7 Films To Watch at MoMI’s First Look ’25
The Museum of Moving Image’s First Look Festival returns for its 12th edition. Showcasing some of this year’s exciting new voices in American and international cinema, this year’s edition will introduce New York audiences to eclectic, innovative works from around the world. Running March 12 – 16, it will feature numerous features and shorts; narratives and nonfiction; performances and experiments. As many of these films have yet to be acquired for distribution, this may be a rare window of opportunity for local moviegoers to witness them on the big screen. Take a look below at 7 films to check out!
Kick off your spring with the festival’s opening film, Bonjour Tristesse. Montreal-born writer-director Durga Chew-Bose makes her feature debut with this fresh adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s 1954 novel (previously helmed by Otto Preminger in 1958) that takes us to the divine, sunkissed shores of the French Riviera. Lily McInnery, who broke out with her impactful performance in Palm Trees and Power Lines, stars as teenager Cécile who lives a sumptuous existence with her father (Claes Bang) and his younger girlfriend (Nailia Harzoune). That existence is soon rocked by the arrival of Anne (a voguish Chloë Sevigny), a fashion designer and friend of Cécile’s late mother whose visit casts a shadow over her belle vie. It recalls the work of Eric Rohmer, not just in its lush French aesthetic (captured by DP Maximilian Pittner), but also through its introspective exploration of its protagonists through every dialogue and moment of vulnerability. McInnery and Sevigny have tremendous on-screen chemistry, even as events take a turn into chaos. Bonjour Tristesse is a visually rich exploration of love, growing up, and life’s bittersweet lessons.
A still from DESERT OF NAMIBIA
Japanese director Yōko Yamanaka explores the numbness, boredom, and narcissism of Gen-Zers in contemporary Tokyo. Desert of Namibia is a slice-of-life drama that follows the life of a magnetic but lost 21-year-old woman Kana (Yuumi Kawai) as she navigates modern life. In the footsteps of Frances Ha and Sick of Myself, the film follows a period in Kana’s life where she swings from parties and relationships while living a less-than-satisfying existence. Her apathy is highlighted in the opening when she reacts indifferently to a former classmate’s suicide. Even as she goes through an abusive relationship and receives a bipolar diagnosis, she maintains a charade throughout with witty remarks and a spirited attitude. Despite the film’s occasional slow pacing, Yuumi Kawai’s astonishing performance is what keeps it afloat. With Desert of Namibia, Yamanaka approaches the subject of modern womanhood with brutal honesty, engrossing characters and smooth visual language.
Transitioning into adulthood is daunting. That’s what Italian student Leonardo (Manfredi Marini) grapples with in writer-director Giovanni Tortorici’s feature debut Diciannove (Nineteen). Produced by Tortorici’s mentor Luca Guadagnino, this introspective and daring debut is a coming-of-age look at the path to self-discovery that every young person is bound to take at some point. It follows nineteen-year-old student Leonardo who leaves his scenic Palermo to study abroad in London. However, it is short-lived as his excitement wanes and he quickly transfers to university back in Italy where he decides to pursue Italian literature. Going back and forth between parties and self-isolation, Leonardo struggles with direction in life and shame over his sexual urges. With remarkable 35mm cinematography from Massimiliano Kuveiller and stylistic editing from Marco Costa (Challengers), Tortorici takes a big worthwhile risk in this personal exploration of how complex, yet worthwhile, the path to figuring yourself out is. An exciting new voice in Italian cinema to watch out for.
French documentarian Claire Simon is a keen observer of everyday life through the perspective of diverse individuals. In her newest documentary Elementary, she explores the daily triumphs and struggles of students and their teachers in the Makarenko public elementary school on the outskirts of Paris. Taking a fly-on-the-wall approach, Simon shows how these dedicated teachers are just as much caregivers to these kids as they are educators. Even as the French public school system is underfunded, they try to be as involved as they can with their students’ education and well-being. She also shines a light up close on these young kids, many of whom come from working-class and immigrant backgrounds, as they deal with friendships, conflicts, and developing behaviors in and out of the classroom. By watching this documentary, you can tell that both the teachers and students put their trust in Simon, and it pays off in this humane and sympathetic film.
A still from MEASURES FOR A FUNERAL
One performance that stuck out to me at last year’s First Look was Deragh Campbell in Graham Swon’s spellbinding An Evening Song (For Three Voices). The Canadian actress gives another outstanding performance full of psychological and emotional depth in Sofia Bohdanowicz’s psychodrama, Measures for a Funeral. Co-written by frequent collaborators Bohdanowicz and Campbell, the latter stars as Audrey, an academic researching the life and music of real-life Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow for her Ph.D thesis, while haunted by her history with her dying failed musician mother. Going from Toronto, to London, to Oslo, Audrey struggles to make sense of her own life while yearning to restage one of Parlow’s opuses, culminating in a captivating 20-minute symphony orchestra performance. In its near two-and-a-half-hour runtime, Bohdanowicz ambitiously displays the amount of research she has clearly done on Parlow while having it perfectly tie into the state of mind of Campbell’s complicated protagonist. Archiving the dead and reliving their lives are two different things, yet Bohdanowicz succeeds here in making them feel one and the same.
Speaking of complicated family history, a son dissects his fractured history with his father in Pavel G. Vesnakov’s haunting drama, Windless. Here, we experience life in modern-day Bulgaria through the eyes of Koloyan, aka Koko (Bulgarian rapper FYRE), a heavily tattooed man returning home after years of living in Spain to handle the sale of his late father’s apartment. Those who knew his father refer to him as a great man or “a man of honor.” However, Koko does not seem to share these sentiments, hinting at a more complicated relationship with his old man. What starts as a mundane task turns into a journey of self-discovery for Koko as he learns about his father’s life in his absence and tries to make sense of how much his old town has changed due to capitalism and neglect. This film was uniquely shot in a square 1:1 aspect ratio that evokes medium format photography. Just about every shot in the film is meticulously framed and exquisitely lit, almost like a moving photograph. Windless is a poignantly poetic testament to a decaying way of life and complex familial ties.
One of the most pleasant surprises of this year’s Sundance Film Festival was director Charlie Shackleton’s documentary Zodiac Killer Project. Winner of the NEXT Innovator Awards, Shackleton turns what was meant to be a true crime documentary on the notorious Zodiac Killer and instead turns it into a sharp, surprisingly funny critique of the true crime genre itself. With his narration guiding us throughout, Shackleton has his camera linger on barren California locations to illustrate how his Zodiac Killer movie would’ve turned out in his original vision. HtN’s Editor-in-Chief Don Lewis said in his Sundance review, “Zodiac Killer Project is very clever. It gets at all sorts of intriguing questions in terms of creativity, media consumption, doc filmmaking, obsession, and more… Shackleton walks a clear line in storytelling that at once sticks it to the people who ruined his project while also, hopefully, not getting sued. Hopefully, this film has an opportunity to reach the masses but its wiseacre look at the true crime doc industry would require a brave distributor or streamer to jump aboard. I hope that happens.”
Get your First Look tickets HERE, and check out the festival trailer below.
– M.J. O’Toole (@mj_otoole93)
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