21st Century Cinema

21st Century Cinema

116 Episodes

Explore the best of contemporary cinema from around the world.

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21st Century Cinema
  • A Wild Patience Has Taken Me Here

    Episode 1

    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...

  • Carne seca

    Episode 2

    Directed by Jazmin Diaz • 2015 • United States
    Starring Joseph T. Campos, Karina Dominguez, Cristian Miranda

    Two brothers in rural Mexico have until sunset to sell a cooler of beef—or face their father’s anger.

  • Infernal Affairs

    Episode 3

    Directed by Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak • 2002 • Hong Kong
    Starring Andy Lau Tak-wah, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Anthony Wong Chau-sang

    Two of Hong Kong cinema’s most iconic leading men, Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau Tak-wah, face off in the breathtaking thriller that revitalized the city-sta...

  • Infernal Affairs II

    Episode 4

    Directed by Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak • 2003 • Hong Kong
    Starring Edison Chen Koon-hei, Shawn Yue Man-lok, Anthony Wong Chau-sang

    The first of two sequels to follow in the wake of the massively successful INFERNAL AFFAIRS softens the original’s furious pulp punch in favor of something mo...

  • Infernal Affairs III

    Episode 5

    Directed by Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak • 2003 • Hong Kong
    Starring Andy Lau Tak-wah, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Leon Lai

    Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau Tak-wah return for the cathartic conclusion of the INFERNAL AFFAIRS trilogy, which layers on even more deep-cover intrigue while steering the...

  • Demonlover

    Episode 6

    Directed by Olivier Assayas • 2002 • France
    Starring Connie Nielsen, Charles Berling, Chloë Sevigny

    “No one sees anything. Ever. They watch, but they don’t understand.” So observes Connie Nielsen in Olivier Assayas’s hallucinatory, globe-spanning DEMONLOVER, a postmodern neonoir thriller and med...

  • Rat Pack Rat

    Episode 7

    Directed by Todd Rohal • 2014 • United States
    Starring Eddie Rouse, Steve Little, Margie Beegle

    A Sammy Davis Jr. impersonator, hired to visit with a loyal Rat Pack fan, finds himself delivering last rites at the boy’s bedside.

  • The Rabbit Hunt

    Episode 8

    Directed by Patrick Bresnan • 2017 • United States

    In the Florida Everglades, rabbit hunting is considered a rite of passage for young men. THE RABBIT HUNT follows seventeen-year-old Chris and his family as they hunt in the fields of the largest industrial sugar farms in the U.S. The film record...

  • Oliver Sees Indigo

    Episode 9

    Directed by Ryan Clancy • 2022 • United States

    This film enacts an attempt to regain attachment following a period of heroin addiction, near-death experiences, and oxytocin deficiency. The camera shifts between moments of fragile devotion as it searches for a higher power in threads of shared su...

  • So We Live

    Episode 10

    Directed by Rand Abou Fakher • 2021 • Belgium
    Starring Rahaf Alobeid, Amina Al Haj, Luna Al Obeid

    In this claustrophobic study of life during wartime, a family in a conflict-ravaged country spends what seems to be a normal evening together. Their conversations shift between casual matters of dai...

  • Inland Empire

    Episode 11

    Directed by David Lynch • 2006 • United States
    Starring Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux

    “Strange, what love does.” The role of a lifetime, a Hollywood mystery, a woman in trouble . . . David Lynch’s first digitally shot feature makes visionary use of the medium to weave a vast meditatio...

  • Filipiñana

    Episode 12

    Directed by Rafael Manuel • 2020 • Philippines, United Kingdom
    Starring Jorybel Agotto, Sunshine Teodoro, Micah Musah

    The self-contained cosmos of a country-club golf course serves as a microcosm of Filipino society in this sharply observed miniature. New “tee-girl” Isabel still has to learn the...

  • Home When You Return

    Episode 13

    Directed by Carl Elsaesser • 2021 • United States

    “Stretching and blurring the boundaries of video essay, experimental film, and home movie, traces of a 1950s homemade melodrama by amateur filmmaker Joan Thurber Baldwin intermingle with a mournful homage to the author’s grandmother and her vacat...

  • Bintou
    27:58
    Episode 14

    Bintou

    Episode 14

    Directed by Fanta Régina Nacro • 2001 • Burkina Faso
    Starring Alima Salouka, Hyppolite Ouangrawa

    Bintou wants to make sure that her daughter goes to school, but her husband Abel doesn't think it’s worth it because there is only enough money for the boys’ education. Bintou won’t give up and start...

  • Heron 1954–2002

    Episode 15

    Directed by Alexis McCrimmon • 2022 • United States

    HERON 1954–2002 is a visual eulogy that taps into the phenomena of makeshift memorials and small gestures of mourning. Honoring the life of a loved one who died due to an accidental opioid overdose, the film materializes the process of overdue ...

  • Songs from the Second Floor

    Episode 16

    Directed by Roy Andersson • 2000 • Sweden
    Starring Lars Nordh, Stefan Larsson, Bengt C. W. Carlsson

    Following a twenty-five year break from feature filmmaking, Swedish existentialist Roy Andersson reintroduced his singular vision to the world with this by turns bleak and mordantly funny vision o...

  • Three Songs Without Z.

    Episode 17

    Directed by Karthik Pandian and Andros Zins-Browne • 2022 • United States
    Starring Zakaria Almoutlak

    A portrait of Zakaria Almoutlak, a sculptor and media activist from Homs, Syria, who fled the civil war in 2015.

  • Strangers

    Episode 18

    Directed by Rajee Samarasinghe • 2022 • Sri Lanka, United States

    “This footage was shot shortly after the civil war in Sri Lanka on the occasion of my mother’s long-delayed reunion with Kamala, the aunt she lived with as a child. Kamala was living a life of solitude at this point and has now sin...

  • We Knew How Beautiful They Were, These Islands

    Episode 19

    Directed by Younes Ben Slimane • 2021 • France, Tunisia

    At night, a stranger digs graves, buries the dead, and watches over them. In the dark, he reveals the personal belongings of the deceased to us. These objects, separated from their owners, bear their scars and story, while others melt until...

  • Faya dayi

    Episode 20

    Directed by Jessica Beshir • 2021 • Ethiopia, United States, Qatar

    A sublime work of trance-state cinema, the debut feature by the Mexican Ethiopian filmmaker Jessica Beshir is a hypnotic immersion in the world of rural Ethiopia, a place where one commodity—khat, a euphoria-inducing plant once p...

  • Declarations of Love

    Episode 21

    Directed by Tiff Rekem • 2022 • United States

    A fragmentary rumination on an aging father figure and his nearness to the gender-reveal-party fire that scorched the San Bernardino foothills in 2020.

  • Maman Brigitte

    Episode 22

    Directed by Ayanna Dozier • 2022 • United States

    MAMAN BRIGITTE stitches together the intimacy of a private ritual involving the Voudou loa Maman Brigitte (who governst the barrier between the living and the dead) with the sounds of the body (spitting, running, vomiting, etc.). These “interior” ...

  • LYNCH (one)

    Episode 23

    Directed by blackANDwhite • 2007 • United States
    Starring David Lynch

    This 2007 feature-length film by blackANDwhite, the makers of DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE, was made over the course of two years during the filming of INLAND EMPIRE.

  • LYNCH2
    30:19
    Episode 24

    LYNCH2

    Episode 24

    Directed by blackANDwhite • 2007 • United States
    Starring David Lynch

    This 2007 short film by blackANDwhite, the makers of DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE, features behind-the-scenes footage from the making of INLAND EMPIRE.