David Farnor | On 23, May 2020

It’s been a big week for MUBI, which has just launched MUBI Library, a new collection of archive titles that opens up the streamer’s catalogue, with more than 400 former releases now available to stream at any time. You can read our full guide to how that works here.

But MUBI’s daily drops of new titles continues apace, even though not all of its new arrivals will expire. This week is as impressive as ever, kicking off with Lenny Abrahamson’s remarkable Frank and including another gem from Satyajit Ray and the best Jane Austen adaptation in recent memory.

What’s new, coming soon and leaving soon on the subscription service? This is your weekly MUBI Digest:

 

This week on MUBI

Frank – 23rd May

We all know the story. Guy joins unknown band. Guy discovers his inner creative self. Unknown band becomes famous. Frank is not that story. Inspired by the persona of Frank Sidebottom, Lenny Abrahamson’s film isn’t a straight-out biopic. It isn’t a comedy either. Or a drama. Or a musical. It’s a mix of all three – and, as a result, manages that to be that rare thing: original and unpredictable. Read our full review

Love & Friendship – 24th May

Not just the tale of a widow (Kate Beckinsale) riding out the rumours of her romantic liaisons, while trying to find a suitor for her young daughter (Morfydd Clark), Love and Friendship is also a non-stop string of witty insults and catty shots – and Beckinsale is brilliant at firing them out. Whit Stillman’s hilarious period comedy is Jane Austen as you’ve never seen her before.

Satyajit Ray: The Stranger (1991) – 26th May

A well-off family is paid an unexpected visit by a man claiming to be the matriarch’s long-lost uncle. The initial suspicion with which they greet the man slowly dissolves as he regales them with stories of his travels, tales at odds with their conventional middle-class perspective of the world.

Mia Madre – 27th May

Margherita is a director shooting a film with the famous American actor Barry Huggins, who is quite a character. Away from the set, Margherita tries to hold her life together while feeling powerless when facing her mother’s illness and her daughter’s adolescence. Nanni Moretti’s moving drama stems from the death of his own mother.

Around the World When You Were My Age – 28th May

At age 30, Jiro embarked into a year-long trip taking in the Soviet Union, North Africa, and the United States. Nearly half a century later, her daughter makes use of various memorabilia to step back in time and explore to what degree such adventures have shaped the man’s take on the modern world. This 2018 documentary from Aya Koretzky is one of MUBI’s Undiscovered picks.

Krabi, 2562 – 29th May

In the town of Krabi, a popular destination in Thailand, the local folklore and histories are promoted as attractions, while the labour force is hidden from the tourists’ eyes. A nameless character, whose identity continually changes, takes us around town to explore sites that capture Krabi now. This avant-garde offering from Anocha Suwichakornpong and Ben Rivers is a MUBI Exclusive.

 

Other new releases on MUBI

Wadjda

The first feature film to be shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, Haifaa Al Mansour’s remarkable debut is a fantastic, uplifting story about a girl who wants to ride a bike and wear purple trainers to school. Read our full review

The Past

Following a four year separation, Ahmad returns to Paris from Tehran, upon his French wife Marie’s request, in order to finalize their divorce procedure. During his brief stay, Ahmad discovers the conflicting nature of Marie’s relationship with her daughter Lucie. Berenice Bejo and Tahar Rahim star in Asghar Farhadi’s drama, which won Best Actress at Cannes. Read our full review

Ema

Ema is a magnetic and impulsive dancer in a reggaeton troupe. Her toxic marriage to choreographer Gastón is beyond repair, following a decision to give up on their adopted child Polo. She sets out on a mission to get him back, not caring who she’ll need to fight, seduce or destroy to make it happen. Read our review

Passion

There is fierce competition between Christine, the boss of a multinational advertising agency, and her talented protégée Isabelle. Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace star in Brian De Palma’s game of seduction, manipulation and humiliation.

Cassandro, The Exotico!

After 26 years of spinning dives and flying uppercuts on the ring, Cassandro, the star of the gender-bending cross-dressing Mexican wrestlers known as the Exoticos, is far from retiring. But with dozens of broken bones and metal pins in his body, he must now reinvent himself, a process captured in Marie Losier’s documentary. Read our review

Vitalina Varela

When her husband leaves to find work in Portugal, Vitalina is left behind in Cape Verde. Years later, she finally makes the journey to Lisbon, but arrives three days after his funeral. Alone and isolated in her late husband’s home, she is determined to persevere and confront the ghosts of the past. Released on MUBI straight after its March cinema release, Pedro Costa’s 2019 drama won Best Actress at the Locarno Film Festival.

Our Daily Bread

A woman walks for miles every day to get bread for her truck driver husband, and waits for him to drive past the village. While he spends time with his friends and his mistress, she is concerned about their dying relationship. One day she needs to help her sister, and is late for her husband.

The Lunchbox

Charming in its simplicity, this dainty drama starring the late Irrfan Khan is a delectable treat worth savouring. Read our full review

Take Me Somewhere Nice

Alma is in between everything: raised in the Netherlands by Bosnian parents, no longer a girl, but not really a woman yet. She hardly knows her father, but when he is admitted to a Bosnian hospital she decides to visit him one last time. The directorial debut of Bosnian-born Dutch director Ena Sendijarević.

Fellini: I Vitelloni

Five young men, the not-so-young sons of middle class parents, linger in a postadolescent limbo, dreaming of adventure and escape from their small coastal town. Perpetually unemployed, they whittle their lives away by spending the money of their families on drink, women, and nights at the pool hall.

45 Years

Andrew Haigh’s drama starring Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay is a haunting study of relationships and memory. Read our full review

The Fall

Jonathan Glazer’s follow-up to Under the Skin is a short film inspired by Goya, a sinister descent into the lynch-mob mentality and the horrors of the human condition. Also available on BBC iPlayer.

Our Little Sister

Hirokazu Koreeda’s eye for human relationships has never been more tender than in this delicate study of parenthood, absence and inheritance. Read our review

The Orphanage (2019)

In the late 1980s, 15-year-old street kid Qodrat is arrested for illegally reselling cinema tickets, and put in an orphanage on the outskirts of Kabul. For the first time in his life, he goes to school, takes a class trip, makes friends, and falls in love—while avoiding two older bullies.

Fedora

Washed-up producer Barry ‘Dutch’ Detweiler attempts to lure the iconic but reclusive actress Fedora out of retirement in a bid to revive both their careers. But her privacy is hard won, and with good reason. When she commits suicide, Detweiler becomes suspicious and decides to investigate further. Almost 30 years after Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder reunited with William Holden for this spiritual sequel.

Diary of a Country Priest

A new priest arrives in the rural French village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish. The apathetic congregation rejects him immediately. Through his diary entries, the suffering young man relays a crisis of faith that threatens to drive him away from the village and from God.

National Gallery

Frederick Wiseman’s three-hour visit to the National Gallery is a portrait of a hugely complex world painted as simply as possible. Completely absorbing. Read our review

Straub-Huillet: Antigone

A fearless Antigone, refusing to allow the dishonored body of her murdered brother Polynices to be devoured by vultures and dogs, defies the Thebian tyrant Creon by burying him. In punishment Creon orders Oedipus’s rebellious daughter to be entombed alive, lest she sow insurrection among the people.

Romantic Comedy

In Elizabeth Sankey’s Romantic Comedy, our most-loved romcoms are torn apart and scrutinised for their unrealistic pictures of male-female relationships and white, heterosexual, middle-class characters. Why does the woman always have to be saved by a man? Read our full review

Let the Sunshine In

Juliette Binoche is brilliant in this witty but episodic romantic comedy from Claire Denis. Read our full review

Céline Sciamma: Tomboy – 15th May

There is definitely something boyish about ten-year-old Laure. It’s summer and she has recently moved to a new area with her parents and her little sister, Jeanne. Laure allows her new neighbourhood acquaintances to believe that she is a boy. That’s how Laure becomes Michael. Truth or dare? Celine Sciamma’s delicate exploration of identity and gender is a sweet, funny, moving gem. Read our review

Céline Sciamma: Water Lilies

The paths of three 15-year-old girls living in a modern Paris suburb cross at the local swimming pool, where love and desire make a dramatic appearance. The dynamics of their relationships gradually begins to shift as they come to learn the true meaning of arousal and the power of sexual attraction.

 

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Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon

The Go-Between
Available until end of May 2020

Ghost Town Anthology
Available until end of May 2020

La Bete Humaine
Available until end of May 2020

Chloe
Available until end of May 2020

Biutiful
Available until end of May 2020

Ran
Available until end of May 2020

A.K.
Available until end of May 2020

My Blueberry Nights
Available until end of May 2020

L’Eclisse
Available until end of May 2020

Blue Valentine
Available until end of May 2020

Mother
Available until end of May 2020

The Host
Available until end of May 2020

Contempt
Available until end of May 2020

To The Wonder
Available until end of May 2020

Pierrot Le Fou
Available until end of May 2020

Le Cercle Rouge
Available until end of May 2020

The Servant
Available until end of May 2020

La Strada
Available until end of May 2020

Grand Illusion
Available until end of May 2020

Mr. Klein
Available until end of May 2020

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