EXCLUSIVE: New York’s Museum of the Moving Image announced the full lineup today for the 11th edition of First Look, its annual festival showcasing adventurous cinema from around the world.
The in-person festival, running March 16-20 at MoMI in Astoria, Queens, will kick off with Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s Murina, a “simmering, sexually charged coming-of-age tale set in scenic coastal Croatia,” executive produced by Martin Scorsese. Murina won the Caméra d’Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, an award for Best First Feature.
First Look set The Balcony Movie as its closing night film, a documentary that director Pawel Lozinski shot entirely from the balcony of his apartment in Warsaw, Poland. The film, which MoMI calls “delightful and insightful,” won the Grand Prix at the 2021 Locarno Film Festival’s Critics Week.
In all, 38 films will screen at First Look [see full lineup below], a combination of features, shorts, fiction and nonfiction, “as well as forms that fall outside the boundaries of traditional theatrical distribution, from gallery presentations to live performances to artist talks.”
The work originates from more than 30 countries. According to the event organizers, “The Festival introduces New York audiences to formally inventive works that seek to redefine the art form while engaging in a wide range of subjects and styles.”
Among the festival’s three Showcase Screenings is Zero Fucks Given (Rien à foutre), directed by Julie Lecoustre and Emmanuel Marre. It stars Adèle Exarchopoulos (Blue Is the Warmest Color) as Cassandre, a “seemingly carefree flight attendant for a budget airline.”
The directors cast non-profressional actors alongside Exarchopoulos, including real flight attendants. In an interview for Semaine de la critique (Critic’s Week) at Cannes, they spoke of the origins of Zero Fucks Given.
“The film started with a picture on a low-cost flight to Spain,” the directors explained. “During take-off, a flight attendant was sitting on her jump seat and looked as if she was leaving huge personal baggage on the ground. It was an intense, graceful, serious moment that related to our human experience on earth. Then the signal was heard, and she stood up. A stark contrast between an almost metaphysical force and a zany sale of perfume by a hostess who had turned into a relentless vendor.”
Artists behind the First Look festival selections will appear either in-person or by remote. Works in Progress runs concurrently with First Look, from March 16-18, a “laboratory for works in progress and dialogues about process, bringing together festival guests, filmmakers, students, writers, and the general public.” Past participants include Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, Maya Daisy Hawke, and Robert Greene.
“First Look has evolved into an event reflective of both the current state of the cinematic arts and MoMI’s curatorial character and curiosity,” Eric Hynes, the museum’s curator of film, said in a statement. “We’re attracted to a wide spectrum of work, from a diversity of makers, and are ever in search of new ways of seeing and expressing. The films and projects in the festival are indeed new to New York, but First Look also signifies an open, activated way of approaching the moving image. Crucial to this is our showcasing both finished and unfinished work—the latter via our daytime Working on It sessions—offering artists and audiences an enticing space in which to encounter one another.”
[Tickets and passes go on sale February 10; find information here].
First Look 2022 was programmed by Eric Hynes, and Edo Choi, assistant curator of film; Becca Keating, director of development and curator of Persistent Visions; Sonia Epstein, associate curator of science and film, and Jesse Berberich, programmer of Disreputable Cinema.
In a press release, the programming team acknowledged a number of people for their “guidance, support, advocacy, and generosity”: the aforementioned director Robert Greene, actor Mads Mikkelsen, the Sundance Institute’s Kristin Feeley, SXSW director of film Janet Pierson, Michael Andrianaly, Chris Boeckmann, Caitlin Mae Burke, Phil Coldiron, Joost Daamen, Dominic Davis, Mary Lee Grisanti, Dorota Lech, , Dan Nuxoll, Alla Rachkov, Michael Sicinski, Tomek Smolarski, Abby Sun, Laura Van Halsema, and Stacey Woelfel.
Below is the full lineup for First Look 2022.
Opening night:
Murina [New York City premiere]
Dir. Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović. Croatia/Brazil/United States/Slovenia. 2021, 92 mins. Winner of the Camera d’Or (Best First Feature) at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, Murina is a serrated-edge, sexually charged coming-of-age tale set in scenic coastal Croatia. Amidst clashes with her oppressive father and impassive mother, restless Julija seeks liberation from their isolated existence when a visit from an old family friend foments overlapping waves of greed, jealousy, desire, and rage. Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, the film features gorgeous camerawork by Hélène Louvart (The Lost Daughter, Happy as Lazzaro).
Preceded by:
The Night [New York premiere]
Tsai Ming-liang. Taiwan, Hong Kong. 2021, 19 mins. No dialogue. DCP. Recorded in November 2019 at the height of mass protests against Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Law, Tsai’s plaintive durational portrait of emptying streets and an overpass on Causeway Bay builds almost imperceptibly to its exquisite pang of sorrowful longing.
Closing Night:
The Balcony Movie [New York premiere]
Dir. Pawel Lozinski. 2021, Poland. 100 mins. In Polish with English subtitles. DCP. Filmed before the pandemic yet prescient about our collective craving for connection in isolation, First Look veteran Pawel Lozinski (You Have No Idea How Much I Love You, 2018) returns with a quietly revelatory documentary shot entirely from his balcony in Warsaw. Elevated from the street and armed with just his camera and boom mic, Lozinski engages strangers and friends, old couples and young mothers, commuting workers and ex-convicts, in philosophical queries that evolve, over many months, into confessions, course corrections, and complicated relations, offering a cumulative portrait of the struggles and moods of the times while exemplifying the humanist curiosity and formalist rigor of the unseen director behind the camera.
Showcase Screening:
Zero Fucks Given (Rien à foutre) [New York premiere]
Dirs. Julie Lecoustre, Emmanuel Marre. France/Belgium. 2021, 112 mins. In French with English subtitles. DCP. Toeing a fine line between documentary portraiture and archly pop fiction that evokes sixties Godard, Lecoustre and Marre’s boldly conceived, thrillingly singular debut renders the disconnected existence of Cassandre (Adèle Exarchopoulos, perfect), a seemingly carefree flight attendant for a budget airline, with the flat primary color tones and melancholic detachment of Hopper paintings. Starting as a sharply deadpan, basement-level study of the global service economy, the film gradually blossoms into a devastating depiction of personal loss amid the profound social and spiritual deficits of our age.
Showcase Screening:
Petrov’s Flu [United States premiere]
Dir. Kirill Serebrennikov. Russia. 2021, 145 mins. In Russian with English subtitles. DCP. Russian cause celebré Kirill Serebrennikov’s third feature is a hallucinatory, surrealistic adaptation of Alexey Salnikov’s novel The Petrovs in and Around the Flu, in which a young husband, wife, and child feverishly careen through the day, the past, and the dreams and nightmares of a city on the edge. A Strand release.
Showcase Screening:
Mr. Landsbergis [New York premiere]
Dir. Sergei Loznitsa. Lithuania/Netherlands/Ukraine. 2021, 246 mins. In Lithuanian and Russian with English subtitles. DCP. The latest documentary from the indefatigable Loznitsa is a masterwork of archival storytelling, grippingly and exhaustively detailing the Lithuanian fight for nationhood during the crucial years of 1989–1991, threaded together by interviews with the first Head of the Lithuanian Parliament, the now 89-year-old Vytautas Landsbergis.
Babi Yar. Context [New York premiere]
Dir. Sergei Loznitsa. Netherlands/Ukraine. 2021, 121 mins. In Russian and Ukrainian with English subtitles. DCP. Winner of jury prizes at both Cannes and IDFA, Loznitsa’s latest film constructed entirely of archival footage (following The Event, The Trial, and State Funeral) is a meticulous recounting of the events at Babi Yar, a ravine on the outskirts of Kiev where, in 1941, one of the largest mass executions in history took place, and where citizens who turned on their Jewish neighbors under one occupation sought to erase their actions under the next.
Constant [North American premiere]
Dirs. Sasha Litvintseva, Beny Wagner. Germany/United Kingdom. 2022, 40 mins. DCP. The artist duo Litvintseva and Wagner use a combination of beautifully rendered 3-D animation, documentary footage, live action, and diagrams to relate the history of the search for a universal standard of measurement to the production and control of knowledge and power. A Science on Screen presentation.
Day after… [North American premiere]
Dir. Kamar Ahmad Simon. Bangladesh/France/Norway. 2021, 115 mins. In Bengali with English subtitles. DCP. A century-old paddle steamer called the Rocket journeys from capital city Dhaka to coastal villages in a 360-degree portrait of contemporary Bangladesh, complete with a literal upstairs/downstairs class divide—politicians and radicals in conflict, workers, the elderly and bohemians gathered above and below deck.
Faritra + Two by Marek Moučka
Faritra [North American premiere]
Dir. Tovoniaina Rasoanaivo, Luck Razanajaona. Madagascar. 2021, 78 mins. In Malagasy with English subtitles. DCP. This startlingly candid observational documentary takes place almost entirely inside a juvenile prison in Madagascar, where young boys rough-house, barter, gamble, and recount the conditions and incidents that led to their incarceration—both to the filmmakers and each other as they pass around the camera and slide provocatively between roles.
Preceded by:
Attention All Passengers [United States premiere]
Dir. Marek Moučka. Slovakia. 2020, 19 mins. In Slovak with English subtitles. DCP.
In Shallow Water [New York premiere]
Dir. Marek Moučka. Slovakia. 2020, 10 mins. In Slovak with English subtitles. DCP.
Redolent of the frank, reportorial mode of early cinema vérité, these two miniatures, shot on 16mm, explore social rehabilitation in two different sets of men: train pilots recovering from the trauma of experiencing fatal collisions and prisoners who fish for traditional Christmas carp as a form of community service. Moučka evinces a keen eye for the telling idiosyncrasies of his subjects.
Feathers [United States premiere]
Dir. Omar El Zohairy. Egypt, France, Netherlands, Greece. 2021, 112 mins. In Arabic with English subtitles. DCP. In his auspicious debut feature, a surreal absurdist parable, El Zohairy conjures an entire, self-contained universe around the story of a working-class Egyptian family, whose meekly long-suffering housewife is forced to fend for herself and her children when their overbearing patriarch is suddenly and inexplicably transmogrified into a chicken. Recipient of the Grand Prix at Cannes 2021 Critics’ Week. A Grasshopper Film release.
First Time [The Time for All but Sunset (Violet)] United States premiere
Dir. Nicolaas Schmidt. Germany. 2021, 50 mins. In German with English subtitles. DCP. In what Schmidt describes as his “common sensations music movie,” a young man rides the Hamburg tram at magic hour while listening to dreamy pop and sipping Coca-Cola. Over the course of a single film-length shot, interior and exterior spaces commingle and a tantalizing romantic encounter unfolds.
Husek [United States premiere]
Dir. Daniela Seggiaro. Argentina. 2021, 89 mins. In Spanish and Wichí Lhamtés with English subtitles. DCP. A multi-million dollar urbanization project for the indigenous territory of Gran Chaco threatens to relocate Wichi families and disrupt their ancestral way of life. Chief Valentino and his grandson refuse to comply, which nudges architect Ana to own up to her role in their displacement. Written with Wichi author Osvaldo Villagra and incorporating documentary elements, FIDMarseille winner Husek is both intently local and undeniably universal in its themes of erasure and gentrification. Preceded by: Listen to the Beat of Our Images [New York premiere]
Dirs. Audrey and Maxime Jean-Baptiste. France/French Guiana. 2021, 15 mins. In French with English subtitles. DCP. Recovering a history of colonial expropriation in Kourou, French Guiana, where, in 1964, France established its Guianese Space Center by displacing 600 Guianese villagers, the Jean-Baptistes’ archival film orchestrates a mesmerizing soundtrack to conjure a pellucid mental image of a lost time before the Europeans.
A Man and a Camera [New York premiere]
Dir. Guido Hendrikx. Netherlands. 2021, 64 mins. In Dutch with English subtitles. DCP. Dutch instigator Guido Hendrikx’s conceit is simple—he knocks on strangers’ doors and then films them without saying a word. But the results are myriad and complicated. By playing the provocateur, or even, depending on your comfort level, the villain, the director fashions a subtly powerful and frequently hilarious mosaic of community and tolerance.
A New Old Play [North American premiere]
Dir. Qiu Jiongjiong. China. 2021, 179 mins. In Mandarin with English subtitles. DCP. The story of 20th-century China, from the collapse of the Qing dynasty through Mao’s Cultural Revolution, is recalled through the irreverent remembrances of an old thespian on the road to the afterlife. In his hand-crafted masterwork, celebrated artist Qiu has delivered a gloriously synthetic historical pageant in homage to classical Chinese opera without forgetting to make us laugh. A dGenerate release.
Reflection [New York premiere]
Dir. Valentyn Vasyanovych. Ukraine. 2021, 126 mins. In Ukrainian with English subtitles. DCP. Vasyanovych’s follow up to his acclaimed Atlantis concerns the trials of a Ukrainian surgeon who, moved to join his fellows at the front of Russia’s military incursion, is promptly captured, subjected to sickening horrors, and then released as though from an alien abduction. A grim and bloody tour de force of long-take cinema, Reflection obliterates the imaginary line between states of peace and states of war.
A Thousand Fires [North American premiere]
Dir. Saeed Taji Farouky. France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Palestine, Myanmar. 2021, 90 mins. In Burmese with English subtitles. DCP. This ravishing film follows the tireless Thein Shwe and his family as they eke out a life drilling for oil in the fields of Magway, Myanmar. Tracing ineluctable cycles of life and death on multiple levels—natural, social, spiritual, and economic—A Thousand Fires accomplishes a rare feat, successfully balancing the universal and the particular without compromising the dignity of those with whom it was made.
Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash [East Coast premiere]
Dir. Edwin. Indonesia. 2021, 114 mins. In Indonesian with English subtitles. DCP. Indonesian auteur Edwin’s exhilarating whatsit blends grindhouse exploitation with meet-cute romance and magical realism in the form of a shaggy dog road movie. Ajo Kawir, a fighter whose fearlessness is matched only by shame over his enduring impotence, falls for (and gets pummeled by) a female fighter named Iteung, sending him on a journey in which he may finally rise to the occasion. A MoMI Disreputable Cinema presentation.
Preceded by:
Semiotic Plastic [New York premiere]
Dir. Radu Jude. Romania. 2021, 22 mins. No dialogue. DCP. Merging the kitschy with the uncanny, Romanian provocateur Radu Jude’s follow-up to Berlin winner Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn dramatizes the cycle of human life, and the history of western civilization, from birth to death, rise and fall, via tableaus of mismatched, inanimate toys.
What We Leave Behind [New York premiere]
Dir. Iliana Sosa. United States. 2021, 71 mins. In Spanish with English subtitles. DCP. An intimate, lovingly patient portrait of the director’s 89-year-old grandfather Julián, from his final, long, solo bus ride to visit his daughters in El Paso, Texas, to his efforts to build a second house for his blind son on his property in Mexico.
Persistent Visions Program 1
Persistent Visions is the Museum’s ongoing series dedicated to experimental works. In this first program, an exploration of indeterminacy, feelings, time and a need for grounding in the physical world.
Tigre del Carbón [United States premiere] aZuLosa. Mexico, Argentina. 2022, 5 mins. Super 8mm-to-digital.
The Pendulum [New York premiere] Linda Scobie. United States. 2021, 2 mins. 16mm.
The Limits of Vision [World premiere] Laura Harrison. United States. 2022, 35 mins. DCP.
Notes on Connection III [North American premiere] Andrea Franco. United States, Peru. 2021, 12 mins. 16mm-to-digital.
Autoficción [New York theatrical premiere] Laida Lertxundi. USA, Spain, New Zealand. 2020, 13.5 mins. 35mm.
Persistent Visions Program 2
Gestural lyrics, offerings to the heavens, rituals for ancestors, meditations on unfulfilled dreams give way to new forms, radical structures for restoring luminous contact with life, which, in turn, prepare the way for primordial visions of the world and our first tremulous contact with it.
pài-la̍k ē-poo (saturday afternoon) [New York premiere] Erica Sheu. Taiwan/USA. 2021, 2 mins. 16mm-to-digital.
Meihōdō [United States premiere] Jorge Suárez-Quiñones Rivas. Spain. 2020, 10.5 mins. Super 8mm.
Configurations [New York premiere] James Edmonds. Germany. 2021, 8 mins. 16mm.
News from Nowhere [New York premiere] Ben Balcom. United States. 2020, 8 mins. 16mm-to-digital.
Slow Volumes [New York premiere] Mike Gibisser. United States. 2019, 4.5 mins. 35mm.
Untitled (34bsp) [New York premiere] Philipp Fleischmann. Austria. 2021, 5 mins. 35mm.
Merapi [New York premiere] Malena Szlam. Indonesia, Canada. 2021, 8 mins.
William [World premiere] Nathaniel Dorsky. United States. 2020, 12.5 mins. 16mm.
First Look in the Museum Galleries:
Our Ark [New York gallery premiere]
Dirs. Deniz Tortum, Kathryn Hamilton. Netherlands, USA, Turkey. 2021, 12 mins. Single-channel loop. Exploring the technological advances that have made backing up our world possible—from trees to turtles to tangerines—Our Ark probes the urge to preserve as well as what cannot be captured.
As Mine Exactly [New York premiere]
Dir. Charlie Shackleton. United Kingdom. 2022. Live virtual reality performance. A mother and son revisit the medical emergency that reshaped their lives and the remarkable fragments that remain of that time in this intimate blend of VR and performance film. Co-presented with Rooftop Films.
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