Criterion is thrilled to partner with Le Cinéma Club for this selection of cutting-edge contemporary short films. A free and curated online cinema, Le Cinéma Club streams one film a week, celebrating a new generation of filmmakers and uncovering inspiring discoveries from the past. This program gathers some of their recent favorite films, spotlighting emerging directors and newly acclaimed voices. These award-winning films were shot all over the world, with themes that are both timely and timeless, but were selected for their distinctive storytelling. Extending across genre and form, these films are inventive, hybrid, playful, cosmic, and personal, blazing adventurous paths for the future of cinema.
Directed by Clément Cogitore • 2017 • France, Finland
What’s at stake when a group of humans gather in an isolated location? That’s one of the questions that drove acclaimed French filmmaker and artist Clément Cogitore to the remote reaches of the Siberian taiga, where two families, the Braguine...
Directed by Mahdi Fleifel • 2018 • Germany
Immediately after a Palestinian-Danish filmmaker signs an online petition, he spirals into self-doubt. He calls an understanding friend in London from his base in Berlin, and the two Palestinians analyze, deconstruct, and interpret the meaning of his ch...
Directed by Garrett Bradley • 2019 • United States
Taking as its starting point the recently rediscovered Bert Williams feature LIME KILN CLUB FIELD DAY (1913)—the first known film to feature an all-Black cast—Garrett Bradley’s extraordinary new short imagines an entire lost lineage of African A...
Directed by Pham Ngoc Lan • 2019 • Vietnam
Starring Nguyen Thuy Anh, Minh Chau, Hoang Ha
In the dune landscape of a cemetery—or is it a golf course?—past and present converge in the search for a grave.
Directed by Gabriel Abrantes • 2019 • France
Starring Liza Lapert, Virgil Vernier, Caroline Deruas-Garrel
Tired of being a banal architectural ornament, a sculpture runs away from the Louvre to confront real life on the streets of Paris.
Directed by Adinah Dancyger • 2019 • United States
Starring Hannah Gross
One woman’s Sisyphean attempt to transport an old mattress into a new walk-up apartment is transformed into a feat of absurdist cinematic choreography in this wordless, gracefully contained and conceived vignette full of hu...
Directed by Naïla Guiguet • 2020 • France
Starring Dustin Muchuvitz, Félix Maritaud, Raya Martigny
In an abandoned warehouse, a crowd—including a young transgender woman and her boyfriend—dances as one to techno music. As the night wears on, collective hysteria morphs into sweet melancholy, and ...
Directed by Jacqueline Lentzou • 2020 • Greece
Starring Sofia Kokkali
After Sofia suffers a panic attack on a train, she is contacted by the Universe and a cosmic dialogue ensues in this “planet symphony” by Greek experimentalist Jacqueline Lentzou.
Directed by Ayo Akingbade • 2020 • United Kingdom
Starring Emmanuel Adeneye
Rafiki, an artist whose practice focuses on trees, discusses their individuality and presence. The film gently and laconically segues into a conversation about identity, wanting to confound stereotypes, and inviting peop...
Directed by Akinola Davies • 2020 • United Kingdom
Starring Pamilerin Ayodeji, Rita Edward, Charles Etubiebi
Juwon, an eight-year-old girl with an ability to sense danger, gets ejected from Sunday-school service. She unwittingly witnesses the social underbelly in and around a megachurch in Lagos.
