Content from Nowness

Arab-American filmmaker Yumna Al-Arashi embraces the rhythmic rituals that have run alongside Islamic tradition throughout the centuries in this surreal and poetic short film. Piecing together old and new, Al-Rashi's dream-like imagery breathes fresh air to a subject hardly seen in positive light.

A woman descends into a surreal odyssey of fragmented memories after waking with excruciating neck pain.

A portrait of Victoria Sin, and the transformative power of drag.

Two girls find themselves locked in an Oslo public swimming hall and bond over school gossip, boys and dancing to the psychedelic sounds of Lindstrøm.

Artist and filmmaker Quentin Jones joins forces with Miley Cyrus in a kinky collaboration, stripping away the pop phenomenon's cartoonish persona in "Miley Cyrus: Tongue Tied".

Varanasi is the Indian city where Hindus go to die. Stretching along the Ganges, Varanasi holds great spiritual significance because Hindu scriptutres say that anyone who dies there will attain moksha—liberation from the cycle of rebirth. Berlin-based director Dan Braga Ulvestad captures life and death in India’s heartland in this moving documentary filled with exquisite cinematic moments. By the River starts its narrative journey with the city’s “death hotels,” dedicated apartments where people wait to die, sometimes for decades, so they can be cremated on the banks of the Ganges.

Two Asian-American teenagers meet in the bathroom of a Chinese restaurant while having dinner with their families.

There are houses, and then there’s Ricardo Bofill’s house: a brutalist former cement factory of epic proportions on the outskirts of Barcelona, Spain. A grandiose monument to industrial architecture in the Catalonian town of Sant Just Desvern, La Fabrica is a poetic and personal space that redefines the notion of the conventional home. “Nowadays we want everyone who comes through our door to feel comfortable, but that's not Bofill’s idea here,” says filmmaker Albert Moya, who directed latest installment of In Residence. “It goes much further, you connect with the space in a more spiritual way.” Rising above lush gardens that mask the grounds’ unglamorous roots, the eight remaining silos that once hosted an endless stream of workmen and heavy machinery now house both Bofill’s private life, and his award-winning architecture and urban design practice.

A frazzled adulteress played by Parisian beauty Zoë Le Ber wakes up in the familiar surroundings of Bar Chateau Marmont, only to find herself trapped in a prank at the hands of her restaurant-owner lover, Fred.

Cinema's reigning romantic Luca Guadagnino premiers a modern-day paean to the good times, inspired by a Wolfgang Tillmans picture.

A master of sound at work on a fashion film. If you’ve ever wanted to see the chasm between the finished product and the extraordinary lengths taken to produce it, this short is for you.

After recently going blind, a young gay man struggles to navigate his new life in the shadows.

A young man eats alone at an LA cevicheria, processing his relationships, grief and questionable behaviours over a phone call.

For the fourth episode of the original series “Young Masters”, NOWNESS CHINA travelled north to the barren and cold expanse of the Hulunbuir Grasslands in October 2022. There, the team met Angchinhuu, a budding horse trainer in her sophomore year of junior high. Described as a “girl like the wind”, Angchinhuu possesses qualities that are typical of teenage girls everywhere: she is restless, daydreams, and is hopeful. She is also exceptionally determined to carry on her family’s profession of training horses amidst the unforgiving grasslands, a remote terrain marked by severe weather conditions.

A young astrophysicist in a war-torn country watches the stars and black holes, holding a dialogue with her unborn daughter about the nature of light and darkness.

Lou, a teenage tomboy in a small Californian town, idolizes her single father. When he has a date over one night and she is cast out of the house, Lou wanders to the outer reaches of town and into a new era of teenage identity.

What does it mean to be goth—to be an outsider, to live both on the margins and in the midst of society? Filmmakers Jordan Hemingway and Alban Adam prize open the coffin on a world of darkness and light, exploring its multiplicities and intersections with subcultures and the ever-present experience of queerness.

Chef Mark Hix describes the history and importance of salt.

Marking the 30th anniversary of Derek Jarman's passing, close friend and collaborator Tilda Swinton leads a poetic tribute to the late artist and filmmaker with a slow, meditative journey into Jarman’s poem "Chroma" during a visit to Beijing.