21st Century Cinema

21st Century Cinema

140 Episodes

Explore the best of contemporary cinema from around the world.

Subscribe Share
21st Century Cinema
  • 2046

    Episode 1

    Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 2004 • Hong Kong
    Starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Gong Li, Faye Wong

    Wong Kar Wai’s loose sequel to IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE combines that film’s languorous air of romantic longing with a dizzying time-hopping structure and avant-sci-fi twist. Tony Leung Chiu Wai reprises his...

  • After Yang

    Episode 2

    Directed by Kogonada • 2021 • United States
    Starring Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja

    When his young daughter’s beloved companion—an android named Yang (Justin H. Min)—malfunctions, Jake (Colin Farrell) searches for a way to repair him. In the process, Jake discovers ...

  • Teknolust

    Episode 3

    Directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson • 2002 • United States
    Starring Tilda Swinton, Jeremy Davies, James Urbaniak

    Tilda Swinton plays four roles in Lynn Hershman Leeson’s feminist sci-fi brain-bender about Rosetta Stone and her three Self-Replicating Automatons, (SRAs), which she cloned from her own...

  • Life After BOB: The Chalice Study

    Episode 4

    Directed by Ian Cheng • 2021 • United States
    Starring Poonam Basu, Cherami Leigh, Dana Lee

    In this innovative anime created by artist Ian Cheng in the Unity game engine, neural engineer Dr. Wong installs an experimental AI named BOB (“Bag of Beliefs”) into the nervous system of his ten-year-old ...

  • Ennui ennui

    Episode 5

    Directed by Gabriel Abrantes • 2013 • France
    Starring Edith Scob, Laetitia Dosch, Omid Rawendah

    With a cast featuring Edith Scob and Esther Garrel, this delirious espionage farce resembles what might have happened if ZERO DARK THIRTY had been written by Georges Bataille.

  • Os humores artificiais

    Episode 6

    Directed by Gabriel Abrantes • 2016 • Portugal
    Starring Margarida Lucas, Amanda Rodarte, Gilda Nomacce

    Taking Wittgenstein’s assertion that the most profound problems can only be discussed in the form of jokes as a starting point, OS HUMORES ARTIFICIAIS (“The Artificial Humors”) combines old-Hol...

  • Godland

    Episode 7

    Directed by Hlynur Pálmason • 2022 • Iceland, Denmark
    Starring Elliott Crosset Hove, Vic Carmen Sonne, Ingvar Sigurdsson

    The struggle between the strictures of religion and our own brute animal nature plays out amid the beautifully forbidding landscapes of remote Iceland in this stunning psychol...

  • Will-o’-the-Wisp

    Episode 8

    Directed by João Pedro Rodrigues • 2022 • France, Portugal
    Starring Mauro Costa, André Cabral, Joel Branco

    A rapturously queer, ecologically minded, antiroyalist musical fantasia, WILL-O’-THE-WISP finds the ever-audacious João Pedro Rodrigues (The Ornithologist) at his most playfully and pleasur...

  • Old Man

    Episode 9

    Directed by Leah Shore • 2012 • United States

    For more then 20 years Charles Manson has refused to communicate to the outside world. Until now. These are actual never before heard phone conversations between Canadian best selling author Marlin Marynick and Charles Manson.

  • 38
    22:50
    Episode 10

    38

    Episode 10

    Directed by Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew • 2021 • United States
    Starring Curie Choi, Alicia Novella Vasquez

    Vivid interruptions of sound and images fragment the psychic landscape of a thirty-eight-year-old woman who becomes obsessed with the social-media presence of the young woman who broke u...

  • I Love You So Much

    Episode 11

    Directed by Leah Shore • 2014 • United States
    Starring Leah Shore, Jarret Kerr

    Pillow talk takes a surreal turn in a shape-shifting blend of live action and animation.

  • Mother of George

    Episode 12

    Directed by Andrew Dosunmu • 2013 • Nigeria, United States
    Starring Isaach De Bankolé, Danai Gurira, Yaya Alafia

    Photographer turned filmmaker Andrew Dosumnu’s eye for striking compositions and vibrant colors is on resplendent display in this sensuous visual feast, a heartrending immigrant’s tal...

  • Summer 1993

    Episode 13

    Directed by Carla Simón • 2017 • Spain
    Starring Laia Artigas, Bruna Cusí, David Verdaguer

    Six-year-old Frida (Laia Artigas) looks on in silence as the last objects from her recently deceased mother’s apartment in Barcelona are placed in boxes. Although her aunt, uncle, and younger cousin Anna (P...

  • Puss
    08:49
    Episode 14

    Puss

    Episode 14

    Directed by Leah Shore • 2021 • United States
    Starring Sarah Ellen Stephens, Karl Jacob, Brian W. Smith

    How does one get laid in the midst of a global pandemic? A woman seeks release for her locked-down libido, with surreal results.

  • First
    11:59
    Episode 15

    First

    Episode 15

    Directed by Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew • 2019 • United States
    Starring Mae Wangmo, Anne Hanavan, Angel Cruz

    A teenager lives her life, toggling seamlessly between her physical and digital selves. She walks over a bridge at sunrise, follows a stranger through the streets of the city, and meet...

  • Funeral

    Episode 16

    Directed by Leah Shore • 2018 • United States
    Starring Jarret Kerr, Jennifer Prediger

    On the day of her lover’s funeral, a pregnant woman works through her grief in an unexpectedly kinky way.

  • Hallway

    Episode 17

    Directed by Leah Shore • 2015 • United States
    Starring Margaret Singer, Sarah Ellen Stephens

    In a secret sex club in Brooklyn, a queer couple unleash upon each other a drug-induced existential barrage of delusions and broken dreams.

  • Madeline’s Madeline

    Episode 18

    Directed by Josephine Decker • 2018 • United States
    Starring Helena Howard, Molly Parker, Miranda July

    Josephine Decker’s psychodramatic revelation features a riveting debut performance from Helena Howard as Madeline, a teenage girl who has become an integral part of a prestigious experimental t...

  • Negative Two

    Episode 19

    Directed by Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew • 2019 • United States
    Starring Eric Lee, Sean Dunn, Matthew Raviotta

    A twentysomething gay man develops a relationship over text messages with a stranger he meets on a dating app. Their exchange becomes increasingly intimate as the protagonist navigate...

  • Launch
    03:01
    Episode 20

    Launch

    Episode 20

    Directed by Leah Shore • 2021 • United States

    An animated outer-space odyssey puts Einstein’s theory of relativity to the test.

  • Lan Yu

    Episode 21

    Directed by Stanley Kwan • 2001 • Hong Kong, China
    Starring Liu Ye, Hu Jun, Huatong Li

    Filmed in secret in Beijing, this tender gay romance by Stanley Kwan combines the timeless conventions of classic melodrama with a radically frank depiction of queer intimacy as it traces, over the course of y...

  • Vámonos

    Episode 22

    Directed by Marvin Lemus • 2015 • United States
    Starring Vico Ortiz, Jessica Camacho, Natalia Cordova-Buckley

    Vico Ortiz (OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH) and Jessica Camacho (ALL RISE, THE FLASH, WATCHMEN) costar in this beautiful story about what it looks like to show up as an ally for our gender-nonconf...

  • Southern Comfort

    Episode 23

    Directed by Kate Davis • 2001 • United States
    Starring Robert Eads, Lola Cola, Maxwell Scott Anderson

    A deeply life-affirming film about death, this richly humanist documentary follows the final year in the life of Robert Eads, a trans man living in rural Georgia who was refused treatment for hi...

  • A Wild Patience Has Taken Me Here

    Episode 24

    Directed by Érica Sarmet • 2021 • Brazil
    Starring Zélia Duncan, Bruna Linzmeyer, Lorre Motta

    This formally innovative, euphorically sexy short travels through the queer Brazil of past, present, and future as it traces an encounter between an older butch biker and a band of young polyamorous lesb...