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The latest existential epic from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a masterclass in characterization, atmosphere, and moral and philosophical inquiry. When he comes under scrutiny for misconduct, cynical middle-school instructor Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu) fears that his punishment will trap him in the snowy, isolated Anatolian village he has grown to despise. The only ray of hope is his relationship with Nuray (Merve Dizdar, who won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival), a fellow teacher who openly challenges Samet’s bitter narcissism—yet Samet’s friendship with his colleague and roommate, Kenan (Musab Ekici), who also has feelings for Nuray, hangs in the balance. Using hypnotic long takes and other bold formal techniques to convey the murky motives of its Dostoevskian protagonist, About Dry Grasses proves Ceylan to be one of cinema’s most incisive investigators of the human condition. INCLUDES Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Nuri Bilge Ceylan Trailer

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While vacationing by the Baltic Sea, writer Leon (Thomas Schubert) and photographer Felix (Langston Uibel) are surprised to encounter Nadja (Paula Beer), a mysterious young woman staying as a guest at the holiday home of Felix’s family. Nadja soon distracts Leon from finishing his latest novel, not only because of her passionate liaison with lifeguard Devid (Enno Trebs) but also because her brutal honesty forces Leon to confront his artistic inadequacies. As Nadja and Leon grow closer, an encroaching forest fire threatens the group and pushes the writer to discover whether he can truly care for anything beyond himself. Christian Petzold’s acclaimed latest film was the winner of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival. INCLUDES Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Christian Petzold Trailer

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Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes reinvents the environmental documentary by portraying, in incisive yet lyrical fashion, the reciprocal influence of animals and humans. For more than a year, Sen followed New Delhi brothers Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad as they rescued birds of prey from the increasingly destructive effects of urban pollution. While charting the siblings’ daily struggles and successes, he also documented their poetic reflections on humankind’s relationship to the environment, the interaction of wildlife with the city, and India’s explosions of anti-Muslim violence. Suffused with beauteous, sobering, and contemplative imagery, All That Breathes ponders the delicate bonds of interconnectivity among humans and between species. INCLUDES Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Shaunak Sen Trailer

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In Anselm, Wim Wenders creates a hypnotic portrait of Anselm Kiefer, one of the most innovative and important painters and sculptors of our time. Shot in 6K resolution, and presented theatrically and on Blu-ray in 3D, the film presents an immersive cinematic experience of the German artist’s work, which explores the overawing beauty of human existence, landscape, and myth while confronting the horrors of his country’s history and seeking to undo the postwar silence in which both artist and director came of age. Through archival footage, biographical scenes, and direct access to his subject at work amid the massive installation in France where he now lives among his creations, Wenders traces the arc of Kiefer’s career, provoking an engagement with creativity through the senses, the intellect, and the spirit. INCLUDES One Blu-ray 3D disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Wim Wenders Trailer Top About this item Similar From the Brand Reviews Anselm (Criterion Premieres) [Blu-ray]

Description

In Anselm, Wim Wenders creates a hypnotic portrait of Anselm Kiefer, one of the most innovative and important painters and sculptors of our time. Shot in 6K resolution, and presented theatrically and on Blu-ray in 3D, the film presents an immersive cinematic experience of the German artist’s work, which explores the overawing beauty of human existence, landscape, and myth while confronting the horrors of his country’s history and seeking to undo the postwar silence in which both artist and director came of age. Through archival footage, biographical scenes, and direct access to his subject at work amid the massive installation in France where he now lives among his creations, Wenders traces the arc of Kiefer’s career, provoking an engagement with creativity through the senses, the intellect, and the spirit. INCLUDES One Blu-ray 3D disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and specia

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By the year 2044, artificial intelligence reigns, and human emotions are a liability that must be surgically removed to produce a more pliant workforce. But this procedure triggers Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) to experience haunting memories of her past lives, as she encounters different incarnations of her paramour, Louis (George MacKay), first in belle epoque Paris and then in 2014 Los Angeles. As she once more undergoes the pains and pleasures of romance—and rediscovers what it means to be truly alive—Gabrielle awaits the erasure of her humanity with growing fascination and dread. In his most ambitious film yet, visionary director Bertrand Bonello freely adapts Henry James’s novella The Beast in the Jungle into a visually stunning science-fiction labyrinth that is as metaphysically mysterious as it is emotionally powerful. Powered by Seydoux’s heartrending performance, The Beast poignantly imagines the consequences of humankind becoming too afraid to risk the inherent vulnerability of love. INCLUDES Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Bertrand Bonello Trailer English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

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An epic journey of friendship and self-discovery set in the Italian Alps, The Eight Mountains is a cinematic experience as intimate as it is monumental. Adapting an award-winning novel by Paolo Cognetti, Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch portray, through observant detail and stunning landscape photography, the profound relationship between Pietro (Luca Marinelli) and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi), who first meet as children in an Alpine village. Years later, the estranged friends reunite, after the passing of Pietro’s father (Filippo Timi), in order to realize his dream of rebuilding a ruined cabin on a mountain slope. This emotional project, and their subsequent explorations of the mountains, create a strong bond between the two—yet individual dreams, and the demands of society, ultimately drive them to pursue irrevocably divergent paths. INCLUDES Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with directors Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen The Making of “The Eight Mountains,” a new documentary featuring cast and crew Trailer Top About this item Similar From the Brand Reviews The Eight Mountains (Criterion Premieres) [Blu-ray]

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Seen largely through the eyes of a donkey, this lyrical odyssey moves across modern Europe exposing cruelty, kindness and human chaos.

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In a secluded, snowy mountain village, widower and single father Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) leads a modest life gathering water, wood, and wild wasabi for a friend’s udon shop. Yet this peaceful existence is threatened when a pair of corporate reps (Ryuji Kosaka and Ayaka Shibutani) arrive to launch a glamping site, sparking resistance from community members who fear the project’s potentially pernicious impact on the environment. When Takumi—a respected local figure—is offered the conciliatory role of site caretaker, it becomes unclear where his loyalties lie. Evil Does Not Exist, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s much-anticipated follow-up to his Academy Award–winning Drive My Car, is a haunting, suspenseful meditation on humankind’s thorny relationship with nature, consumerism, and itself. Inspired by a collaboration with composer Eiko Ishibashi, the director showcases his masterful command of pacing and atmosphere to uncover the destructive forces lurking beneath the thin veneer of civilization. INCLUDES Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Ryusuke Hamaguchi Trailer

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The struggle between the strictures of religion and humankind’s brute animal nature plays out amid the beautifully forbidding landscapes of remote Iceland in this stunning psychological epic from director Hlynur Pálmason. In the late nineteenth century, Danish priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) makes the perilous trek to Iceland’s southeastern coast with the intention of establishing a church. There, the arrogant man of God finds his resolve tested as he confronts the harsh terrain, temptations of the flesh, and the reality of being an intruder in an unforgiving land. What unfolds is a transfixing journey into the heart of colonial darkness—one that’s attuned to both the majesty and the terrifying power of the natural world. INCLUDES Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Hlynur Pálmason Trailer

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Part crime thriller, part romantic comedy, Louis Garrel’s The Innocent shows the dangerous and outlandish lengths two men go to for the women they love. Garrel stars as Abel, an aquarium educator whose mother, Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), marries one of her drama pupils in the local penitentiary, Michel (Roschdy Zem). Once on parole, Michel attempts to start a legitimate life but soon reverts to his old ways, eventually roping Abel into one of his schemes. Complicating matters is Clémence (Noémie Merlant), Abel’s brazen coworker, who convinces him to take part in the heist. Directing from a screenplay he cowrote (with Tanguy Viel and Naïla Guiguet), Garrel explores the comedic results of playacting’s intrusion into reality, as well as reality’s comedic tendency to transform us into what we never thought we could be. SPECIAL FEATURES Meet the Filmmaker, a new interview with director Louis Garrel Trailer Top About this item Similar From the Brand Reviews The Innocent (Criterion Premieres) [Blu-ray]

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Returning after a decade away from filmmaking, Catherine Breillat examines desire and its power to destabilize in the story of Anne, a lawyer whose work centers on abused minors. Anne's life with her husband Pierre — an ineffectual businessman and father — looks enviable from the outside, but when Pierre's teenage son Théo comes to live with them, Anne finds herself compelled by the young man's beauty and begins an affair with him. The relationship threatens everything she has built, forcing her toward a choice between honesty and self-protection.

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The themes, images, and cultural vernacular of Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz continue to haunt David Lynch’s filmography—from his early short The Alphabet to his recent television series Twin Peaks: The Return. Arguably, no filmmaker has so consistently drawn inspiration—consciously or unconsciously—from a single work. Is Lynch trapped in the Land of Oz? If so, what can we learn about his body of work by taking a closer look at how it intersects and communicates with that legendary fantasy? In turn, what do Lynch’s films have to say about the enduring resonance of one of America’s most beloved classics? Through six distinct perspectives, Alexandre O. Philippe’s Lynch/Oz helps us reexperience and reinterpret The Wizard of Oz by way of David Lynch, delivering new appreciations of both. INCLUDES Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Alexandre O. Philippe Trailer English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

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One of the world’s great cinema artists, Jafar Panahi has been carefully crafting self-reflexive works about artistic, personal, and political freedom for the past three decades, despite being banned from filmmaking by the Iranian government since 2010. In No Bears—completed shortly before his imprisonment in 2022—Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself, a dissident filmmaker who relocates to a rural border town to direct a film remotely in nearby Turkey and finds himself embroiled in a local scandal. As he struggles to complete his feature, Panahi must confront the opposing pulls of tradition and progress, city and country, belief and evidence, as well as the universal desire to reject oppression. SPECIAL FEATURES On Panahi’s Films, a new interview with filmmaker Ramin Bahrani about director Jafar Panahi’s work PLUS: Panahi Speaks from Prison Trailer Top About this item Similar From the Brand Reviews No Bears (Criterion Premieres) [Blu-ray]

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From two-time Palme d’Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne comes the story of seventeen-year-old Lokita and twelve-year-old Tori, two immigrants to Belgium—from Cameroon and Benin, respectively—whose siblinglike bond is the only resource they can depend on in their struggle for survival on the margins of European society. The pair work as performers in a cheap trattoria, dealing drugs on the side, while balancing the demands of an indifferent bureaucracy. When Lokita is held captive in a marijuana grow house, events spiral out of control. Winner of the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the latest humanist drama from the Dardenne brothers is a heart-stopping thriller that casts an unflinching eye on the trials of the young and dispossessed. INCLUDES Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne Trailer

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In a bustling Mexican household, seven-year-old Sol is swept up in the whirlwind of preparations for her terminally ill father’s birthday party, led by her mother, aunts, and other relatives. As the day builds to an event both anticipated and dreaded, Sol and her family begin to understand the gravity of this year’s celebration. Lila Avilés directs a dynamic ensemble cast in this stunning sophomore effort—a warmly observed, poignantly funny, and emotionally expansive study of the ways we cope with grief. INCLUDES Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Lila Avilés Trailer Top About this item Similar From the Brand Reviews Tótem (Criterion Premieres) [Blu-ray] Tótem (Criterion Premieres) [Blu-ray]