New Directors/New Films 2023 [Film Festival Preview]

New Directors/New Films is an annual film series hosted by Film At Lincoln Center and The Museum Of Modern Art, highlighting the latest and greatest in first/second features and shorts, with a focus on the more experimental and boundary-pushing efforts therein. This year’s festival runs March 29-April 9, and here are a few highlights:

First up on this year’s New Directors/New Films preview is maybe the most approachable film in this year’s lineup. Entitled Almost Entirely A Slight Disaster, the film comes from director Umut Subasi and tells a series of interconnected stories of Istanbul-based millennials as they deal with everything from love to work. Very much rooted in a sort of Mumblecore-esque tradition, Subasi’s film is an impressively told yarn about modern millennial malaise, embedding within his film a distinct and tactile melancholy as his characters see their lives bounce off one another.

The real beauty in the film, however, comes from Subasi’s dry sense of humor, which manifests not only in the rather impressive script, but in the deadpan direction as well. The photography is rightly muted and naturalistic, and the performances uniformly follow suit, but again its the quiet direction that really brings this film to life. Verging nearly into absurdity, the film is more or less a series of increasingly comic vignettes, and yet the central focus on human connection and urban life never gets lost. Truly an impressive debut feature from Subasi.

Next up is the sophomore effort from director Alena Lodkina. Petrol tells the story of Eva (Nathalie Morris), a film student in the middle of a sort of passion project shes working on for school, who ultimately encounters a beautiful woman named Mia (Hannah Lynch) and the two instantly click. However, as the relationship and connection grows, the film begins to ebb and flow between being a beautiful character study about a young woman seeking companionship and something more sinister.

At its core a coming-of-age tale, Petrol is unlike many seen before it. Ethereal in its direction and photography, the film is a thoughtful character study about a woman picking up the pieces as her life splinters. Both Morris and Lynch are fantastic here, particularly in the sequences they share together. Their chemistry together is energetic if sometimes unsettling, particularly as Eva falls more and more for Mia. A film that’s surprisingly unsettling, Petrol is an announcement for one of the more exciting young filmmakers working today.

Speaking of exciting young filmmakers, Gush is the directorial debut of video artist Fox Maxy, and it’s truly unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Ostensibly a film about trauma, Maxy’s debut is a revolutionary work of collage, mixing together things like original documentary material, archival footage and even animation, all painting a portrait of freedom in the face of violence. Collecting material from the last decade ranging from a Tyra Banks interview to footage of Maxy and her own family, the film is a diary-like experimental documentary. Coming off of a hotly talked about bow at Sundance 2023 as part of the New Frontiers section, Gush is a profoundly intimate and personal rumination on power that is like something beamed in from the future. One of a kind, this picture.

Finally, we’re closing out this preview with two entries from the shorts sidebar. First up is Ecasso from directors Clara Anastacia and Gabriela Gaia Meirelles. At just 15 minutes in length, this short introduces viewers to Rose, a “pet professional” who, while walking a dog, stumbles upon an empty apartment. Built out as a “mockumentary” of sorts, Rose begins recounting the lives of the residents of the apartment, even connecting herself to the woman of the house through a fictional friendship. A profoundly economic deconstruction of modern Brazilian life and colonialism writ-large, Escasso is a gorgeously shot, quietly funny piece of slyly political filmmaking.

Then, to close out this list is Center, Ring, Mall, from director Mateo Vega. Marking its North American premiere with this festival, Center is a trio of short stories about a trio of man-made structures: a data center in Amsterdam, a road surrounding a city and a now-vacant shopping mall. Pairing these with voiceovers that are more reminiscent of poetry, this quietly paced documentary of sorts is a beautiful and often strangely moving portrait of capitalism’s final moments. Particularly in the mall sequence, the film’s larger conversation of consumerism comes to light, adding some real depth to this haunting portrait of late-stage capitalism.