21st Century Cinema

21st Century Cinema

105 Episodes

Explore the best of contemporary cinema from around the world.

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21st Century Cinema
  • Madness Remixed

    Episode 1

    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.

  • Who I Am and What I Want

    Episode 2

    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.

  • Behemoth: or the Game of God

    Episode 3

    Directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese • 2016 • Lesotho, Germany
    Starring Tseko Monaheng

    A preacher walks the streets of Lesotho’s capital, Maseru, dragging a mysterious coffin whose contents elicit unexpected—and unscripted—reactions from passersby.

  • Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You.

    Episode 4

    Directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese • 2019 • Germany, Lesotho

    Part poetic essay, part documentary, this rapturous film by director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese (THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT’S A RESURRECTION) analyzes the complexities of his relationship to his native country of Lesotho from his new hom...

  • Mosonngoa

    Episode 5

    Directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese • 2014 • Lesotho
    Starring Siphiwe Nzima-Ntskhe, Masele Tokane, Chaka Phehlamarole Khalechene

    Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese made this narrative short film in 2014, inspired by the real-life legend of Lesotho’s only known female stick fighter.

  • The Clay Bird

    Episode 6

    Directed by Tareque Masud • 2002 • Bangladesh
    Starring Nurul Haque, Russell Farazi, Jayanto Chattopadhyay

    Set during the turbulent late-1960s period leading up to Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, this lyrical drama tells the story of a family torn apart by religion and war. Anu (Nurul Is...

  • ABC Africa

    Episode 7

    Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 2001 • Iran
    Starring Abbas Kiarostami, Seifollah Samadian

    In 2000, Abbas Kiarostami traveled to Africa at the request of the United Nations to document a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Uganda, where 1.5 million children had been orphaned by civil war and AIDS. Wo...

  • Poetry

    Episode 8

    Directed by Lee Chang-dong • 2010 • South Korea
    Starring Yoon Jeong-hee, Lee Da-wit, Kim Hee-ra

    Lee Chang-dong’s follow-up to his acclaimed SECRET SUNSHINE is an exquisite story about the power of art to bear witness to both sublime beauty and the violent truths that lie hidden in the hearts of ...

  • Celluloid Man

    Episode 9

    Directed by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur • 2012 • India
    Starring P. K. Nair, Krzysztof Zanussi, Lester James Peries

    An engaging, heartfelt look at one man’s battle to preserve his nation’s cinematic heritage, CELLULOID MAN is an intimate portrait of legendary Indian archivist P. K. Nair, who founde...

  • Bad Night for the Blues

    Episode 10

    Directed by Chris Shepherd • 2010 • United Kingdom

    It’s a holiday to remember—or not—when a young man joins his dotty elderly aunt for a Christmas party at her local Conservative Club, where the wine is flowing, the bingo is heated, and the cracks in the genteel facade start to show.

  • My Architect

    Episode 11

    Directed by Nathaniel Kahn • 2003 • United States

    Louis I. Kahn, who died in 1974, was one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century, but he left behind an illegitimate son, Nathaniel, and a personal life of secrets and broken promises. MY ARCHITECT takes us on a heartbreaking yet humo...

  • Take Out

    Episode 12

    Directed by Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou • 2004 • United States
    Starring Charles Jang, Jeng-Hua Yu, Wang-Thye Lee

    The American dream has rarely seemed so far away as in Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou’s raw, vérité TAKE OUT, an immersion in the life of an undocumented Chinese immigrant struggli...

  • Mysterious Object at Noon

    Episode 13

    Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul • 2000 • Thailand
    Starring Duangjai Hiransri, Somsri Pinyopol, Kannikar Narong

    Apichatpong Weerasethakul brought an appetite for experimentation to Thai cinema with his debut feature, an uncategorizable work that refracts documentary impressions of his homel...

  • Porto of My Childhood

    Episode 14

    Directed by Manoel de Oliveira • 2001 • France, Portugal
    Starring Jorge Trêpa, Ricardo Trêpa, Maria de Medeiros

    With the freedom and rigor that were his trademarks, Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira returned to Porto, the city where he had been born ninety-three years before, for this sublime...

  • This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection

    Episode 15

    Directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese • 2019 • Lesotho, South Africa
    Starring Mary Twala, Makhaola Ndebele, Jerry Mofokeng

    With a poet’s eye for place, light, and the spiritual dimensions of everyday existence, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese crafts a meditation on the concept of homeland and a transcen...

  • 24 Frames

    Episode 16

    Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 2017 • Iran

    For what would prove to be his final film, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami gave himself a challenge: to create a dialogue between his work as a filmmaker and his work as a photographer, bridging the two art forms to which he had dedicated his life. ...

  • Code Unknown

    Episode 17

    Directed by Michael Haneke • 2000 • France
    Starring Juliette Binoche, Thierry Neuvic, Alexandre Hamidi

    One of the world’s most influential and provocative filmmakers, the Oscar–winning Austrian director Michael Haneke diagnoses the social maladies of contemporary Europe with devastating precisio...

  • Yi Yi

    Episode 18

    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 19

    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 20

    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 21

    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 22

    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...

  • Gomorrah

    Episode 23

    Directed by Matteo Garrone • 2008 • Italy
    Starring Toni Servillo, Salvatore Abruzzese, Gianfelice Imparato

    Matteo Garrone’s GOMORRAH—presented here in its 2020 New Edition director’s cut—is a stark, shocking vision of contemporary gangsterdom, and one of cinema’s most authentic depictions of org...

  • Frances Ha

    Episode 24

    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...