Pacifiction
Contemporary Cinema
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2h 45m
Directed by Albert Serra | 165 mins | 2022
Serra’s mesmerizing portrait of a French bureaucrat’s (Benoît Magimel) visit to a French Polynesian island charts the uneasy relationships between his autocratic yet avuncular High Commissioner and the Indigenous locals under his faux-benevolent thumb. With anxieties recently flamed by rumors of the return of nuclear testing by the French government, the Catalan filmmaker’s slow-building, hypnotic fever dream surfaces incisive commentary about the remnants of colonialism through quiet observation, jaw-dropping shots, and sheer aesthetic audacity.
Up Next in Contemporary Cinema
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Malni -Towards the Ocean, Towards the...
Directed by Sky Hopinka | 80 mins | 2020
The Chinookan people’s origin-of-death myth is at the core of Indigenous filmmaker Hopinka’s dreamy, ethereal debut feature, an experimental documentary following young parents Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier as they struggle with concerns surrounding... -
No Sleep Till
Directed by Alexandra Simpson | 93 mins | 2024
The threat of an impending hurricane has sent most of the residents of and visiting tourists to the coastal Florida town of Atlantic Beach scurrying for cover—but Simpson’s ravishing mood piece lingers behind with a handful of holdouts ignoring the ...
