21st Century Cinema

21st Century Cinema

121 Episodes

Explore the best of contemporary cinema from around the world.

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21st Century Cinema
  • 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...

  • Mulholland Dr.

    Episode 2

    Directed by David Lynch • 2001 • United States
    Starring Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux

    A 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)...

  • 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...

  • So We Live

    Episode 4

    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 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...

  • Filipiñana

    Episode 6

    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 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...

  • Bintou

    Episode 8

    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 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 ...

  • Songs from the Second Floor

    Episode 10

    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 11

    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 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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.

  • ear for eye

    Episode 16

    Directed by debbie tucker green • 2021 • United Kingdom
    Starring Lashana Lynch, Tosin Cole, Danny Sapani

    With 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...

  • 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” ...

  • LYNCH (one)

    Episode 18

    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 19

    LYNCH2

    Episode 19

    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.

  • 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.

  • Orthodontics

    Episode 21

    Directed by Mohammadreza Mayghani • 2021 • Iran
    Starring Maryam Hossieni, Yas Farkhonde, Arezou Aali

    Confined 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...

  • Bleue
    19:18
    Episode 22

    Bleue

    Episode 22

    Directed by Ornella Pacchioni • 2021 • France

    Thirteen-year-old Lucie is alone during the summer holidays when she meets a mysterious boy named Léo. Though she sees him as a remedy for her loneliness, strange events come to pass as they spend time together.

  • Who I Am and What I Want

    Episode 23

    Directed by Chris Shepherd and David Shrigley • 2005 • United Kingdom
    Starring Kevin Eldon

    Appropriately crude hand-drawn animation evokes the manic rantings and ramblings of a singularly self-deluded man.

  • Loving Highsmith

    Episode 24

    Directed by Eva Vitija • 2022 • Germany, Switzerland
    Starring Gwendoline Christie, Annina Butterworth, Marijane Meaker

    The 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...