Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007, the World Cinema Project
has maintained a fierce commitment to preserving and presenting
masterpieces from around the globe, with a growing roster of more
than three dozen restorations that have introduced moviegoers to
often-overlooked areas of cinema history. Presenting passionate
stories of revolution, identity, agency, forgiveness, and
exclusion, this collector’s set gathers six of those important
works, from Brazil (Pixote), Cuba (Lucía), Indonesia (After the
Curfew), Iran (Downpour), Mauritania (Soleil Ô), and Mexico (Dos
monjes). Each title is a pathbreaking contribution to the art
form and a window onto a filmmaking tradition that international
audiences previously had limited rtunities to experience.
DUAL-FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New,
restored 4K digital transfers of all six films, overseen by the
World Cinema Project in collaboration with the Cineteca di
Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays •
New introductions to the films by World Cinema Project founder
Martin Scorsese • New interviews featuring Downpour director
Bahram Beyzaie and film scholars Charles Ramírez Berg (on Dos
monjes) and J. B. Kristanto (on After the Curfew) • Excerpts from
a 2016 interview with Pixote director Héctor Babenco and a 2018
interview with Soleil Ô director Med Hondo • Humberto & “Lucía,”
a 2020 documentary by Carlos Barba Salva featuring Lucía director
Humberto Solás and members of his cast and crew • Prologue
created by Babenco for the U.S. release of Pixote • New English
subtitle translations • Three Blu-rays and six DVDs, with all
content available in both formats • PLUS: A booklet featuring a
foreword by Cecilia Cenciarelli, head of research and
international projects for the Cineteca di Bologna, and essays by
critics and scholars Stephanie Dennison, Dennis Lim, Elisa
Lozano, Hamid Naficy, Adrian Jonathan Pasaribu, and Aboubakar
Sanogo LUCÍA A breathtaking vision of Cuban revolutionary history
wrought with white-hot intensity by Humberto Solás, this operatic
epic tells the story of a changing country through the eyes of
three women, each named Lucía. In 1895, she is a tragic
noblewoman who inadvertently betrays her country for love during
the war of independence. In 1932, she is the daughter of a
bourgeois family drawn into the workers’ uprising against the
dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. And in the postrevolutionary
1960s, she is a newlywed farm girl fighting against patriarchal
oppression. A formally dazzling landmark of postcolonial cinema,
Lucía is both a senses-stunning visual experience and a fiercely
feminist portrait of a society journeying toward liberation.
AFTER THE CURFEW This work by the trailblazing auteur Usmar
Ismail struck Indonesian cinema like a bolt of lightning,
illuminating on-screen, for the first time and with unflinching
realism, the struggles of Indonesian society after the country
gained its independence from the Netherlands. Giving voice to the
frustrated dreams of a nation, After the Curfew follows the
descent into disillusionment of Iskandar (A. N. Alcaff), a former
freedom fighter who is unable to readjust to civilian life
following the revolution that ended centuries of colonial rule.
When he discovers that the ideals he fought for have been
betrayed by a corrupt former commander, Iskandar is pushed to the
breaking point. Steeped in the moody atmospherics and simmering
psychological tension of film noir, this clear-eyed postcolonial
tragedy paints a dark-edged portrait of a country no longer at
war but still fighting for its soul. PIXOTE With its bracing
blend of harsh realism and aching humanity, Héctor Babenco offers
an electrifying look at lost youth fighting to survive on the
bottom rung of Brazilian society that helped put the country’s
cinema on the international . with documentary-like
immediacy on the streets of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Pixote
follows the eponymous preteen runaway (the heartbreaking Fernando
Ramos da Silva) as he escapes a nightmarish juvenile detention
center, only to descend into a life of increasingly violent crime
even as he finds himself part of a makeshift family of fellow
outcasts. Balancing its shocking brutality with moments of
disarming tenderness, this stunning journey through Brazil’s
underworld is an unforgettable cry from the lower depths that has
influenced multiple generations of American filmmakers, including
Spike Lee, Harmony Korine, and the Safdie brothers. DOS MONJES
Made in the early days of Mexican sound cinema, this vividly
stylized melodrama hinges on an audacious, ahead-of-its-time
flashback structure. When the ailing monk Javier recognizes a
brother newly arrived at his cloister, he inexplicably becomes
deranged and attacks him. What causes his madness? Director Juan
Bustillo Oro recounts the two men’s shared past—a tragic rivalry
over the love of a woman—twice, once from the point of view of
each, heightening the contrasts between their accounts with
visual flourishes drawn from the language of German
expressionism. With its gothic sets, elaborate lighting, and
daring camera work by avant-garde photographer Agustín Jiménez,
Dos monjes is a broodingly intense outlier in Mexican cinema,
plumbing the depths of psychological torment and existential
mystery with experimental verve. SOLEIL Ô A furious cry of
resistance against racist oppression, the debut from Mauritanian
director Med Hondo is a bitterly funny, stylistically explosive
attack on Western capitalism and the lingering legacy of
colonialism. Laced with deadly irony and righteous anger, Soleil
Ô follows a starry-eyed immigrant (Robert Liensol) as he leaves
West Africa and journeys to Paris in search of a job, a
community, and intellectual engagement—but soon discovers a
hostile society where his very presence engenders fear and
resentment. Drawing on the freewheeling experimentation of the
French New Wave, Hondo deploys a dizzying array of narrative and
stylistic techniques—animation, docudrama, dream sequences,
musical numbers, folklore, slapstick comedy, agitprop—to create a
revolutionary landmark of political cinema and a shattering
vision of awakening black consciousness. DOWNPOUR Defined by a
b stylistic exuberance and a vivid way of looking at everyday
life in prerevolution Iran, this first feature from the renowned
Bahram Beyzaie helped usher in the Iranian New Wave. When he
takes a job as a schoolteacher in a new neighborhood, the hess
intellectual Hekmati (Parviz Fannizadeh) finds that he is a fish
out of water in a place where everybody’s business—including his
tentative flirtation with an engaged seamstress (Parvaneh
Massoumi)—is subject to the prying eyes of adults and children
alike. in luminous monochrome and edited with quicksilver
invention, this touchstone work, which has been painstakingly
restored from the only known surviving print, captures with
puckish humor and great human tenderness the societal and
intellectual conflicts coursing through Iran at a pivotal
historical moment.