Directed by Ursula Liang • 2020 • United States
When a Chinese American police officer kills Akai Gurley, an unarmed Black man, in a darkened stairwell of a New York City housing project, it sets off a firestorm of emotion and calls for accountability. When he becomes the first NYPD officer conv...
Directed by Marguerite Duras • 1979 • France
Starring Bulle Ogier, Dominique Sanda, Mathieu Carrière
With LE NAVIRE NIGHT, writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras explores the matrix of love, desire, and language in her characteristically oblique and experimental style. The film’s lovers—played by...
An electrifying activist spirit runs through the work of Chinese American documentarian Christine Choy, an Oscar nominee who has been using her camera to shed light on hidden social histories and injustices for nearly fifty years. Whether tracing the evolution of Chinese American labor organizing...
Hailed for her vibrant explorations of culture clash and connection in films like MONSOON WEDDING and MISSISSIPPI MASALA, Indian American auteur Mira Nair has pursued an equally distinguished career as a director of short films that further explore the ways in which deep-rooted cultural tradition...
Directed by Maryam Touzani • 2019 • Morocco, France
Starring Lubna Azabal, Nisrin Erradi, Douae Belkhaouda
Two women at an emotional crossroads are brought together by fate—and by the eternal comforts of food and music—in Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani’s feature debut, a gracefully understate...
Directed by Shu Lea Cheang • 1994 • United States
Starring Sarita Choudhury, Erin McMurtry, Abraham Lim
Taiwanese-born new-media visionary Shu Lea Cheang directs this avant-anarcho ecosatire, in which a lesbian couple living on Staten Island find themselves ensnared in a vast conspiracy involvin...
Directed by Alice Wu • 2004 • United States
Starring Michelle Krusiec, Joan Chen, Lynn Chen
A Chinese American lesbian (Michelle Krusiec) living in New York finds her love life severely cramped when her widowed, unexpectedly pregnant mother is forced to move in with her. Boasting a scene-stealin...
One of contemporary French cinema’s most prolific directors, Luxembourg-born Anne Fontaine has moved easily between serious-minded dramas and frothy comedies for nearly three decades, with psychologically complex characters a constant in whatever genre she happens to be working in. The two sides ...
Building from an early start in nonfiction filmmaking, Naomi Kawase has developed a lyrical, quietly affecting body of work over the past three decades, exploring Japanese family structures and cultural values through a profoundly empathetic lens. Describing her narrative works as “fiction with a...
Directed by Lila Avilés • 2018 • Mexico, United States
Starring Gabriela Cartol, Teresa Sánchez, Agustina Quinci
In her masterful feature debut, theater director Lila Avilés turns the monotonous workday of Eve (Gabriela Cartol), a chambermaid at a high-end Mexico City hotel, into a beautifully o...
Directed by María Novaro • 1991 • Mexico, Spain
Starring María Rojo, Carmen Salinas, Tito Vasconcelos
The slow, sensuous ballroom-style dance known as the danzón is at the heart of María Novaro’s luminous tale of a woman’s awakening, a key work of nineties Mexican cinema that became the country’...
Directed by Kimberly Peirce • 1999 • United States
Starring Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard
Kimberly Peirce’s dramatization of the tragic true story of Brandon Teena—a young trans man living in rural Nebraska who was murdered in a vicious hate crime—brought the 1990s New Queer Cinem...
An unsung feminist trailblazer, Nouchka van Brakel made some of the most subversive and fearlessly compassionate Dutch films of the 1970s and ’80s. Each dealing with resilient women who defy the pressures of a patriarchal society in their quests for self-actualization, these newly restored films—...
Though her name is now unjustly obscure, Larisa Shepitko was one of the boldest, most renowned filmmakers of the Soviet era. In her tragically short career, the Ukrainian-born auteur left behind only a handful of films—including the psychologically charged feminist character study WINGS and the s...
Directed by Catarina Vasconcelos • 2020 • Portugal
An extraordinarily beautiful and fascinating documentary that has the feel of a precious heirloom, this impressionistic and emotionally rich film finds Portuguese director Catarina Vasconcelos sifting through the memories and dreams of her ances...
Directed by Rachel Amodeo • 1993 • United States
Starring Rachel Amodeo, Richard Edson, Nick Zedd
Rachel Amodeo wrote, produced, directed, and stars in this grimily poetic time capsule of life on the margins of a pregentrification East Village. She plays Lisa, a young woman on a downward slide w...
Directed by Mariam Ghani • 2019 • Afghanistan, Qatar, United States
Starring Latif Ahmadi, Said Miran Farhad, Juwansher Haidary
Utterly unique in film history, Mariam Ghani’s archival marvel is a probing and engrossing case study in censorship, authoritarianism, and political art. Thirty years a...
Toronto-based filmmaker Sophy Romvari’s intimate, essayistic shorts muse on family, grief, femininity, and humans’ relationships with animals, often with exquisitely touching vulnerability. Deeply personal—she frequently appears in her own films and incorporates her own family’s history and photo...
Directed by Kasi Lemmons • 1997 • United States
Starring Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Samuel L. Jackson
Kasi Lemmons delivered one of the most distinctive directorial debuts of the 1990s with this richly atmospheric southern-gothic stew of sex, lies, and voodoo. Awash in Creole folklore, magic,...
Directed by Blerta Basholli • 2021 • Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia
Starring Yllka Gashi, Çun Lajçi, Aurita Agushi
This Sundance award winner—the first film in the festival’s history to receive the Grand Jury Prize, the Audience Award, and the Directing Award—is a searing portrait of loss and ...
Directed by Visra Vichit-Vadakan • 2013 • Thailand
Starring Sa Sittijun, Supavitch Mepremwattana, Nang Sittijun
Artfully blending fiction and reality, KARAOKE GIRL follows Sa, a young country girl working as an escort in Bangkok to support her family back home. Sent to work in a factory in the c...
Directed by Alile Sharon Larkin • 1982 • United States
In this poetic, groundbreaking work from LA Rebellion trailblazer Alile Sharon Larkin, Alana (Margot Saxton-Federella), a Black art student, sets out to reclaim her body image and self-worth from Western, patriarchal beauty standards and, in...
Directed by Maya Da-Rin • 2019 • Brazil, France
Starring Regis Myrupu, Rosa Peixoto, Johnatan Sodré
This spellbinding narrative feature debut from Maya Da-Rin is an entrancing, enigmatic meditation on the material, spiritual, and dream lives of Brazil’s Indigenous people. Justino (Regis Myrupu, ...
Iranian American writer-director-actor Desiree Akhavan has been hailed for her bold depictions of female sexuality and queer identity, both in her two feature films and in her acclaimed television series “The Bisexual.” Brash yet empathetic, Akhavan explores the journey of a young queer woman who...
