In February, Mubi will screen films by Alex Ross Perry, David Cronenberg and Sofia Coppola.
In February, Mubi will screen films by Alex Ross Perry, David Cronenberg and Sofia Coppola.
Pavings
February 6
Alex Ross Perry | USA | 2024 | Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements is a genre-defying cinematic portrait of the pioneering American indie band, in which documentary, performance, reenactment and musical spectacle come together to form a playful and compelling reflection on artistic legacy. Anchored around Pavement’s 2022 reunion tour, the film transitions into staged scenes, archival footage and Broadway-style musical interludes drawn from the band’s discography. With Perry’s signature intellectual irreverence, Pavements interrogates nostalgia, authenticity, and the absurdities of cultural canonization—exploring how memory is constructed, rehearsed, and commodified. Both affectionate and sharply self-aware, the film captures the band’s internal dynamics while reflecting on their enduring influence on alternative music culture. Premiered at major festivals including Venice, NYFF and London Film Festival.
The shrouds
February 27
David Cronenberg | France, Canada | 2024 | David Cronenberg delivers one of his most intimate and disturbing works with The Shrouds, a speculative meditation on grief, technology and the terror of love that refuses to end. Vincent Cassel stars as Karsh, a widowed businessman who invents a controversial technology that allows the living to monitor the bodies of their deceased loved ones – until serious desecrations force him to face the emotional costs of his obsession. Conceived in the aftermath of Cronenberg’s own bereavement, the film distills his lifelong preoccupations: the body as interface, technology as an extension of desire, and intimacy as something that mutates uncontrollably. Body horror is present but subdued, giving way to psychological exposure and moral unease. Diane Kruger appears in multiple incarnations that fracture memory, identity, and desire. Premiered at Cannes, TIFF and IFFR.
being John Smith
February 20
Johannes Smit | UK | 2024 Being John Smith, a wry, deeply personal essay film from British avant-garde great John Smith, reflects on the lifelong burden (and strange poetry) of owning the most common name in the English-speaking world. Using family photos, personal archives, internet searches, and deadpan storytelling, Smith transforms autobiography into a quiet, profound meditation on identity, legacy, and self-doubt.
A dream longer than the night
February 20
Niki de Saint Phalle | France | 1976 | February 20 A hallucinatory feminist fairy tale, A Dream Longer Than the Night is one of only two films directed by celebrated artist Niki de Saint Phalle. Magically grown into adulthood, Princess Camélia travels through a phantasmagoric landscape of goblins, ghosts and surreal trials, confronting patriarchal power structures along the way. Somewhere between Jacques Demy and Jean Cocteau, the film extends De Saint Phalle’s vibrant sculptural and performative practice into cinema, transforming a limited budget into a limitless creative universe. Whimsical, daring and defiantly political, the film playfully dismantles gendered expectations through fantasy and satire.
Additional arrivals:
Millennium Mambo – Hou Hsiao-hsien’s hypnotic modern classic wanders through the neon-lit Taipei nights of the early 2000s and follows a young woman floating between love, alienation and self-reinvention. Dreamy, melancholic and formally precise, Millennium Mambo captures the emotional weight of the passage of time – and the silent ache of youth on the brink of change.
L’Eclisse – The final chapter of Antonioni’s iconic trilogy on alienation, L’Eclisse is a stark, modernist meditation on emotional disconnection in an increasingly abstract world. Monica Vitti and Alain Delon wander through an architecture of silence and emptiness, while love makes way for absence. One of the most radical endings of European cinema, the film remains a cornerstone of modernist filmmaking.
Priscilla – Sofia Coppola’s intimate portrait of Priscilla Presley reframes an iconic romance through a lens of isolation, longing and emotional imbalance, centering on the inner life of a young woman coming of age in a gilded cage.
Portrait Of A Lady On Fire – Céline Sciamma’s luminous masterpiece of longing and memory portrays a forbidden love between painter and subject, which unfolds with painful restraint and radical tenderness. A modern classic of queer cinema.
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