Coming this May: Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène, three powerful 1970s works by the trailblazing Senegalese auteur; Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet’s masterful examination of the line between truth and fiction; and Girlfight, Karyn Kusama’s singular tale of a young woman’s path to self-realization. Plus: a Blu-ray upgrade of A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu, a silent classic from one of cinema’s greatest directors alongside his color remake, and Peeping Tom, Michael Powell’s still-shocking masterpiece of British cinema, now on 4K UHD.
A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu (#232) out May 7
In 1959, Yasujiro Ozu remade his 1934 silent classic A Story of Floating Weeds in color with celebrated cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. Setting his later version in a seaside location, Ozu otherwise preserves the details of his elegantly simple plot wherein an aging actor returns to a small town with his troupe and reunites with his former lover and their son, a scenario that enrages his current mistress and results in heartbreak for all. Together, the films offer a unique glimpse into the evolution of one of cinema’s greatest directors. A Story of Floating Weeds finds Ozu in the midst of developing his mode of expression; Floating Weeds reveals his distinct style at its pinnacle. In each, the director captures the joy and sadness of everyday life. The Special Edition Features are:
Buy Stories of Floating Weeds DVD- 4K digital master of Floating Weeds, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack (Blu-ray); high-definition digital transfer of Floating Weeds (DVD)
- High-definition digital master of A Story of Floating Weeds, featuring a score by composer Donald Sosin, presented in 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary for A Story of Floating Weeds by Japanese-film historian Donald Richie and for Floating Weeds by film critic Roger Ebert
- Trailer
- English subtitle translation by Richie for Floating Weeds
- PLUS: An essay by Richie
Peeping Tom (#58) out May 14
Having brought British cinema into exalted realms of fantasy and imagination, Michael Powell took a dark detour into obsession, voyeurism, and violence with this groundbreaking metacinematic investigation into the mechanics of fear. Armed with his killer camera, photographer and filmmaker Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) unleashes the traumas of his childhood by murdering women and recording their deaths—until he falls for his downstairs neighbor, and finds himself struggling against his dark compulsions. Received with revulsion upon its release only to be reclaimed as a masterpiece, the endlessly analyzed, still-shocking Peeping Tom dares viewers to confront their own relationship to the violence on-screen. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Two audio commentaries, one featuring film scholar Laura Mulvey and one featuring film historian Ian Christie
- Introduction by filmmaker Martin Scorsese Interview with editor Thelma Schoonmaker
- Documentary about the film’s history, featuring interviews with Schoonmaker, Scorsese, and actor Carl Boehm
- Documentary about screenwriter Leo Marks
- Program on the film’s restoration
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author Megan Abbott
Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène (#1217) out May 21
Having blazed a trail for African filmmakers to tell their own stories on-screen, Senegalese auteur Ousmane Sembène took his career-long project—to unlock cinema’s potential as a vehicle for social change—in increasingly urgent and provocative directions in the 1970s. Searing critiques of colonialism, political corruption, patriarchal arrogance, and religious indoctrination, his three features from this decade—the radical call to resistance Emitaï, the wickedly subversive satire Xala, and the controversial historical epic Ceddo—confirmed his standing as a fearless truth-teller for whom the camera was the ultimate weapon in the fight against oppression in all its forms. The Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restorations of all three films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
- New conversation between Mahen Bonetti, founder and executive director of the African Film Festival, and film writer Amy Sall
- The Making of “Ceddo,” a 1981 documentary by Paulin Soumanou Vieyra
- New English subtitle translations
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar Yasmina Price
Anatomy of a Fall (#1218) out May 28
The closer we look, the less we know in Justine Triet’s masterful Palme d’Or–winning Anatomy of a Fall, an eerily riveting courtroom thriller that examines the line where truth becomes fiction and fiction becomes truth. When Sandra Voyter (a transfixing Sandra Hüller), a writer who turns the material of her life into autofiction, is put on trial for the suspicious death by defenestration—or was it suicide?—of her husband, it opens up an inquiry that will turn a troubled home inside out. Tapping into the minimalist intensity of a chamber drama—and using intricate, elliptical editing—Triet constructs a mystery that is ultimately less about a death than about the hidden lives we lead. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
- 2K digital master, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- New interview with director Justine Triet
- Deleted and alternate scenes with commentary by Triet
- Audition footage of actors Milo Machado Graner and Antoine Reinartz and rehearsal footage of Machado Graner and actor Sandra Hüller
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by critic Alexandra Schwartz
Girlfight (#1219) out May 28
Bullied by her father at home and feeling adrift at school, Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) finds refuge in an unexpected pocket of her native Brooklyn—a timeworn boxing gym, where she learns to channel her strength, discovers a sense of community, and falls for a rival fighter. In Karyn Kusama’s raw, understated feature debut, Rodriguez commands the screen with both tightly coiled intensity and deep wells of vulnerability as a young woman hitting back at society’s expectations and her own personal demons. Capturing the full emotional weight of Diana’s journey and the kinetic thrill of bodies in motion, Kusama crafts a singularly uncompromising story of self-realization. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director Karyn Kusama and director of photography Patrick Cady, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- Audio commentary featuring Kusama
- New interviews with Kusama, editor Plummy Tucker, and composer Theodore Shapiro
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author Carmen Maria Machado
