First Look 2023 Preview: Survey of New World Cinema

Lead Critic; Brooklyn, New York (@floatingartist)

Once again, First Look Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image is upon us, showcasing new, adventurous films from around the world.

Encompassing features, shorts, narratives and non-narratives, this year's wide ranging selections include Tori and Lokita, a new film from the Dardennes; this year's Sundance favorites, Fremont and Mami Wata (Opening Night and Closing Night film respectively); a new movie from Koji Fukada (Love Life); plus films from Argentina, China, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Senegal, and a whole lot more.

First Look has been and remains the unmissable go-to New York film event for surveying the most exciting current filmmaking from around the world and discovering new talents. I am very privileged to sample the following films, which you can find in the gallery below. 

First Look runs from Wednesday, March 15, through Sunday, March 19, at Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York. Please visit their website for tickets and more info.

A Little Love Package - Gaston Solnicki

It's 2019. Vienna, the last bastion among the European cities where smoking in cafe has been allowed, bans smoking indoors. It's the end of an era.

Two women, played by Angeliki Papoulia (Dogtooth) and Carmen Chaplin, are looking for a house to buy. One is rich and very picky about her choices and the other, her interior designer, is getting frustrated as her suggestions get rejected one after another.

The rich woman's child wants private music lessons from a Korean pianist in Vienna, because she doesn't like the strictness of the music conservatory. After the rich woman finds an apartment, Carmen, the interior designer, travels back to her home in Malaga to visit her aging parents and argue with her sisters about the future of their home and parents.

Shot beautifully by Rui Poças (Tabu, Zama, The Ornithologist), A Little Love Package is composed of loosely associated ideas and images with a free-flowing narrative. Argentine Gastón Solnicki's experiments with improvisation, for the first time using professional actors and also their real family, bear interesting results that are oddly engaging and liberating.

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ArgentinaAsiaChinaCzech RepublicEuropeFirst Look FestivalSenegalUkraine

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