Films by Nina Menkes
Leaving July 1
Formally spare but texturally and symbolically sumptuous, the films of Nina Menkes possess a strange magic. Their languorous and sometimes hallucinatory tableaux, ranging from the North African desert of "The Great Sadness of Zohara" (1983) to the gaudy Vegas casino of "Queen of Diamonds" (1991), bristle with the radical alienation of their heroines—summoning the specter of Jeanne Dielman. The four, recently restored films in this selection represent a quartet of sorts, each one starring Menkes’ sister Tinka, a key collaborator and muse.
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At Home with Nina Menkes
Directed by Metrograph | 10 mins | 2026
Filmmaker Nina Menkes discusses her films "Queen of Diamonds," "The Great Sadness of Zohara," "Magdalena Viraga," and "The Bloody Child". -
The Great Sadness of Zohara
Leaving July 1
Directed by Nina Menkes | 38 mins | 1983
Departing Jerusalem for unknown, arid landscapes, the unnamed protagonist—played by Nina Menkes’ sister, Tinka, in the first of their collaborations—also drifts away, as if compelled by unseen forces, from her orthodox Jewish community and ... -
Magdalena Viraga
Leaving July 1
Directed by Nina Menkes | 90 mins | 1986
Menkes took home the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s “Best Independent Film” prize with her hypnotic but disturbing debut feature, in which her sister Tinka plays Ida, a sex worker accused of killing her pimp. Moving between a string... -
Queen of Diamonds
Leaving July 1
Directed by Nina Menkes | 77 mins | 1991
Set in a drab, grimly coruscating Las Vegas, "Queen of Diamonds" again situates Tinka Menkes, the filmmaker’s sister, as an icon of womankind’s profound estrangement under patriarchy. Her character, Firdaus—the name borrowed from the unrepe... -
The Bloody Child
Leaving July 1
Directed by Nina Menkes | 85 mins | 1996
Described by critics as her most radical work and by the filmmaker as her greatest, the fifth film Nina Menkes made with her sister Tinka in the lead—here, a Marine captain overseeing a murder investigation out in the Mojave—would also be t...
