Great films are coming this August to MUBI, the curated streaming platform that is perfect if you’re in the mood for independent, arthouse and world cinema.
The schedule of films differs in each country, but expect films from last year’s Locarno Film Festival, an exclusive online premiere, and plenty of unique films. Last year’s winner of the Golden Leopard at Locarno, Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela is still available to stream on MUBI’s Library in the U.K.
Rúnar Rúnarsson’s Echo, shown last year at the Locarno International Film Festival, will be showing in a few territories, including the U.S., the U.K., Italy and Germany. Don’t expect a traditional narrative film, this is a beautifully shot portrait of Iceland during Christmas through 56 vignettes. You’ll find yourself quite mesmerzed by Rúnarsson’s film.
Giraffe is Anna Sofie Hartmann’s second feature film, which was shown at last year’s Locarno. Blending fiction with reality, the film is an unconventional love story between an ethnologist, Dara, and a builder, Lucek. Dara is studying inhabitants of an island in south Danemark, whose homes are about to be demolished for the construction of a tunnel linking Germany to Danemark.
Trương Minh Quý’s The Tree House is an intriguing film set in the future in 2045, on the planet Mars, which is now occupied by humans. An unnamed filmmaker, living on Mars in that year of 2045, examines footage of Vietnam shot in our present. This is Trương Minh Quý’s second feature film.
Part of MUBI’s Debuts strand, Wonders in the Suburbs is actress Jeanne Balibar’s directorial debut. Balibar is most well-known for her roles in Jacques Rivette’s films (The Duchess of Langeais and Va Savoir). This French comedy tells the story of Mrs Joly, the new mayor of Montfermeil (the same suburb filmed by Ladj Ly in Les Misérables in which Balibar starred).
Xavier Dolan’s latest film Matthias & Maxime, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019, will have its exclusive online premiere on MUBI on august 28 across the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America (excluding Mexico), and India. Matthias & Maxime is a coming-of-age film from the multi-prize winning Canadian director, whose first feature I Killed My Mother premiered at Cannes when Dolan was only 20. In his latest film, two childhoood friends graple with their sexualities after sharing a kiss. The film stars Dolan himself and Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas, Harris Dickinson, Pier-Luc Funk and Anne Dorval.
MUBI will have a special focus on Japanese director Naomi Kawase this August in the U.K. focusing on three of her features, The Mourning Forest, Still the Water and Sweet Bean. The intimate Sweet Bean is about a lonely baker who hires a 76-year-old woman to be his new assistant, who has a delicious sweet red bean paste recipe. Sweet Bean will also be showing in the U.S on August 7.
MUBI will be showing two films from the acclaimed French director François Ozon, Swimming Pool and Frantz in the U.K. Swimming Pool is one of Ozon’s most well-known thrillers, while Frantz, released in 2016, is a poetic drama set in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Filmed in black and white, the film stars German actress Paula Beer and French actor Pierre Niney. Ozon’s latest film Summer ’85, selected at Cannes 2020, was just released theatrically in France.
Part of the Debuts strand on MUBI, Mo Scarpelli’s Anbessa is a magical realist documentary about a boy named Asalif and his mother who live outside of the city of Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia. They can hear hyenas howl in the night. Asalif dreams that he tranforms into a lion (anbessa in Amharic), th eonly animal that can beat a hyena. Sarpelli’s film pushes the boundaries of nonfiction cinema.
MUBI continues in August its focus on Portuguese filmmaker Rita Azevedo Gomes. After showing The Portuguese Woman and Fragile as the World in July, it will now be showing A Woman’s Revenge and Correspondences across many countries, including the U.K., France and Italy. Correspondences is the story of Jorge de Sena who kept an epistolary correspondence with Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen during his twenty-year exile.
To celebrate Lina Wertmüller’s 92nd birthday, four of the director’s movies will be shown on the streaming platform in the U.S. Wertmüller was the first woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. MUBI will be showing some of her polemical films, including Seven Beauties, starring Giancarlo, Giannini, for which Wertmüller earned two Oscar nominations.
I am a film historian, interested in the history and theory of cinema, as well as the technology behind the making of films. I specialize in European cinema, in
I am a film historian, interested in the history and theory of cinema, as well as the technology behind the making of films. I specialize in European cinema, in particular French film history.