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The festival’s 14th edition opens with Durga Chew-Bose’s Bonjour Tristesse and closes with Giovanni Tortorici’s Diciannove, framing a lineup of 38 premieres, including 20 features, representing 21 countries

Museum of the Moving Image is pleased to announce the complete lineup for the 14th edition of First Look, the Museum’s festival of new and innovative international cinema, which will take place in person March 12–16, 2025. Each year, First Look offers a diverse slate of major New York premieres, work-in-progress screenings and sessions, and fresh perspectives on the art and process of filmmaking.

The 2025 lineup will present 38 films, of which 20 are features, including 4 world premieres and 23 U.S. or North American premieres, from 21 countries. Each day will be anchored by a Showcase screening. The festival will open and close with the U.S. premieres of two scintillating debut features from the 2024 Toronto and Venice Film Festivals, Durga Chew-Bose’s lush, heart-wrenching Bonjour Tristesse...

A yearly highlight of New York programming (and North American options at large), the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look returns on March 12 with an opening-night, US-premiere screening of Durga Chew Bose’s Bonjour Tristesse, closes March 16 with the stateside debut of Giovanni Tortorici’s Diciannove, and in intervening days combines programming of recent cutting-edge highlights with in-person talks and seminars.

First Look’s fixture “Working on It” will run between March 12 and 14, offering “a laboratory for works in progress and dialogues about process, bringing together festival guests, filmmakers, students, writers, and the general public.” Meanwhile, writers and editors from Reverse Shot “will welcome a new cohort for its Emerging Critics Workshop, with writers attending throughout the festival”; submissions may be made here through February 14.

So says Eric Hynes, MoMI’s Senior Curator of Film and First Look’s Artistic Director:

“In so many ways, First Look serves...

The annual First Look festival at the Museum of the Moving Image has unveiled its 2025 program. IndieWire can announce that the 14th edition of the beloved festival will take place March 12-16, and open with Durga Chew-Bose’s “Bonjour Tristesse.” The feature previously debuted at TIFF’s Discovery Program.

The film, which is an adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s novel, centers on 18-year-old Cécile (Lily McInerny) who is enjoying the French seaside with her father, Raymond (Claes Bang) and his lover Elsa (Naïlia Harzoune). Yet the arrival of her late mother’s friend Anne (Chloë Sevigny) changes everything. Per the official synopsis, “amid the sun-drenched splendour of their surroundings, Cécile’s world is threatened and, desperate to regain control, she sets in motion a plan to drive Anne away with tragic consequences.”

The 2025 lineup will present 38 films, of which 20 are features, including 4 world premieres and 23 U.S. or North American premieres,...

John Ford’s classic Western “The Searchers” is back on the big screen — and this time, in 70mm.

IndieWire can exclusively unveil the full lineup for Museum of the Moving Image and Mubi’s ninth annual “See It Big: 70mm” film festival, with “The Searchers” headlining. The annual summer 70mm series is New York City’s only festival of 70mm films. The festival takes place from July 18 through August 18.

Ford’s “The Searchers” in 70mm will make its East Coast premiere after the print debuted at the American Cinematheque earlier this year. From July 18-21, the 1956 masterpiece will be presented seven times in a new restoration and newly struck 70mm print. The film was scanned from the original 35mm VistaVision camera negative for this print and has been approved by The Film Foundation, which was founded by Martin Scorsese. (He’s credited “The Searchers” for being a direct influence on his Oscar-winning film “Taxi Driver.

Agnieszka Holland’s filmography will be celebrated this June thanks to the Museum of the Moving Image and the Polish Cultural Institute New York.

MoMI will host a retrospective featuring nine of Holland’s most beloved films leading up to the release of her latest “Green Border.” The nine features include highlights “Europa Europa” on and “The Secret Garden,” which both will screen in 35mm with Holland in attendance on June 20 and 21.

The retrospective will take place from June 7 through 21 and serve as a toast to Holland’s “undimmed ability to depict historical trauma and human struggle with sensitivity and compassion” across her 60 years in filmmaking, per the official press statement.

The retrospective will feature her initial work made in Poland, including “Provincial Actors,” “Fever,” and “A Woman Alone,” along with Holland’s 1990s art house features “Europa Europa” and “The Secret Garden,” and depictions of present-day political resistance like “Spoor” and “In Darkness.

First Look, Museum of the Moving Image's annual festival for cutting-edge new cinema, returns next week for their 13th edition. This year's five-day event includes 20 features representing 21 countries, and many of them from Asia – including “Achilles”, “Self-Portrait: 47 Km 2020”, “Mimang”, and more. Beyond the traditional cinema, this year's video installation in the Amphitheater Gallery also features an Asian diaspora video artist, Fiona Tan, with her 97-minute video installation, “Footsteps.”

In reflection of this year's selection, we had the opportunity to speak to Edo Choi, MoMI Associate Curator of Film and First Look Senior Programmer. Choi also frequently contributes as a freelance critic and projectionist, with pieces in Reverse Shot and Film Comment. This time around, over Zoom, we talked about what it takes to get on the First Look slate and some personal highlights from the program.

First Look 2024

This interview has been edited and redacted for clarity.

This year...

New York’s Museum of the Moving Image has revealed the full lineup for First Look 2024, the 13th edition of the festival that showcases “new and innovative international cinema,” both fiction and nonfiction.

The festival, set to run March 13-17 at MoMI in Queens, will kick off with Sujo, the drama directed by Mexican filmmakers Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez that won the Grand Jury Prize in World Cinematic Competition at Sundance. The vitality of Latin American cinema is reflected in another film in the First Look 2024 lineup, The Echo, directed by Salvadoran-born and Mexico-based filmmaker Tatiana Huezo. Scroll for the full roster of films.

‘Gasoline Rainbow’

First Look 2024 will close on Sunday, March 17 with Gasoline Rainbow, a “rambunctious coming-of-age road movie” directed by brothers Bill and Turner Ross, their follow up to their acclaimed 2020 film Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets – winner of the True Vision Award at the True/False festival,...

A yearly highlight of New York (or American) programming, the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look will return on March 13 with an opening-night screening of Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s Sujo, close on March 17 with Bill and Turner Ross’ Gasoline Rainbow, and in the intervening days combine programming of recent cutting-edge highlights with in-person talks and seminars.

First Look’s fixture “Working on It” will run between March 13 and 15, offering “a laboratory for works in progress and dialogues about process, bringing together festival guests, filmmakers, students, writers, and the general public.” Meanwhile, writers and editors from Reverse Shot “will continue discussions begun in last year’s Emerging Critics Workshop throughout the festival.”

So says MoMI’s Curator of Film Eric Hynes:

“Now in its 13th year, First Look has carved out a unique, and we think essential, place in New York’s film and cultural landscape.

The annual Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look Festival has given IndieWire an exclusive “first look” at the lineup.

The 13th annual event, which takes place March 13 through 17 in Astoria, Queens, opens with the New York premiere of Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s “Sujo,” which recently took home the Grand Jury Prize, World Cinema Dramatic Competition, at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

The First Look Festival focuses on emerging talents and international voices, with the fest premiering 46 works, including 20 features that represent 21 countries. Highlights include Farhad Delaram’s “Achilles,” Graham Swon’s “An Evening Song (for three voices), and the U.S. premiere of Lois Patiño’s “Samsara.” Zhang Mengqi’s “Self-Portrait: 47 Km 2020,” which won the Award of Excellence winner at the 2023 Yamagata Documentary Festival, will also screen along with Shoghakat Vardanyan’s 2023 IDFA grand prize winner “1489,” the debut for the filmmaker. Returning First Look directors like Michaël Andrianaly...

Much like the number of days with good air quality in New York City this summer, the number of films available as 70mm prints isn’t as high as perhaps it should be. This presents a challenge to the Museum of the Moving Image and its annual See It Big film series. But this year, the beloved Queens museum is capitalizing on interest in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” by including a print of “Inception” that allows viewers to go deeper into the film’s picture quality.

At least that’s the theory.

Associate Curator of Film Edo Choi breaks 70mm prints into two categories: native prints shot on 65mm film (the extra 5mm is used for the soundtrack) and “blow-ups” that expand the image from a 35mm print onto larger film stock. The “Inception” print the museum is showing is a little bit of both.

“In the case of ‘Inception,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSWe’re excited to share the cover for Issue 3 of Notebook, which features a photograph of pioneering Indian actor-producer Devika Rani. Last week we sneak-previewed what will be the subscribers-only gift: a weatherproof sleeve. Subscriptions for the magazine are always open, but in order to receive Issue 3, you’ll need to subscribe by June 1. So if you haven’t yet, don’t hesitate! Some news from the Golden Apricot International Film Festival in Yerevan, Armenia. Notebook contributor Leonardo Goi will be organizing their Critics Campus, a four-day workshop for emerging film critics, in early July. Applications are now open: submit yours today. Recommended VIEWINGHow To With John Wilson is returning for its third, and final, season, which will premiere July 28 on "Max," the...

Exclusive: Comedic documentary filmmaker John Wilson is joining Michael J. Fox among honorees at the Museum of the Moving Image’s spring Moving Image Awards benefit on June 6.

MoMI’s board of trustees announced Monday Wilson will receive the award for Innovative Series in recognition of his career and his HBO show How To with John Wilson. The series, which will premiere its third season later this year, finds Wilson exploring New York in all its eccentricities.

“We are thrilled to honor John Wilson at our Spring 2023 Moving Image Awards benefit event and present him with the award for Innovative Series,” said MoMI’s co-chairmen Ivan Lustig and Michael Barker. “His one-of-a-kind docu-comedy style is a breath of fresh air for the television industry and we are honored to celebrate his work here at the Museum next month.”

Wired magazine called How To with John Wilson “an observational marvel,” and...

One of the best showcases of international cinema every year, the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look festival is now in its 12th edition and we’re pleased to exclusively unveil the lineup. Taking place from March 15-19 at the hallowed Queens theater, the selection features 38 works, including 19 features representing more than 22 countries.

Highlights include some of our favorites on the festival circuit in the past year: at long last, the New York premiere of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Cannes prize-winner Tori and Lokita, along with other victors Rodeo and The Eight Mountains; recent Sundance premieres Babak Jalali’s Fremont, Mary Helena Clark & Mike Gibisser’s A Common Sequence, and C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s Mami Wata; Lucrecia Martel’s new short Maid; Gastón Solnicki’s A Little Love Package; Koji Fukada’s Love Life; and much more.

MoMI Curator of Film Eric Hynes said, “The guiding...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSJeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.At last, Sight & Sound have released the results of the 2022 Greatest Films of All Time critics’ poll. 1,639 ballots later, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) has risen to the number-one spot, accompanied by a new piece from Laura Mulvey. The New York Times offers a useful interactive feature to unpack how the rankings have evolved over time.The American documentarian Julia Reichert—best known for Growing Up Female (1971), Union Maids (1976), and the Oscar-winning American Factory (2019)—died last week of cancer at age 76. Eric Hynes wrote an elegant appreciation of her work in a 2020 piece for Crosscuts, published by the Walker Art Center: Consistently through half a century of filmmaking, Reichert spends time with people.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAnne Heche in Psycho.Anne Heche has died at the age of 53, one week after sustaining critical injuries in a car accident. At Vulture, Matt Zoller Seitz offers a tribute to her "elastic," unclassifiable talent over 35 years of screen roles.Best known for Half of a Yellow Sun, an adaptation of the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie novel, Nigerian director and novelist Biyi Bandele died aged 54 last week. His second feature, Elesin Oba, The King’s Horseman, is set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month.In New York, the Downtown Community Television Center (Dctv) will open a documentary cinema in lower Manhattan's Chinatown district, screening first-run debuts and curated programs starting on September 22.Mid-century Italian screen icon Gina Lollobrigida has said she will run for the Sovereign and Popular Italy party (ISP...

The Museum of the Moving Image is pleased to announce the complete lineup for the 11th edition of First Look, the Museum’s festival of new and innovative international cinema, which will take place in person March 16–20, 2022. 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. The 2022 lineup includes both nonfiction and fiction, features and shorts, as well as forms that fall outside the boundaries of traditional theatrical distribution, from gallery presentations to live performances to artist talks. This year, the festival will premiere 38 works, including 18 features representing more than 30 countries. Artists will appear both in person and remotely.

“Now in its 11th year, First Look has evolved into an event reflective of both the current state of the cinematic arts and MoMI’s curatorial character and curiosity,” said Eric Hynes, Curator of Film.

The 11th annual First Look festival at the Museum of the Moving Image released its star-studded lineup February 7.

The festival, which is set to take place March 16–20 at the MoMI museum in Astoria, Queens, will open with the New York City premiere of Camera d’Or winner “Murina.” Director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović was honored with the title at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival for Best First Feature, and the film is executive produced by Martin Scorsese.

“Murina” is a coming-of-age story set in a scenic coastal Croatian town. Also on March 16, Tsai Ming-Liang’s ode to Hong Kong, “The Night,” will host its New York premiere. Closing Night selection and 2021 Locarno Grand Prix winner “The Balcony Movie” finishes off the festival.

The First Look festival features “new and innovative international cinema.” Spotlight screenings include the New York premiere of “Zero Fucks Given,” starring Adèle Exarchopoulos as a flight attendant in crisis,...

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...

Film journalists, critics, directors, and more are showing support for writer-actress-filmmaker Amy Seimetz on social media after news surfaced she has an open restraining order against “Primer” and “Upstream Color” director Shane Carruth. Seimetz starred opposite Carruth in “Upstream Color” and the two had a relationship that ended in 2018. Seimetz filed for the restraining order against Carruth on June 12, citing years of emotional and physical abuse. One alleged incident that occurred at a hotel in 2016 found Carruth strangling Seimetz until it was hard for her to breathe.

Seimetz’s restraining order gained visibility on social media after Carruth tweeted an image of the “Upstream Color” soundtrack on vinyl with part of the restraining order document sticking out from underneath it. The photo’s timing has led many people in the film community to wonder if Carruth is trying to take attention away from the release of Seimetz’s acclaimed new film “She Dies Tomorrow,...

Do any of us remember a time when the film industry was not in crisis? At the time of Wim Wenders’s 1982 documentary, Room 666, the on-screen directors who considered his prompt grappled with the kinds of issues that would go on to preoccupy filmmakers and film critics for many years — up to and through the production of Jeff Reichert, Damon Smith and Eric Hynes’s 2018 Brooklyn-set reply to Wenders, Room […]...

Do any of us remember a time when the film industry was not in crisis? At the time of Wim Wenders’s 1982 documentary, Room 666, the on-screen directors who considered his prompt grappled with the kinds of issues that would go on to preoccupy filmmakers and film critics for many years — up to and through the production of Jeff Reichert, Damon Smith and Eric Hynes’s 2018 Brooklyn-set reply to Wenders, Room […]...

The narrative feature “Minari” and the documentary “Boys State” have won the top prizes from the U.S. jury at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, which announced its winners at an awards ceremony on Saturday night. “Minari,” director Lee Isaac Chung’s coming-of-age story about a Korean-American boy, also won the festival’s audience award.

The only other films to win more than one award were “Identifying Features” (“Sin Senas Particulares”), Fernanda Valadez’s drama about a Mexican woman searching for a son who disappeared while attempting to cross the border; and “I Carry You With Me,” in which documentary director Heidi Ewing makes her narrative feature debut about an aspiring Mexican chef whose life changes when his sexuality becomes public. “Identifying Features” won the audience award in the World Cinema Dramatic section and a jury award for its screenplay, while “I Carry You With Me” won the audience award in...

Toronto–Director Nanfu Wang wracked up accolades for her debut feature “Hooligan Sparrow,” a riveting, guerrilla-style exposé of sexual abuse in China that made the Academy Award shortlist for best documentary. But as she prepared to return to the cutting room for her sophomore feature, she learned a valuable lesson that guides her to this day.

“I thought it would be easier, and it wasn’t,” she said. “The previous success of one successful work will not necessarily translate into your next work. Every film is a brand new beginning.”

Wang appeared at Hot Docs on Thursday in conversation with journalist and film critic Eric Hynes, where she discussed her career as a documentary filmmaker and the role that she plays as a character in her own films. Her latest feature, “One Child Nation,” which she co-directed with Jialing Zhang, was described by Variety as a “brave, brain-rewiring exposé” of China’s One-Child Policy.

A Moon For My Father, Dark Suns also among winners.

This year’s Cph:dox festival in Copenhagen has handed out its main prize, the Dox:Award, to John Skoog’s Ridge. The film is an artistic hybrid documentary portrait of the Swedish summer, featuring visual art, abstract fiction and documentary material from Skåne, the country’s southernmost county.

The jury, consisting of producer Katrin Pors, critic and curator Eric Hynes, filmmaker Soudade Kaadan, filmmaker Frederic Tcheng, and Berlinale Panorama programme director Paz Lazaro, also gave a special mention to Pia Hellenthal’s feminist doc Searching Eva about a young woman living in Berlin.

Norman NormanThe First Look Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image, located in the New York borough of Queens, has historically showcased a brave program that puts attention primarily on experimental, outsider and newcomer art. For example, last year it showed Let the Summer Never Come Again, a 202-minute long Georgian film shot on a first generation cellphone camera, and Colo, Teresa Villaverde’s latest exploration on the Portuguese economic and moral crisis, alongside Prototype, Blake William’s truly experimental 3D feature debut. Now in its 8th edition, First Look has managed to double its bet in terms of discovering new alleyways in which to find where the cinema of the future might come from.This is clear from the decisions made by Eric Hynes, MoMI curator, and David Schwartz, the festival founder, as the only films that might come from established filmmakers are the ones that are on...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAnnette Michelson, one of the foremost film scholars and illuminating minds on the avant-garde, has sadly left us at the age of 96. Artforum offers a thoughtful remembrance, including a round-up of links to Michelson's Artforum contributions.French philosopher and cultural theorist Paul Virilio passed earlier this month. Scholar McKenzie Wark has penned a lovingly thorough of the man and his works for Frieze.Recommended VIEWINGIn the event of Criterion Collection's new release of Terrence Malick's masterpiece, The Tree of Life (which includes a new cut of the film!), they have shared a special feature which offers rare insights into the ethereal cosmological imagery and special effects. Watch it here.An evocative, even minimal trailer for Her Smell, Alex Ross Perry's and Elizabeth Moss' joint exploration of a unhinged '90s rockstar is here.

Eric Hynes serves as writer-in-residence.

Sundance Institute has selected five projects for this year’s Documentary Edit and Story Lab, which will take place at the Sundance Resort in Utah on July 6

The Lab helps director-editor teams develop their independent non-fiction projects, most of which are in the later stages of post-production.

The selected projects: are Giovanni Buccomino and James Scott’s After A Revolution (UK); James LeBrecht, Nicole Newnham, and Andy Gersh’s Crip Camp (USA); Elizabeth Stopford and Gary Forrester’s Forgiveness (UK); Brett Story and Nels Bangerter’s The Hottest August (USA); and Betzabe Garcia and Jose...

I’d seen 2001: A Space Odyssey on 70mm twice over the years before going to see the “unrestored” print out now in limited release. Christopher Nolan premiered this new print at Cannes, and his interview from there with Eric Hynes is helpful to understanding some of the thinking behind this reissue. Still, I haven’t read anyone really breaking down what Nolan’s birthed, which is incredibly specific. Nolan’s explanation is that he’s gone back to the original camera negative to come up with a print that looks like what the very first public audience to view 2001 would have seen. This isn’t entirely accurate, […]...

I’d seen 2001: A Space Odyssey on 70mm twice over the years before going to see the “unrestored” print out now in limited release. Christopher Nolan premiered this new print at Cannes, and his interview from there with Eric Hynes is helpful to understanding some of the thinking behind this reissue. Still, I haven’t read anyone really breaking down what Nolan’s birthed, which is incredibly specific. Nolan’s explanation is that he’s gone back to the original camera negative to come up with a print that looks like what the very first public audience to view 2001 would have seen. This isn’t entirely accurate, […]...

Ela Bittencourt's new column explores South America’s key festivals and notable screenings of Latin films in North America and Europe.We Are All HereThe news from Sundance this year was that it’s been a year of women filmmakers. But that early optimism was quickly cut short. Alison Wilmore reported for Buzzfeed that the grumblings by the industry about no clear discoveries at this year’s festival seemed directly related to the larger representation by women. In Wilmore’s words, the buyers were asking, “Who are these films for?” “As mindblowing a concept as this may be, for women,” was Wilmore’re answer in the article. Some critics, such as Eric Hynes, retweeted Wilmore’s repartee on Twitter to voice criticism of the industry’s response. Others, like me, reacted to the industry comments with even more chagrin, wondering if indeed only women were the intended viewer.Meanwhile in Latin America,...

In its seventh year, MoMI's First Look film series, organized by chief curator David Schwartz and associate curator Eric Hynes, introduces bold, formaly inventive, innovative international films to start the new year. And to all the adventurous cinephiles, this is definitely a good way to start 2018. This year's selections in First Look go beyond the traditional screen presentsuch as Daniel Cockburn's quasi-film lecture All the Mistakes I've Made (Part 2); a new program of Radio Atlas short works comprised soley of audio recordings and projected subtitles; and even a work being produced during the festival, an update of Wim Wenders's documentary Room 666 in which filmmakers talk about the state of the art form. First Look to open with U.S. premirere of Blake Williams's...

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