Preview: First Look at Museum of Moving Image 2025

Israel-Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 - Göran Hugo Olsson

Göran Hugo Olsson's new, well-timed archive-based documentary once again culls materials exclusively from Swedish Public Broadcasting (SVT), seeing the Israel-Palestine conflict from a non-partial point of view. But even with the wealth of footage, Olsson puts in the beginning of the film that 'the archive material doesn't necessarily tell us what really happened but says a lot about how it was told.'

What's not shown or omitted holds just as much importance, he seems to suggest. These snapshots of 40 years of footage, with numbers, dates, the producer's names, the original title, and the type of film stock (up until the 80s) on 'archive cards', chronicles the rise of the State of Israel and 'The Palestine Problem'.

It features many of the movers and shakers of the region over the years, all of whom contributed to the downward spiral of the circle of violence and suffering. It illustrates what happens when the powers-that-be lose sight of the people, even while attempting to solve the Problem. It also suggests that it is unreasonable that a state exists on religious foundation in this day and age.

As we go through early reports on Israeli society through the 1967 war and the tumultuous 70s, Sabra and Shatila Massacre, and the collapse of Soviet Union, it shows how public opinion has shifted as Israel's aggression intensified over the years. If anything, this clear-eyed, 3 1/2-hour documentary gives the historical and political context to what is happening in Gaza right now.

Desert of Namibia - Yoko Yamanaka

Yoko Yamanaka, who made a splash with her first low budget feature, Amiko (2017), when she was just 20, is at it again with her second feature, Desert of Namibia. This time, her protagonist is not a High School girl, but a wayward 21-year-old, bouncing from one boyfriend to another, having a hard time fitting into a rigid society, where things are in decline and there's no real prospect for the future, as a young zoomer woman.

Kana (Yuumi Kawai), a gazelle-like beauty, is first seen wondering around Tokyo, meeting a friend, who informs her about the suicide death of one of their friends. But she is distracted by other peoples' conversations spilling in her earshot.

The dissociation is a dominant feature in the film. One minute, Kana is happy and sunny, the next, she is moody and unresponsive. After leaving a live-in boyfriend in their tiny apartment, she moves in to another crammed one with Hayashi (Daichi Kaneko), an artist. Both men are enamored of her. Soon, though, she finds faults in the men and becomes volatile in her relationships.

There's a scene in which Kana takes a tumble on the stairs outside their apartment after a heated argument. She is briefly hospitalized with a neck brace. Kana's anger doesn't stop there, however.

Everyone tells her that she is free to do whatever she wants and the choices she makes in life are entirely hers. But it's as if she is watching her daily life (physically fighting with Hayashi) on her phone while on a treadmill -- which Yamanaka includes later, as a movie within a movie.

The general idea of survival and foreignness Kana feels is suggested in the film's title. With handheld camera work and long takes in tiny spaces, Yamanaka expertly captures the intimacy and suffocation that Kana feels.

100,000,000,000,000 - Virgil Vernier

Taking place in glitzy Monaco near Christmas time, Virgil Vernier's new film focuses on Alfine, an escort who describes himself as having a nice ass, nice lips, and a nice cock but lacking initiative. Not having a permanent residence, Alfine jumps from one client's luxury home to another and wonders around the port city-state lit up with Christmas decorations and lights, luxury shops, and shorelines filled with million-dollar yachts.

He and his escort friends talk about opening an agency, and their shallow dreams. Then he gets to babysit Julia, a twelve-year-old Chinese girl whose super-rich developer parents are away on holiday. She says that her father is building an offshore island equipped with bunkers. She ominously tells Alfine that something bad is going to happen in the near future and she wants him to be on the island. The society we are living in is in many ways incomprehensible. A million, trillion, quadrillion; these are numbers so big they lose all meaning and don't contribute to anything in our lives.

As usual, Vernier (Mercuriales, Sophia Antipolis), examines the seedy underbelly of our shallow modern society, urban isolation, loneliness, and human connection in 100,000,000,000,000. Virgil Vernier remains one of the most interesting contemporary French directors working today.