The Criterion Collection Complete

KUSAMA, Karyn (United States) Girlfight [2000] Spine #1219 Blu-ray 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. 111 minutes 5.1 Surround Color 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Karyn Kusama  was 32 when she directed Girlfight. The Film a Film Rating (0-60): 60 The Extras The Booklet Commentary Video tribute Documentary 1 Documentary 2 Documenta...

TRIET, Justine (France) Anatomy of a Fall [2023] Spine #1218 Blu-ray 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. 151 minutes 5.1 Surround Color in French and English 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Justine Triet  was 45 when she directed Anatomy of a Fall. The Film a Film Rating (0-60): 60 The Extras The Booklet Commenta...

SEMBÈNE, Ousmane (Senegal) Ceddo [1977] Spine #1217c Blu-ray In precolonial Senegal, members of the Ceddo (or “outsiders”) kidnap Princess Dior Yacine (Tabata Ndiaye) after her father, the king, pledges loyalty to an ascendant Islamic faction that plans to convert the entire clan to its faith. Attempts to recapture her fail, provoking further division and eventual war between the animistic Ceddo and the fundamentalist Muslims, with Christian missionaries and slave traders from Europe also playing a role in the conflict. Banned in Senegal upon its release,  Ceddo  is an ambitious, multilayered epic that explores the combustible tensions among ancient tradition, religious colonization, political expediency, and individual freedom. 116 minutes Monaural Color in Wolof 1:85:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Ousmane Sembène  was 54 when he directed Xala. Other Sembène films in the Collection: #852: Black Girl (1966) #1065: Mandabi (1968) #1217a: Emitaï (1971) #1217b: Xa...

SEMBÈNE, Ousmane (Senegal) Xala [1975] Spine #1217b Blu-ray An adaptation of Ousmane Sembène’s own 1973 novel,  Xala  is a hilarious, caustic satire of political corruption under an inept patriarchy. On the night of his wedding to his third bride, government official El Hadji (Thierno Leye) is rendered impotent and begins to suspect that one of his other wives has placed a curse on him. After seeking a cure from a local marabout, El Hadji must face the possibility that he deserves the infliction for his part in embezzling public funds and for helping to keep Senegal under French control. Adeptly combining elements of African folklore and popular cinema, Sembène indicts the hubris, entitlement, and opportunism of male authority figures. 123 minutes Monaural Color in French and Wolof 1:66:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Ousmane Sembène  was 52 when he directed Xala. Other Sembène films in the Collection: #852: Black Girl (1966) #1065: Mandabi (1968) #1217a: Emitaï...

SEMBÈNE, Ousmane (Senegal) Emitaï [1971] Spine #1217a Blu-ray With revolutionary outrage, Ousmane Sembène chronicles a period during World War II when French colonial forces in Senegal conscripted young men of the Diola people and attempted to seize rice stores for soldiers back in Europe. As the tribe’s patriarchal leaders pray and make sacrifices to their gods, the women in the community refuse to yield their harvests, incurring the French army’s wrath. With a deep understanding of the oppressive forces that have shaped Senegalese history,  Emitaï  explores the strains that colonialism places upon cultural traditions and, in the process, discovers a people’s hidden reserves of rebellion and dignity. 101 minutes Monaural Color in Diola and French 1:66:1 Criterion Release 2024 Director/Writer Ousmane Sembène  was 48 when he directed Emitaï. Other Sembène films in the Collection: #852: Black Girl (1966) #1065: Mandabi (1968) #1217b: Xala (1975) #1217c: Ceddo (1977) The Fi...

SEMBÈNE, Ousmane (Senegal) Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène [1971-77] Spine #1217 Blu-ray 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. Criterion Release 2024 #1217a: Emitaï (1971) #1217b: Xala (1975) #1217c: Ceddo (1977) By Director By Spine #