Paula Guedes

Once we discovered French director Yann Gonzalez’s debut, You and the Night, we had to see more. So we’ve tracked down the short he made just before his first feature—and, unsurprisingly, it is pure kink featuring a mother-daughter stripping act. Hyper-stylized, campy and sexy, the film simply pops!

José Álvaro Morais theatrically transforms Alexandre Herculano’s 1843 novel before our eyes in his Golden Leopard-winning first feature. Set in the abandoned Lisboa Filmes film studio, The Jester imaginatively ruminates on national identity, engaging with entire centuries of Portuguese history.