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 as the centerpiece of MoMI’s film programming calendar. Over the course of five days in March we bring in select filmmakers from around the world to premiere their latest films in New York, share with our audience and one another their working methods and future plans, and either establish or build upon relationships with our programming team and wider community. We’ll welcome debut filmmakers, veterans making their first trip to MoMI, and First Look veterans with exciting new work. I’m excited about this year’s lineup, proud of its wide spectrum of forms and practices, and eager to bring more attention to these amazing artists.”
First Look 2025 was programmed by Eric Hynes, MoMI Curator of Film & First Look Artistic Director; Edo Choi, First Look Senior Programmer; and Sonia Epstein, Curator of Science and Technology; Sarah Luciano, Associate Director of Special Programs; and Eynar Pineda, First Look Producer. First Look’s avant-garde films were programmed by Edo Choi and David Schwartz.
See the lineup below:
OPENING NIGHT
Bonjour Tristesse
Dir. Durga Chew-Bose. 2024, 110 min. Canada/France. Durga Chew-Bose’s modern adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s classic 1954 novel features Lily McInerny as 18-year-old Cécile, spending her summer holiday on the French Riviera with her widowed father Raymond (Claes Bang). The carefree, sun-soaked days are interrupted by the arrival of steely fashion designer Anne (Chloë Sevigny). A major new film director, Chew-Bose has created a heart-wrenching, keenly observed coming-of-age tale. U.S. premiere
CLOSING NIGHT
Diciannove
Dir. Giovanni Tortorici. 2024, 108 mins. Italy. Outstanding newcomer Manfredi Marini plays Leonardo, who leaves his home in Palermo to attend business school in London, starting a journey that takes him to Siena and Torino, where he becomes increasingly intolerant of the larger world and others’ points of view. Tortorici’s debut is reminiscent of early Arnaud Desplechin as it zigzags temporally and tonally along with Leonardo’s impulsive, potentially toxic behavior. U.S. premiere
SHOWCASE SCREENING
Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958–1989
Dir. Göran Hugo Olsson. 2024, 200 mins. Sweden/Finland. Working from thousands of hours of footage catalogued in the vaults of Sweden’s national television service SVT, archival chronicler Olsson unspools a rigorously cool and steely account of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, as witnessed and represented by Swedish journalists over the course of the Cold War era. U.S. premiere
SHOWCASE SCREENING
Zodiac Killer Project
Dir. Charlie Shackleton. 2024, 91 min. U.K. When his plans for a true crime documentary hit a wall, Shackleton set about reconstituting what might have been, while deconstructing what we’ve come to expect from an oversaturated genre—using Bay Area landscapes, archival material, reenactments, film and TV clips, and his own wry and nimble voice-over. New York premiere
SHOWCASE SCREENING
When the Phone Rang
Dir. Iva Radivojević. 2024, 75 mins. Serbia/U.S. On a Friday morning in 1992, eleven-year-old Lana (Ilincic) receives a phone call about a death in the family, a life-changing event in sync with the fracturing of Yugoslavian history and identity. Inspired by her own childhood memories, filmmaker Radivojevic loops back to that fateful moment as a conjuring and incantation.U.S. premiere
100,000,000,000,000 (Cent Mille Milliards)
Dir. Virgil Vernier. 2024, 77 mins. France. Drifting through an ethereal Monaco during the eerie, emptied-out limbo of the Christmas holidays, a diffident young sex worker gradually forms a strange, tentative bond with a preadolescent whose parents, Chinese real estate developers, have left her in the charge of her Serbian babysitter. U.S. premiere
Chronicles of the Absurd
Dir. Miguel Coyula. 2024, 77 mins. Cuba. Coyula and actor Lynn Cruz were subjected to various forms of control and intimidation while making their dystopian feature Corazón azul in Cuba in 2011. This defiant and entertaining work playfully uses headshots and avatars to visualize clandestine audio recordings documenting years of Kafkaesque impositions, threats, and vital dissident art. U.S premiere
Desert of Namibia
Dir. Yôko Yamanaka. 2024, 137 min. Japan. Yamanaka’s second feature follows mercurial 21-year-old Kana, who vacillates among suitors, priorities, and moods. Does she want security or stimulation, adulthood or regression; is she just unpredictable or unwell? Yuumi Kawai embodies Kana with a fierce volatility that evokes the hot-blooded, without-a-net cinema of Cassavetes and Rowlands. New York premiere
Elementary
Dir. Claire Simon. 2024, 105 min. France. The latest immersive work from documentary master Claire Simon takes us into Makarenko, a public elementary school in the Parisian suburb Ivry-sur-Seine, over the course of a school year, staying attentive to the glorious unpredictability of human interaction and the revelations of learning. U.S. premiere
The Fifth Shot of La Jetée
Dir. Dominique Cabrera. 2024, 104 min. France. Filmmaker Cabrera belatedly discovers in her latest feature that Chris Marker’s 1962 sci-fi photomontage La Jetée, made the same year that Algeria gained independence from French colonial rule, might also be an inadvertent historical document of her own family. This detective story uncovers evidence about her family, French colonialism, Marker, and film itself. U.S. premiere
A Frown Gone Mad
Dir. Omar Mismar. 2024, 71 mins. Lebanon. In a beauty salon in Beirut, one client after another sits in Bouba’s chair seeking cosmetic treatment. Omar Mismar’s uniquely mesmerizing film consists entirely of close-ups fixed on clients’ faces. A work of real-life body horror that’s also a tender portrait of communal defiance. North American premiere
Measures for a Funeral
Dir. Sofia Bohdanowicz. 2024, 142 min. Canada. PhD candidate Audrey (Deragh Campbell) journeys from Toronto to London to Oslo to research the life of forgotten Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow while fever-dream calls from her dying mother (herself a failed violinist) go to voicemail. The latest from singular artist Bohdanowicz richly blends family history with archival research and gothic storytelling. U.S. premiere
Park
Dir. So Yo-Hen. 2024, 101 min. Taiwan. In this intricately improvised whatsit, Indonesian immigrants Asri and Hasan convene every day at twilight hour, in the heart of Taiwan’s oldest city, to share the day’s news and experiences, spinning second-hand tales of migrant struggle into rhapsodically spontaneous verse. New York premiere
The Periphery of the Base
Dir. Zhou Tao. 2024, 54 mins. China. Mixed media artist Zhou constructs mutating digital landscapes that confound classical notions of scale, composition, and visual realism. His latest sets us adrift in the desolate expanse of the Gobi Desert, where an amorphous infrastructure project of massive proportions is underway. North American premiere
Sanctuary Station
Dir. Brigid McCaffrey. 2024, 69 mins. U.S. Shot on high-contrast black-and-white 16mm film and Super 16, this incandescent work weaves a rough, hallucinatory patchwork of encounters with women, old and young, solitary and collective, who live or work among the wildlife of the redwood forests and remote terrains of northwestern California. Part of Science on Screen. New York premiere
The Shipwrecked Triptych
Dir. Deniz Eroglu. 2025, 90 mins. Germany. Displaying remarkable formal sophistication with a dazzling composite of film stocks, formats, and digital VFX, visual artist Eroglu’s provocative narrative triad forms a surreal, at times comic, and alway fascinating treatise on contemporary Germany, its meaning, its history, and its libidinal unconscious. North American premiere
Songs of Slow Burning Earth
Dir. Olha Zhurba. 2024, 95 mins. Ukraine/France/Sweden/Denmark. Filmed over two years in Ukraine, Zhurba’s epic depiction of her society under siege by Russia moves ineluctably from one grandly scaled, finely detailed scene of calamity to another, each designated by its degree of proximity to the front. East Coast premiere
Tata
Dirs. Lina Vdovîi, Radu Ciorniciuc. 2024, 82 min. Moldova/Romania. Moldovan journalist Lina receives a video message from her estranged father, a migrant worker in Italy, seeking help from his abusive employer. Equipping him with a hidden camera, Lina finds herself on a parallel journey of justice—uncovering a pattern of domestic violence that has plagued her family for generations. U.S. premiere
A Want in Her
Dir. Myrid Carten. 2024, 81 min. Ireland. When her troubled mother goes missing, Irish filmmaker Myrid Carten returns home to find her—at the risk of losing herself. Drawing upon previously captured footage, new interventions, and extraordinarily evocative visual experiments within their living spaces, Carten reinvents the “home movie” as an aching, active processing. New York premiere
Windless
Dir. Pavel G. Vesnakov. Bulgaria/Italy. 93 mins. After years working abroad in Spain, a taciturn young man returns to his village in rural Bulgaria to clean out his late father’s flat. As he reconnects with old friends and relatives, he hears tales of his father, by all accounts, a fiercely deeply loving man whom he does not recognize from his own memories. 2024 European Film Awards Selection. New York premiere
FIRST LOOK 2025 SHORTS:
Aotearoa
Dir. Maximilien Luc Proctor. 2024, 6 mins. Germany. 16mm. The snow of Weissensee, a home in Tāmaki Makaurau, the beach in Matapōuri. Edited in camera, using double-perforated film. North American premiere
Being Blue
Dir. Luke Fowler. 2024, 18 mins. U.K. DCP. Filmed during a residency at Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, former home of artist, filmmaker and gay rights activist Derek Jarman, Being Blue touches impressionistically on themes of sexuality, queer British life, art making, and nature. North American premiere
Bliss Point
Dir. Gerard Ortín Castellví. 2023, 26 mins. Italy/U.K./Spain. Artificial intelligence manages a warehouse, identical rows of burgers are flipped, and robots glide through factories. Filmed with elegance and technological precision, Bliss Point portrays the automation of food production. Part of Science on Screen. North American premiere
Common Pear
Dir. Gregor Bozic. 2025, 15 mins. Slovenia. In a not-too-distant future ravaged by climate disasters, a team of scientists develops new technology that transmits true emotions from humans on screens to those that watch them. North American premiere
Chelsea Drive
Dirs. Kevin Jerome Everson, Claudrena N. Harold. 2025, 4 mins. U.S. Digital projection. Chelsea Drive displays three decades of Black student style, fashion and dance at the University of Virginia. North American premiere
Full Out
Dir. Sarah Ballard. 2025, 14 mins. U.S. DCP. In French with English subtitles. In 19th-century Paris at the Salpêtrière Hospital, patients were hypnotized onstage to reproduce the symptoms of hysteria for public audiences. Over a century later, high school cheerleaders are fainting en masse. World premiere
how to make magic
Dir. Blanca Garcia. 2024, 5 mins. Spain/U.K. Super 8mm. Filmed in the New Forest, the largest remaining unenclosed common land in England, where the entanglement of non-human and human activity hides a joyous spell. New York premiere
Memory Is an Animal, It Barks with Many Mouths
Dir. Eva Giolo. 2025, 24 mins. DCP. Belgium/Italy. In the valleys surrounding the Dolomite Mountains, children reimagine ancient Ladin legends while they examine bodies of water, holes, caves, and passages looking for something lost or forgotten. North American premiere
The Phalanx
Dir. Ben Balcom. 2025, 13 mins. U.S. DCP. Letters from the Ceresco community trace the fragility of harmony, the dream of life in association. Members of the phalanx drift apart, lingering in private corners, suspended in speculative time. World premiere
Songs Overheard in the Shadows
Dir. James Edmonds. 2025, 22 mins. Germany. 16mm. Balanced on the edge of what is visible, everything comes from nothingness and returns to nothingness. World premiere
Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of the Air
Dir. Sam Drake. 2025, 9 mins. U.S. DCP. Fragmented records reveal a concealed history of Cold War-era human radiation experiments—a miasma of elite deviance. Desert dust settles into teeth. A search that dissolves into a cipher. North American premiere
A Thousand Waves Away
Dir. Helena Wittmann. 2025, 10 mins. Germany. DCP. The people are in turmoil. The ground from which their enchanted garden grows, is trembling. North American premiere
Unstable Rocks
Dir. Ewelina Rosinska, in collaboration with Nuno Barroso. 2024, 25 min. Germany/Portugal. Geology, animals, and the human path flow together in this subjective portrait of Portuguese landscapes. North American premiere
The Vanguard Tapes
Dir. Bill Morrison. 2025, 29 mins. U.S. In 1995, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Bill Morrison (Incident) was a dishwasher at the Village Vanguard, the legendary jazz club in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Morrison’s poignant and deliciously candid film, with footage captured during his breaks, features conversations with and monologues by legends Cecil Taylor, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Harold Mabern, Jamil Nasser, and others. U.S. premiere
First Sight: 2025 Award-Winning Shorts from the Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism:
For the eighth consecutive year, First Look presents Jury award–winning graduate and undergraduate student films from the Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism. All were originally presented at the Stronger Than Fiction Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri. This year’s jurors were Isabel Castro, Chloe Gbai, and Eric Hynes. New York premieres
Cowboy Strike
Dir. Matt Pehl. 2024, 22 mins. U.S. In 1883, cowboys in the Texas Panhandle responded to the rise of the first mega-ranches in dramatic fashion: they launched a strike. In investigating the story of this long-forgotten historical anecdote, a songwriter seeks to pay tribute to the cowboys’ search for economic justice. Winner, Stacy Woelfel Award for Innovative Journalism.
I Will Take the Blame
Dir. Elena Fu. 2024, 15 mins. U.S. A young Chinese woman endeavors to mend her parents’ fractured marriage, only to encounter the painful realization of her own limitations. Winner, Best Film.
Satan’s Greatest Lies
Dir. Michael Coleman. 2024, 35 mins. U.S. George Russell, a maverick environmental activist with a God complex, mourns the unexpected loss of his youngest daughter, causing him to question his lifelong crusade to preserve the piney woods of East Texas. Winner, Best Director.
Victim
Dir. Tess Jagger-Wells. 2024, 13 mins. U.S. In 1950, Janett Christman was murdered while babysitting in Columbia, Missouri. Almost 75 years later, a filmmaker investigates the unsolved case and its surprising connection to pop culture while she confronts her obsession with true crime. Winner, Special Jury Award for Editing.