Contemporary Cinema

Contemporary Cinema

A selection of 21st-century films from around the globe.

Subscribe Share
Contemporary Cinema
  • The Projectionist

    Directed by Abel Ferrara | 81 mins | 2019
    Ferrara’s fond, often funny portrait of Nicolas “Nick” Nicolaou, a Cypriot immigrant who got his start in movie houses working in the Times Square porno theaters in the 1970s and has held on into the 21st century as an independent exhibitor in spite of ov...

  • The Tsugua Diaries

    Leaving November 1

    Directed by Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes | 102 mins | 2021
    The relaxed routine of housemates Carlos, Crista, and João, living in rural isolation during the COVID pandemic, gives way to beguiling mystery in this meta-movie about the demands of filmmaking and the laxity o...

  • Western

    Leaving November 1

    Directed by Valeska Grisebach | 121 mins | 2017
    Tensions rise during a work stoppage when a group of German laborers erecting a hydroelectric plant in rural Bulgaria suddenly find themselves with time to get into trouble in Grisebach’s patient, tonally precise, naturalist dram...

  • Friends And Strangers

    Directed by James Vaughan | 81 mins | 2021
    In writer/director/editor Vaughan’s ennui-drenched feature debut, molehill difficulties—an impromptu camping trip, an ill-fated wedding video—take on mountainous significance for Ray, an Australian twentysomething living a cushioned life in affluent Sydn...

  • 4 Days in France

    Directed by Jérôme Reybaud | 141 mins | 2016
    Parisian Pierre (Pascal Cervo) impulsively leaves his boyfriend Paul (Arthur Igual) behind and hits the backroads of rural France in Reybaud’s droll, sexy road movie for the dating-app age. Pierre makes his way between Grindr dates and cruising destina...

  • So Pretty

    Directed by Jessica Dunn Rovinelli | 83 mins | 2019
    Two young queer couples in New York City—transgender artist Tonia and her American academic boyfriend Franz; transwoman musician Erika and her political radical transmasculine partner Paul—find their daily lives gradually merging with the action...

  • Stranger by the Lake

    Directed by Alain Guiraudie | 100 mins | 2013
    Lauded and laureled at Cannes, Guiradie’s understated, simmeringly sensual thriller explores the proximity of Eros and Thanatos in an idyllic, lakeside nude beach/cruising spot—shot for maximum pastoral splendor by DP Claire Mathon—where regular Franc...

  • I Was at Home, But...

    Directed by Angela Schanelec | 95 mins | 2019
    One of European art cinema’s most distinctive voices, Schanelec—Silver Bear winner for Best Director at this year's Berlinale—orchestrates a tense elliptical drama that’s part psychological close-up, part middle-class Berlin pastiche. Widowed mother-o...

  • Marwencol

    Directed by Jeff Malmberg | 82 mins | 2010
    In Malmberg’s mesmerizing, multi-award-winning portrait of healing and obsession, Mark Hogencamp recovers from a brutal assault and alcoholism by building and tending to a miniature plywood town in his backyard. Populating the diorama with dolls based on...

  • Futuro Beach

    Directed by Karim Aïnouz | 107 mins | 2014
    In this reflective romance from Brazilian auteur Aïnouz, a lifeguard (Wagner Moura) throws himself into a torrid affair with a motorcycling war veteran whose friend disappears in the ocean, but then struggles to find himself after traveling with his brus...

  • Exit Elena

    Directed by Nathan Silver | 72 mins | 2012
    One of the great under-the-radar debuts, Silver’s sly comedy drops a twenty-something nursing aide (Kia Davis) into a suburban house where her kibitzing employer—played by the director’s scene-stealing mom—keeps drawing her into drama and chit chat. Show...

  • Soft in the Head

    Directed by Nathan Silver | 70 mins | 2013

    Twenty-five-year-old force of nature Natalia escapes a bruising relationship and lands like a tornado touching down in the lives of a best friend and a kindly shelter manager. Silver’s feel for the helter-skelter of existence and its volatility in the f...

  • Stinking Heaven

    Directed by Nathan Silver | 70 mins | 2015
    A group home for recovering addicts teeters into cult-like territory in Silver’s hot-house drama, starring a dream team of micro-indie talent including Keith Poulson, Deragh Campbell, and Eleonore Hendricks. Shot on analog video and set in the early 1990...

  • The Great Pretender

    Directed by Nathan Silver | 71 mins | 2018
    When a French theater director (Maëlle Poesy-Guichard) comes to New York to direct an autobiographical play about her disastrous last relationship, a chain reaction of romantic escapades is set off by her two stars (Esther Garrel and Keith Poulson). Each...

  • Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

    Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan | 157 mins | 2011
    Against the majestic Turkish countryside, a roaming police investigation reveals more about the investigators and the tragicomedies of everyday life than about the foggy facts of the case. Ceylan’s gorgeously shot, masterfully paced story has a nove...

  • The Wild Pear Tree

    Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan | 188 mins | 2018
    An aspiring writer comes back to the village where he was born only to find that he can’t escape the debts owed by his father. Quintessentially Chekhovian, the beautifully shot story captures the ache and the ironies of the young man’s predicament, ...

  • Three Monkeys

    Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan | 105 mins | 2008
    Ceylan’s unsettling noir sets up a doomed love triangle between a corrupt politico, his chauffeur who takes the rap for his crimes, and his lover—who happens to be his chauffeur’s wife. A work of true stylistic bravura, the shifting story deploys sk...

  • Beeswax

    Directed by Andrew Bujalski | 100 mins | 2009
    One of the acclaimed writer-director’s unsung gems is a casually nuanced portrait in contrasts between twenty-something twin sisters, Jeannie and Lauren, in Austin, Texas. While Jeannie (who’s paraplegic) keeps a steely eye on her vintage shop, Lauren...

  • Zama

    Directed by Lucrecia Martel | 115 mins | 2017
    A scruffy bureaucrat for the Spanish crown hopelessly angles for ways to get ahead in this audacious vision of 18th-century colonial empire, adapted from Antonio de Benedetto’s 1956 novel of the same name. Don Diego’s anti-epic progress in a far-flung...

  • I Am Not a Witch

    Directed by Rungano Nyoni | 93 mins | 2017
    A young Zambian girl is accused of being a witch and then pressed into soothsaying service by a slick government official in this strikingly shot deadpan satire. Skewering superstition and corruption, it’s a feminist exposé of exploitation done with dazz...

  • Go Down Death

    Directed by Aaron Schimberg | 88 mins | 2013
    Schimberg’s uncanny debut feature is a handcrafted American Gothic pastiche that’s like sitting in on hidden scenes from the 19th century. Lost soldiers, ghosts and lovers, schoolhouse lessons and cabaret songs—these dispatches from the past possess th...

  • Viola

    Directed by Matías Piñeiro | 60 mins | 2012
    A group of actresses who are putting on all-female Shakespeare productions find that the theatrical swirl of frisky intrigue is blurring the boundaries between onstage and off. Filmed with a witty feel for the ongoing dance of social life, Piñeiro’s ele...

  • They All Lie

    Directed by Matías Piñeiro | 75 mins | 2006
    When several artist friends get together in a country house, what follows isn’t a relaxing vacation but a rapid-fire roundelay of conspiracies and capers. Characteristically laced with double layers of meaning, Piñeiro’s romp plays out in personal rival...

  • The Stolen Man

    Directed by Matías Piñeiro | 92 mins | 2007
    Piñeiro’s delightful debut feature skips along with a coterie of Buenos Aires friends, galvanized by one devilishly playful woman with a penchant for games of love and chance. With New Wave brio, the film kicks off Piñeiro’s cycle of contagiously rhythm...