black Panthers Party to free Huey Newton, one of their leaders, and to turn his trial into a political debate. They tried and succeeded in catching America’s attention.

Lina from Lima

Lina is a Peruvian woman who works as a domestic helper for a wealthy Chilean family. She earns enough to make ends meet, and to send money back to her son in Lima. But when she prepares for her annual trip home for Christmas, she comes to the stark realization that no one is really waiting for her.

White God

A pack of dogs run wild through the streets of Budapest in this captivating revenge parable from Kornél Mundruczó, an idiosyncratic allegory on authority, rebellion, power, and protest. Rise of the Planet of the Dogs. If your ears have already perked up, then White God is for you. Read our full review

24 Hour Party People

A vibrant portrait of the Manchester music scene during the mid-to-late 1970s, through the eyes of TV presenter Tony Wilson, founder of Factory Records, as he introduces the world to such notable musical acts as Joy Division, New Order, and The Happy Mondays.

Menarca

​In a Brazilian village infested with piranhas, Nanã and Mel are fast growing into adolescence as they dream of ways of protecting themselves

Apples

An amnesia pandemic is the backdrop for this poignant tragicomedy. The deadpan debut of former Yorgos Lanthimos collaborator Christos Nikou, Apples is an allegorical meditation on memory, identity and technology. Read our full review.

Hedi

Majd Mastoura scored the Best Actor Silver Bear for Mohammed Ben Attia’s variation on Finding Miss Right.

Amer

Ana is confronted with body and desire at three key moments of her life. As a young girl, she brings her dead grandpa back to life. In her puberty, she discovers the power of decay and sexuality. Finally, she wrestles with loss and loneliness when she returns to her parental home, now derelict.

Good Vibrations

A chronicle of Terri Hooley’s life, a record-store owner instrumental in developing Belfast’s punk-rock scene.

Happy End

When her mother falls ill, Eve is sent to live with her estranged father’s relatives, a bourgeois family living in a mansion. As a series of intergenerational back-stabbings threaten to tear the family apart, the family fails to notice that their new arrival has a sinister secret of her own. Michael Haneke’s ensemble drama is a dark, biting satire. Read our full review

Diva

Jules, an opera enthusiast, is particularly enchanted by American diva Cynthia Hawkins, who refuses to be recorded. So enamored with her, he makes an illegal tape at her concert. But when the tape is confused with one implicating a police chief with the mob, he must use all his ingenuity to survive.

The Harder They Come

In partnership with Cinema Rediscovered, MUBI presents Jamaica’s first feature film: a restored cult classic that helped make reggae music popular worldwide.

Treasure Island

Returning to the water park of his childhood, Guillaume Brac’s graceful documentary sees the seemingly mundane recreational space as an urban oasis, a refuge from the hustle and bustle of Paris. Underneath the playfulness, however, is a commentary on immigration in France.

All Hands on Deck

A warm summer evening in Paris: Félix meets Alma by chance. They laugh, dance, and spend the night in a park. But she is about to go on a family vacation and their time together is cut short. On an impulse, Félix decides to surprise her where she is holidaying and enrols a friend in the adventure.

Black Bear

Aubrey Plaza is terrific as a creatively blocked filmmaker in this engaging and thought-provoking indie thriller. Read our full review

Something Different

Věra, a bored housewife with a defiant son and an unappreciative husband, seeks an escape from her frustrations in an extramarital affair. Meanwhile, the headstrong gymnast Eva Bosáková trains for the 1962 World Championship in Prague. Her lack of motivation prompts her coach to put pressure on her.

Salut Les Cubains

A photo montage of Cubans filmed by Agnès Varda during her visit to Cuba in 1963, four years after Fidel Castro came to power. This black & white documentary explores their post-revolution culture and society while making use of 1500 pictures (out of 4000!) the filmmaker took while on the island.

April’s Daughter

Valeria is 17 and pregnant. She lives in Puerto Vallarta with Clara, her half sister. Valeria has not wanted her long-absent mother, April, to find out about her pregnancy, but due to the economic strain Clara decides to call their mother.

Welcome II The Terrordome

In the near future, black residents living in the Terrordome ghetto battle oppression from powerful whites. Black Rad fights for black power after his wife’s death while gangster Spike engages in an illicit affair with a white woman.

Joy Division

An account of the musical journey and ongoing legacy of Joy Division, the influential Manchester post-punk rock band of the late 1970s. Features interviews with the surviving band members (now known as New Order) and never-before-seen live performance footage and newly discovered audio tapes.

Diary for My Children

This deeply personal work explores Mészáros’ own experiences via Juli, a young woman returning home to Budapest from the Soviet Union where her exiled parents had died. Scarred by the wounds of the past, she’s repulsed to see the very same spectre of socialist oppression now rife in her homeland.

Hotel New York

Jackie Raynal returned to filmmaking in 1981, over a decade since Deux fois, with the autobiographical tale New York Story — later expanded into a feature as Hotel New York (1984) — which featured both her and her husband Sidney Geffen as themselves.

The Cloud in Her Room

Zhao Muzi went back to her hometown Hangzhou for spring festival. Her parents divorced years ago, her mother is dating a foreigner now while her father started a new family and had a new kid.

The Human Voice

This scathingly witty and sumptuously performed short film is a superbly stylish English-language debut for Pedro Almodóvar. Read our full review

Jessica Forever

In a dystopian world dominated by an oppressive regime, a woman, Jessica, rescues orphaned boys and gives them love and understanding, offering them an escape from their violent past. Bound by a united hope for peace and harmony, this matriarchal family fight for a better future.

Barrage

Working with renowned cinematographer Hélène Louvart and chronicling three generations of women, director Laura Schroeder expertly creates an atmosphere of eerie unease in this subtly suspenseful and foreboding family drama. Starring real-life mother-daughter duo Isabelle Huppert and Lolita Chammah.

Freedom Fields

Freedom Fields follows three women and their football team over five years in post-revolution Libya. As the country descends into war, “Determination, Will, Strength” is their motto. Community is key in this intimate story of hope, struggle, joy, and sisterhood.

A Special Day

On a special day in 1938, all of Rome is attending a parade celebrating Hitler’s meeting with Mussolini. A working-class housewife, left alone to tend to household duties, meets the only person not attending the parade, a liberal radio broadcaster, and the two forge an unexpectedly close friendship.

Volleyball (Foot Film)

A volleyball is rolled into the frame and comes to rest. Two legs in sneakers, seen from the knees down, enter the frame and stand beside it. Cut to new angle, same characters and actions

The Unseen River

A confluence of two love stories: one in which a woman reunites with her former lover after 30 years; the other, where a young couple visits a monastery seeking a cure for insomnia. Between streams of past and future, the river offers an oneiric site where timelines intersect.

Pikadero

Unable to fly the nest due to Spain’s economic crisis, a penniless, young couple have trouble consummating their relationship while living in their parents’ homes. With no money to afford a hotel, they are forced to look to public hotspots used for sex, known by the locals as “pikaderos”.

Fire in My Belly

How do you come to feel part of a community? Over six months, Ayo Akingbade collaborated with Whitechapel Gallery’s youth collective Duchamp & Sons in London to explore ideas of place and belonging through workshops, screenings, and fieldwork in the local area.

Claudette’s Star

In Claudette’s Star, Ayo Akingbade recreates and documents her subjects’ encounters with art, literature and the “canon.” A commune between young artists and artistic legacies, that looks towards the future.

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki

Bittersweet and shot through with the romance of defeat, this unconventional boxing movie is knock-out cinema. Read our full review

The Prostitutes of Lyon Speak

Approximately two hundred sex workers occupied the church of Saint-Nizier, in Lyon, in the spring of 1975. They speak of their personal stories, their relationships to society, their labour conditions, and their demands to stop police and social harassment.

Air Conditioner

One day, air conditioners in the Angolan capital Luanda start to mysteriously fall from the buildings. When security guard Matacedo is told to get his overheating boss an airco unit by end of day, he embarks on a mission that brings him into contact with the eccentric owner of an electronics store.

First Cow

Two men use a landowner’s cow for their business venture in Kelly Reichardt’s superlative period drama about male friendship, capitalism and creativity. Read our full review

Alice and the Mayor

The mayor of Lyon has run out of ideas! Behind this intriguing premise lies a delightful reflection on current politics starring an exquisite Fabrice Luchini.

Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc

Who else but Bruno Dumont to take us on a musical journey through the religious awakening of Joan of Arc? France, 1425. In the midst of the Hundred Years’ War, 8-year-old Jeannette cannot bear to see the suffering caused by the English. A nun tries to reason with her, but Jeannette is ready to take up arms for the liberation of the Kingdom of France. Carried by her faith, she will become an icon.

Borg vs McEnroe

This smashing sports biopic is hit home by a pair of ace performances. Read our full review.

The 10th Victim

In a futuristic world, the Big Hunt is a televised competition pitting assassins against each other. The prize for surviving 10 rounds? A million dollars. When renowned shooters Marcello and Caroline are selected for a showdown, their will to win is suddenly replaced by another kind of desire.

Maso and Miso Go Boating

The year 1975 is declared “year of the woman”. On this occasion, Bernard Pivot invited Françoise Giroud, then Secretary of State for Women, on his popular TV show. A collective of women filmmakers, Les Insoumuses, parody the misogynistic statements from the show in a provocative way.

Princess Cyd

This low-key coming-of-age drama is a gorgeous, generous showcase for two contrasting, complex women. Read our full review

The Congress

Ari Folman followed the Oscar-nominated Waltz With Bashir with this striking adaptation of Stanisław “Solaris” Lem’s novella. Folman blends live-action with hallucinatory animation for a vivid, sci-fi satire – beginning with Robin Wright agreeing to be scanned by Miramount so that the film studio has the rights to her digital image.

Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project

Matt Wolf’s engaging, reverential documentary explores the story of a woman who recorded US news for over 30 years. Read our full review

Undine

Paula Beer plays a water nymph who can’t escape her fate in Christian Petzold’s beautifully made fantasy romance.

White on White

Late-19th century: Pedro arrives in Tierra del Fuego to photograph a landowner’s wedding. In capturing his future wife’s beauty, Pedro betrays the forces dominating these lands. Unable to escape, he becomes a participant in a new society being built through the genocide of the Selknam people.

Nadia, Butterfly

Nadia, 23, decides to retire from professional swimming after the Olympic Games in order to escape a life of sacrifice. After her final race, she drifts out of control with nights of excess, but this momentary elation is unable to hide her inner struggle: defining her identity outside of sports.

Yes

An American woman (Joan Allen), trapped in a loveless marriage with a devious politician, meets a Lebanese man (Sam Neill) living in exile. They begin a passionate, carefree affair, despite a conflict between their illicit love and religious beliefs, and travel from London to Belfast, Beirut and Havana in Sally Potter’s vivid drama.

Phoenix

After surviving Auschwitz, a former cabaret singer, her face disfigured and reconstructed, returns to her war-ravaged town to find a husband who may or may not have betrayed her. Without recognising her, he asks her to help him claim his wife’s inheritance. She agrees, becoming her own doppelganger.

Circumstantial Pleasures

A feature-length collection of six animated short films by Lewis Klahr, combining collage animation with mid-century comic books, pop art, and magazines to explore “the pastness of the present”.

The Female Closet

Using groundbreaking research, newly discovered home movies, and archival photographs, and other visual sources, The Female Closet. is a cultural interrogation of the closeted and not-so-closeted lives of three women artists.

Shiva Baby

A highlight of 2020’s Toronto International Film Festival and SXSW, and featuring a standout lead performance from emerging actor-comedian Rachel Sennott, Emma Seligman’s bold, hilarious debut feature is a darkly playful comedy of chaos about a young bisexual woman grappling with tradition and independence over the course of one climactic day-long shiva. Read our review.

Where To?

The First Lebanese film to ever show at Cannes, Where To? gained worldwide recognition and ushered in a period of emancipation for Lebanese cinema. Exploring exile and emigration through the story of one family, this is an evocative journey full of ingenious visual symbolism.

Delphine & Carole

In the mid-1970s, Delphine Seyrig and Carole Roussopoulos began making videos devised as political interventions to champion the struggle of women. Delphine and Carole retraces this collaboration by mixing video images filmed by the two directors, interviews, and archival material.

Lemebel

Joanna Reposi Garibaldi’s winner of the Teddy Award for Best Documentary at 2019 Berlinale depicts a pioneering figure in Latin America’s LGBTQ+ movement and a tireless fighter who continued to speak out until the very end of his life. His sharp-tongued, poetic texts and provocative performances made him one of South America’s most important contemporary artists. In dictatorial Chile under Pinochet, Lemebel expressed things that only few dared to say.

Invasión

The city of Aquilea has fallen under siege by sinister forces. A group of middle-aged men, led by a somewhat older man, resolve to mount clandestine resistance to the invaders and defend their city. Meetings are held, maps are studied, strategies are proposed—but can the invasion really be overcome?

Correspondence

This filmed epistolary conversation between two acclaimed filmmakers blends digital and Super 8 footage, new material and family home movies, to form a reflection on family, history, motherhood, and current politics.

Petzold: Barbara

In 1980s East Germany, Barbara is a Berlin doctor banished to a country medical clinic for applying for an exit visa. Deeply unhappy with her reassignment and fearful of her co-workers as possible Stasi informants, Barbara stays aloof, especially from the good natured clinic head, Andre. MUBI’s Christian Petzold retrospective continues with this 2012 drama.

Munyurangabo

The debut film by Lee Isaac Chung (Minari), Munyurangabo (2007) is a powerful and tender tale of a friendship between two teenagers as they deal with the effects of the Rwandan genocide. Quiet and authentic, the film also features a poem by Poet Laureate Edouard Uwayo.

One in a Thousand

This coming-of-age drama set in a housing project in Argentina refreshingly defies heteronormativity and queer stereotypes. Featuring a mostly non-professional cast, One in a Thousand is intimate, sensual and authentic.

Piercing

A darkly comic giallo-esque romance, torturously literalising all the dynamics of S&M, while accommodating the persistence of trauma.

PVT Chat

An erotic drama about love and loneliness, it follows a man as he becomes obsessed with a dominatrix met via video chat, played by Uncut Gems star Julia Fox.

2 Days in Paris

Julie Delpy’s delightfully prickly romantic comedy follows Marion, a bohemian French photographer, and Jack, a neurotic American, a couple living in New York and travelling around Europe. When they make a stopover in Marion’s hometown, Paris, the romantic trip takes a crooked turn as Jack meets her offbeat family and learns about her past.

Snowtown

After being introduced to a charismatic man, 16-year-old Jamie becomes friends with him. As the relationship grows so do Jamie’s suspicions, until he finds his world threatened by both his loyalty for, and fear of, his newfound father figure, John Bunting: Australia’s most notorious serial killer.

State Funeral

Sergei Loznitsa returns to take us back to Moscow, March 1953: in the days following the death of Joseph Stalin, countless citizens flooded the Red Square to mourn their leader’s loss and witness his burial. Though the procession was captured in detail by hundreds of cameramen, their footage has remained largely unseen until now.

Tetro

When naïve, 17-year-old Bennie arrives in Buenos Aires to look for his long-estranged brother Tetro, he finds a tormented soul who has abandoned his career as a writer. After Tetro rejects him, Bennie risks his brother’s wrath by secretly completing one of his plays and submitting it for a prize.

The Hummingbird Project

Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard star in Kim Nguyen’s 2018 drama about New York cousins Vincent and Anton, who are players in the game of high-frequency stock trading, where winning is measured in milliseconds. Their dream? To build a fibre-optic cable in a straight line between Kansas and New Jersey and make millions. But nothing is straightforward for this flawed pair.

The Trial

In 1930 in Moscow, USSR. the Soviet government puts a group of top rank economists and engineers on trial, accusing them of plotting a coup d’état. The charges are fabricated and the punishment, if convicted, is death. MUBI continues its look back through the work of Sergei Loznitsa with this 2018 documentary.

Petzold: The State I Am In

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. MUBI’s Christian Petzold retrospective continues with this 2000 drama.

Tender

On a hot summer day by a small lake, Mia asks Hugo, 15 years old and yet already blasé, to tell her about his love story with Chaïnes. Despite his reluctance, memories come to the surface: evenings spent at the edge of the lake trying to seduce her, or the fear felt when declaring his love.

Diary for My Father and Mother

This story follows a young student, who is orphaned as she grows to adulthood in the shadow of the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

Diary for My Lovers

Orphan Juli, 18, is determined to become a film director and starts studying filmmaking after moving to Moscow. Following Stalin’s death, she returns to Hungary to prepare her diploma film, but soon the 1956 uprising takes place, and Juli is forced to make compromises when it comes to her career.

The Two of Them

Mari has a narrow-minded man for a husband, and Juli is fleeing her passionate marriage with an uncontrollable alcoholic. Both passing through a marital crisis, the two women turn to each other for comfort, and each of them gains necessary insights into her own life in seeing the other’s struggles.

Old Joy

Kelly Reichardt’s second feature follows two old friends, Kurt and Mark, who reunite for a weekend camping trip in the Cascade mountain range east of Portland, Oregon. When they arrive at their final destination, a hot spring deep in the forest, they must confront the divergent paths they have taken in life.

Personal Shopper

Olivier Assayas captures the uncertainty of the digital age in a haunting drama of isolation.

Atlantis

A winner at Venice Film Festival, and Ukraine’s official Oscar® submission for Best International Feature Film, Atlantis is a post-apocalyptic drama with an unexpectedly sweet love story at its core and dark humor around the edges.

Mayor

This unique documentary follows the daily duties of the mayor of Ramallah in the midst of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Warm and full of humour, but with a strong political stance.

Thirst

An operatic vampire tale from Park Chan-wook, this grand, tragic story an equal parts astonishing, romantic, and devastating.

LA Confidential

Film noir gets the colour treatment in Curtis Hanson’s thrilling depiction of a city of corrupt angels. Read our full review

Labyrinth of Cinema

The only movie theater on the Onomichi seafront is about to close its doors. Its last night of screenings will be an all-night marathon of Japanese war films. When lightning strikes the theater, three young men in the audience find themselves thrown back in time into the world inside the screen.

X&Y (2018)

Artist Anna Odell conducts a social experiment in which she aims to challenge gender roles in our society. In a purpose-built set, she confronts herself with the actor and masculine icon Mikael Persbrandt, and invites seven other actors to live with them and act as alter egos of herself and Mikael. Also available is Odell’s The Reunion.

Ghosts

In Istanbul, a day on the verge of a country-wide power surge unfolds with four characters—a mother whose son is in prison, a young woman committed to dancing, a female activist-artist, and a cunning middle man—all in a neighbourhood undergoing a process of gentrification for the “New Turkey”. Azra Deniz Okyay’s electrifying Venice prize-winner is a politically charged snapshot that reveals the rebellious rhythms of Istanbul’s ghettos with a focus on gender and social politics.

This Boy’s Life

All Caroline wants is to be able to settle down in one place and find a man who will treat both she and her son Toby right. She moves to Seattle and finds the seemingly respectable Dwight. However, Toby feels differently about him, as Dwight’s methods are emotionally and physically abusive.

Compliance

You’ll hate every second – but you won’t stop watching this horribly gripping thriller. Read our full review

Brazil

Terry Gilliam’s darkly funny dystopian fantasy about a low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is eerily, brilliantly prescient.

IWOW: I Walk on Water

Returning to the intersection of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in East Harlem, Khalik Allah centres his new film on his long-time friendship with Frenchie, a homeless Haitian man, while also documenting his recent life: his relationships with his former girlfriend and an inner circle of friends.

Cuatro Paredes

Karla arrives in Tijuana, Mexico to stay at her estranged aunt’s house a year after her father’s death. In this moment of solitude and calm, she looks up, down, inward and outward through the transpositional alchemy of text and is reminded that speaking to oneself feels like a vital human practice.

Death in the Garden

Amid a revolution in a South American mining outpost, a band of fugitives – a roguish adventurer, a local prostitute, a priest, an aging diamond miner, and his deaf-mute daughter – are forced to flee for their lives into the jungle in Luis Buñuel’s 1956 drama.

Songs My Brothers Taught Me

Beautifully photographed in the badlands of the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, Chloé Zhao’s debut is a wistful and delicately observed tale of loss and familial bonds, featuring a wonderful cast of non-professional actors.

Black Pond (2018)

A double from documentarian Jessica Sarah Rinland begins with an odyssey across a common land in the south of England, told through the hands of the members of the Natural History Society who currently occupy it. After two years of filming, the rushes were shown to the society — their memories and responses were recorded and used as the film’s narration.

Malmkrog

Among the guests who come to the mansion of aristocratic landowner Nikolai over Christmas are a politician, a young countess, and a general with his wife. They dine and discuss topics such as progress and morality. As the debate becomes more heated, cultural differences become increasingly apparent. The Berlinale-winning latest from Cristi Puiu.

Those That, At A Distance, Resemble Another (2019)

A museum-quality replica of a historic elephant tusk is painstakingly created. The hands and tools of conservators in a number of different museums and laboratories embark on a creative process. The second of two documentaries from Jessica Sarah Rinland.

Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls!

A gang of Beat music fans attend concerts and parties after spending tedious days in the factory in Márta Mészáros’s 1970 musical drama. Juli, the fiancée of one of the gang’s boys, falls in love with a musician and travels with him for a gig. The jealous fiancé and his friends go after them and the whole affair comes close to violence.

Pusher

As a heroin dealer in Copenhagen, Frank is far from the top but earns good money pushing with a friend. When he decides to up the ante, Frank goes to Milo, a drug lord—except he doesn’t have enough money for the heroin. Instead, Milo fronts him the goods upon the condition of immediate repayment. Kim Bodnia and Mads Mikkelsen star in Nicolas Winding Refn’s 1996 thriller.

With Blood on My Hands: Pusher II

Following his memorable supporting turn in the first Pusher film, Mads Mikkelsen moves centre stage for this adrenalised sequel. Tonny, just released from prison, tries to bring order to his life and gain the respect of his father, the Duke, a notorious gangster who despises his son. Trying to repay a debt held over from prison, he makes misstep after misstep. What’s more, Tonny must contribute to the upbringing of a child.

I’m the Angel of Death: Pusher III

As drug lord Milo struggles to prepare his daughter’s 25th birthday party, his business proves equally challenging when a shipment of ecstasy arrives instead of heroin. Forced to work with a new drug he knows little about, he must find a way to maintain his dominance atop the Copenhagen underworld.

Mommy

Xavier Dolan’s hugely emotional drama is a stunning tale of troubled youth, motherly love and the music of Oasis.

A Colony

Introverted teenager Mylia feels lost between the uncertainty in her family life, the superficial atmosphere at her new school, and her first experiences at house parties. But one day Mylia meets Jimmy. The boy from the nearby Abenaki reserve is different and he encourages her to break free.

Sonita

Sonita is a talented teenage rapper and an indomitable force in spite of her conservative family. She is, however, an undocumented Afghan refugee in Iran, and her family has other plans for her. Her dream of living abroad is about to come true just as her family wants to send her back home to marry.

Gianfranco Rosi: Notturno

Shot in Iran, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon over the course of three turbulent years, it is an intimate and devastating depiction of the civilian populations who have no choice but to live on the frontlines. Told with compassion, grace and humanism, this is a breathtaking cinematic journey.

Gianfranco Rosi: El Sicario, Room 164

In room 164 of a grubby hotel near the Mexican-American border, a man with a black cloth over his head starts talking about the life he has lived. He provides full details on his 20 years of work for a Mexican drugs baron, shading light on how thoroughly corrupt the local authorities are.

Gianfranco Rosi: Sacro Gra

Gianfranco Rosi’s snapshot of life in Rome drifts round ring road GRA to capture lives that have come to a halt on the fringes of a society that races on.

Gianfranco Rosi: Below Sea Level

During a five year period, Gianfranco Rosi documents the world of down-on-their-luck individuals who live in a Californian desert, about 200 miles southeast of Los Angeles and 20 feet below sea level. They have turned their backs on society, and want to be left alone.

Beyond Clueless

Charlie Shackleton’s essay dissecting high school movies is a smart, entertaining ode to the teen movie legacy. Read our full review

Cold Meridian

A beguiling new short film from Peter Strickland, shot on black and white Super8 and 16mm film. Originally commissioned by the London Short Film Festival to wriggle inside the ASMR phenomenon, it follows the repeated rituals of an online performer and the transfixing, hypnotising effects she has on her viewers.

Alex Ross Perry: The Color Wheel

JR, an aspiring news-anchor, forces her younger brother Colin to embark on a road trip to move her belongings out of her professor-turned-lover’s place. Traveling through New England, they uncomfortably run into old school-mates or revisit familial history from which they have long since diverged.

A Family Tour

After directing the film The Mother of One Recluse, director Yang Shu has been forced to live in exile in Hong Kong. But when her mother has to undergo a serious operation, the two women plan to meet in Taiwan where Yang will be attending a film festival with her husband and son.

Berlinale: The Twentieth Century

Toronto, 1899. Mackenzie King dreams of becoming Canada’s Prime Minister. In his quest for power he faces his Mother, a war-mongering Governor-General. When the run for leadership leads to a battle between good and evil, King learns that disappointment is the only way to survive the 20th century.

Berlinale: Uppercase Print

The story of Mugur Calinescu, a Romanian teenager who wrote graffiti messages of protest against the regime of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and was subsequently apprehended, interrogated, and ultimately crushed by the secret police.

Dead Pigs

The fates of an unlucky pig farmer, a feisty home-owner defending her property, a lovestruck busboy, a disenchanted rich girl, and an American expat pursuing the Chinese Dream converge and collide as thousands of dead pigs are found floating down the Huangpu River, towards a modernizing Shanghai. Don’t miss the rare chance to catch this Sundance-winning debut from Birds of Prey director Cathy Yan. Read our full review

Stump the Guesser

He works at the fairground as “Stump the Guesser”, who can guess anything for a fee. But suddenly his tricks stop working. Then, he falls in love with his sister whom he believed to be lost. He sets out to scientifically disprove the theory of heredity and marry his beloved as soon as possible.

If It Were Love

1990s rave culture was a chance to let go of oneself. If It Were Love explores such dimension through the eyes of artist Gisèle Vienne: young dancers dissolve into a community on stage, where their bodies move in graceful slow motion. Performance and reality flow together into an artistic whole.

Lucky

Harry Dean Stanton delivers a wonderful penultimate performance in this delightful, low-key indie drama. Read our full review – and our interview with director John Carroll Lynch.

The Painted Bird

A young boy journeys through a Second World War landscape in Václav Marhoul’s harrowing odyssey.

About Some Meaningless Events

In Casablanca, a group of filmmakers conduct discussions with people about their expectations of, and aspirations for, the emerging Moroccan national cinema. When a disgruntled worker kills his superior accidentally, their inquest shifts focus, and they begin to probe the motives of the killing.

Tyrel

After playing at the Glasgow Film Festival in 2019, Sebastián Silva’s latest (currently available with Amazon Prime) gets a wider showcase. It follows Tyler, who joins a friend on a birthday weekend away with several people he doesn’t know. As soon as he gets there, it’s clear that he’s the only Black guy. Although welcomed, Tyler can’t help but feel uneasy. As the testosterone and alcohol gets out of hand, his precarious situation becomes nightmarish.

About Endlessness

Roy Andersson’s supposed swan song is a greatest hits remix of absurd humanist melancholy.

August 32nd on Earth

Prior to making some of the biggest sci-fi blockbusters of the 21st century, Denis Villeneuve directed this French New Wave-influenced drama.

All is Forgiven

Debuting at the Quinzaine in 2007, Mia Hansen-Løve’s debut announces what we have come to appreciate in her cathartic cinema. All is Forgiven ambitiously embeds in its structure (and in this way, successfully grasps) all that is lost, gained, and transmitted through the persistent passage of time.

 

A monthly subscription to MUBI costs £9.99 a month, with a 30-day free trial. A MUBI Go subscription costs £14.99 a month.

 

Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon

Wind
Available until: 13th September

Nooreh
Available until: 16th September

Khule Darwaaze
Available until: 16th September

The Cabin Man
Available until: 16th September

Seduced and Abandoned
Available until: 19th September

Tigerland
Available until: 19th September

The Watermelon Woman
Available until: 23rd September

Buddies
Available until: 23rd September

Add to Watchlist