21st Century Cinema
121 Episodes
Explore the best of contemporary cinema from around the world.
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12:15Episode 1
The Rabbit Hunt
Episode 1
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...
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2:27:18Episode 2
Mulholland Dr.
Episode 2
Directed by David Lynch • 2001 • United States
Starring Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin TherouxA love story in the city of dreams . . .
Blonde Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia (Laura Harring)... -
13:13Episode 3
Oliver Sees Indigo
Episode 3
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...
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16:58Episode 4
So We Live
Episode 4
Directed by Rand Abou Fakher • 2021 • Belgium
Starring Rahaf Alobeid, Amina Al Haj, Luna Al ObeidIn 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...
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3:00:22Episode 5
Inland Empire
Episode 5
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...
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24:05Episode 6
Filipiñana
Episode 6
Directed by Rafael Manuel • 2020 • Philippines, United Kingdom
Starring Jorybel Agotto, Sunshine Teodoro, Micah MusahThe 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...
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30:12Episode 7
Home When You Return
Episode 7
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...
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Bintou
Episode 8
Directed by Fanta Régina Nacro • 2001 • Burkina Faso
Starring Alima Salouka, Hyppolite OuangrawaBintou 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...
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04:14Episode 9
Heron 1954–2002
Episode 9
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 ...
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1:39:00Episode 10
Songs from the Second Floor
Episode 10
Directed by Roy Andersson • 2000 • Sweden
Starring Lars Nordh, Stefan Larsson, Bengt C. W. CarlssonFollowing 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...
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36:17Episode 11
Three Songs Without Z.
Episode 11
Directed by Karthik Pandian and Andros Zins-Browne • 2022 • United States
Starring Zakaria AlmoutlakA portrait of Zakaria Almoutlak, a sculptor and media activist from Homs, Syria, who fled the civil war in 2015.
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Strangers
Episode 12
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...
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We Knew How Beautiful They Were, These Islands
Episode 13
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...
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Faya dayi
Episode 14
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...
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29:15Episode 15
Declarations of Love
Episode 15
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.
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1:28:47Episode 16
ear for eye
Episode 16
Directed by debbie tucker green • 2021 • United Kingdom
Starring Lashana Lynch, Tosin Cole, Danny SapaniWith this riveting adaptation of her acclaimed play, debbie tucker green pushes the boundaries of stage and screen alike. Dynamic, absorbing, and visually inventive, EAR FOR EYE traces racial...
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02:51Episode 17
Maman Brigitte
Episode 17
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” ...
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1:25:31Episode 18
LYNCH (one)
Episode 18
Directed by blackANDwhite • 2007 • United States
Starring David LynchThis 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.
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11:28Episode 20
Madness Remixed
Episode 20
Directed by Rhea Storr • 2021 • United Kingdom
MADNESS REMIXED examines the fetishization of Josephine Baker’s body through data-moshing analogue film. What unfolds is a questioning of which images of Black bodies should be reproduced and on what terms.
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14:46Episode 21
Orthodontics
Episode 21
Directed by Mohammadreza Mayghani • 2021 • Iran
Starring Maryam Hossieni, Yas Farkhonde, Arezou AaliConfined by her orthodontic headwear, an alienated teenage girl seeks release through a series of transgressions in this surreally stylized vision of adolescent ennui giving way to shocking rebel...
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07:48Episode 23
Who I Am and What I Want
Episode 23
Directed by Chris Shepherd and David Shrigley • 2005 • United Kingdom
Starring Kevin EldonAppropriately crude hand-drawn animation evokes the manic rantings and ramblings of a singularly self-deluded man.
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1:27:51Episode 24
Loving Highsmith
Episode 24
Directed by Eva Vitija • 2022 • Germany, Switzerland
Starring Gwendoline Christie, Annina Butterworth, Marijane MeakerThe life and work of celebrated American writer Patricia Highsmith are revealed through her diaries and notebooks and the intimate reflections of her lovers, friends, and family...