21st Century Cinema

21st Century Cinema

109 Episodes

Explore the best of contemporary cinema from around the world.

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21st Century Cinema
  • Yi Yi

    Episode 1

    Directed by Edward Yang • 2000 • Taiwan, Japan
    Starring Nianzhen Wu, Elaine Jin, Issey Ogata

    The extraordinary, internationally embraced YI YI (A ONE AND A TWO . . .), directed by the late Taiwanese master Edward Yang, follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginnin...

  • The Piano Teacher

    Episode 2

    Directed by Michael Haneke • 2001 • France
    Starring Isabelle Huppert, Benoît Magimel

    In this riveting study of the dynamics of control, Academy Award–winning director Michael Haneke takes on Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek’s controversial 1983 novel about perverse female sexuality and the world ...

  • maɬni—towards the ocean, towards the shore

    Episode 3

    Directed by Sky Hopinka • 2020 • United States

    A poetic experimental documentary circling the origin of the death myth of the Chinookan people in the Pacific Northwest, MAŁNI—TOWARDS THE OCEAN, TOWARDS THE SHORE follows two individuals as they wander through nature, the spirit world, and somethi...

  • Old Joy

    Episode 4

    Directed by Kelly Reichardt • 2006 • United States
    Starring Daniel London, Will Oldham

    Two old friends reunite for a quietly revelatory overnight camping trip in this breakout feature from Kelly Reichardt, a microbudget study of character and masculinity that introduced many viewers to one of co...

  • Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time

    Episode 5

    Directed by Lili Horvát • 2020 • Hungary
    Starring Natasa Stork, Viktor Bodó, Benett Vilmányi

    The second feature by Hungarian director Lili Horvát is a slippery, seductive investigation of memory, obsession, and delusion. After twenty years in the United States, Hungarian neurosurgeon Márta (Nata...

  • Frances Ha

    Episode 6

    Directed by Noah Baumbach • 2013 • United States
    Starring Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner

    Greta Gerwig is radiant as Frances, a woman in her late twenties in contemporary New York trying to sort out her ambitions, her finances, and, above all, her intimate but shifting bond with her best friend, Sop...

  • George Washington

    Episode 7

    Directed by David Gordon Green • 2000 • United States
    Starring Candace Evanofski, Donald Holden, Damien Jewan Lee

    Over the course of one hot summer, a group of children in the decaying rural South must confront a tangle of difficult choices. An ambitiously constructed, elegantly photographed med...

  • Frownland

    Episode 8

    Directed by Ronald Bronstein • 2007 • United States

    Longtime Safdie brothers collaborator Ronald Bronstein has described his lone directorial effort as "a rotten egg lobbed with bad aim at the silver screen." Be forewarned: audience response has been intensely divided. FROWNLAND has garnered bot...

  • Japón

    Episode 9

    Directed by Carlos Reygadas • 2002 • Mexico
    Starring Alejandro Ferretis, Magdalena Flores

    In this preternaturally assured feature debut by Carlos Reygadas, a man (Alejandro Ferretis) travels from Mexico City to an isolated village to commit suicide; once there, however, he meets a pious elderly ...

  • My Winnipeg

    Episode 10

    Directed by Guy Maddin • 2007 • Canada

    The geographical dead center of North America and the beloved birthplace of Guy Maddin, Winnipeg is the frosty and mysterious star of Maddin’s “docu-fantasia.” A work of memory and imagination, the film burrows into what the director calls “the heart of the...

  • Revanche

    Episode 11

    Directed by Götz Spielmann • 2008 • Austria
    Starring Johannes Krisch, Irina Potapenko, Ursula Strauss

    A gripping thriller and a tragic drama of nearly Greek proportions, REVANCHE is the stunning, Oscar-nominated international breakthrough of Austrian filmmaker Götz Spielmann. In a ragged section...

  • A Christmas Tale

    Episode 12

    Directed by Arnaud Desplechin • 2008 • France
    Starring Catherine Deneuve, Mathieu Amalric, Jean-Paul Roussillon

    In Arnaud Desplechin's beguiling A CHRISTMAS TALE, Catherine Deneuve brings her legendary poise to the role of Junon, matriarch of the troubled Vuillard family, who come together at Ch...

  • Hunger

    Episode 13

    Directed by Steve McQueen • 2008 • Ireland, United Kingdom
    Starring Michael Fassbender, Stuart Graham, Liam Cunningham

    With HUNGER, British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen has turned one of history’s most controversial acts of political defiance into a jarring, unforgettable cinematic experie...

  • Life During Wartime

    Episode 14

    Directed by Todd Solondz • 2010 • United States
    Starring Ally Sheedy, Allison Janney, Ciarán Hinds

    In LIFE DURING WARTIME, independent filmmaker Todd Solondz explores contemporary American existence and the nature of forgiveness with his customary dry humor and queasy precision. The film functio...

  • Certified Copy

    Episode 15

    Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 2010 • Italy
    Starring Juliette Binoche, William Shimell

    The great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami travels to Tuscany for a luminous and provocative romance in which nothing is as it appears. What seems at first to be a straightforward tale of two people—played by...

  • Beyond the Hills

    Episode 16

    Directed by Cristian Mungiu • 2012 • Romania
    Starring Cristina Flutur, Cosmina Stratan

    With this arresting drama based on notorious real-life events, Cristian Mungiu mounts a complex inquiry into faith, fanaticism, and indifference. At a desolate Romanian monastery, a young novice nun, Voichita ...

  • Phoenix

    Episode 17

    Directed by Christian Petzold • 2014 • Germany
    Starring Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina Kunzendorf

    This evocative and haunting drama, set in rubble-strewn Berlin in 1945, is like no other film about post-World War II Jewish-German identity. After surviving Auschwitz, a former cabaret singer (Ni...

  • A Master Builder

    Episode 18

    Directed by Jonathan Demme • 2014 • United States
    Starring Wallace Shawn, Julie Hagerty, Lisa Joyce

    Twenty years after their brilliant cinema-theater experiment VANYA ON 42ND STREET, Wallace Shawn and André Gregory reunited to produce another idiosyncratic film version of a classic play, this t...

  • Dheepan

    Episode 19

    Directed by Jacques Audiard • 2015 • France
    Starring Antonythasan Jesuthasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine Vinasithamby

    With this Palme d’Or–winning drama, which deftly combines seemingly disparate genres, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard cemented his status as a titan of contemporary world ...

  • Certain Women

    Episode 20

    Directed by Kelly Reichardt • 2016 • United States
    Starring Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams

    The expanses of the American West take center stage in this intimately observed triptych from Kelly Reichardt. Adapted from three short stories by Maile Meloy and unfolding in self-containe...

  • The Other Side of Hope

    Episode 21

    Directed by Aki Kaurismäki • 2017 • Finland
    Starring Sherwan Haji, Sakari Kuosmanen

    This wry, melancholic comedy from Aki Kaurismäki, a response to the ongoing global refugee crisis, follows two people searching for a place to call home. Khaled (Sherwan Haji), a displaced Syrian, lands in Helsin...

  • David Lynch: The Art Life

    Episode 22

    Directed by Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, and Olivia Neergaard-Holm • 2016 • United States, Denmark

    A rare glimpse into the mind of one of cinema’s most enigmatic visionaries, DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE offers an absorbing portrait of the artist, as well as an intimate encounter with the man himself. ...

  • 45 Years

    Episode 23

    Directed by Andrew Haigh • 2015 • United Kingdom
    Starring Charlotte Rampling, Tom Courtenay

    In this exquisitely calibrated film, Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay perform a subtly off-kilter pas de deux as Kate and Geoff, an English couple who, on the eve of an anniversary celebration, fin...

  • Clouds of Sils Maria

    Episode 24

    Directed by Olivier Assayas • 2014 • France, Germany, Switzerland
    Starring Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace Moretz

    This multilayered, immensely entertaining drama from the great contemporary French director Olivier Assayas is a singular look at the intersection of high art and popu...