Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho, who has gifted us such films as Aquarius (NYFF54) and Bacurau (NYFF57), returns with the thrillingly unpredictable The Secret Agent.

A dynamic, shape-shifting epic set in Mendonça’s hometown of Recife during the late 1970s, The Secret Agent won Best Director award at Cannes. Wagner Moura was also deservedly honored as Best Actor at the festival for his magnetic performance as a widowed former university researcher whose life has been violently upended by the greed and vengeance of a government bureaucrat.

On the run and living under an alias during the country’s military dictatorship, he tries to escape, while also reconnecting with the young son he had to leave behind. Even this brief description cannot fully prepare the viewer for the zigzagging subplots and delights of Mendonça’s eccentric and affectionate ode to the movies and the Brazil of his youth—and to maintaining individuality amid abuses of power.

Live for tomorrow. Die today.

The Frida Cinema is excited to partner up with our friends at GKIDS to present All You Need Is Kill, the action-packed new anime film from director Kenichiro Akimoto!

When a massive alien flower known as “Darol” unexpectedly erupts in a deadly event, unleashing monstrous creatures that decimate the population of Japan, Rita is caught in the destruction—and killed. But then she wakes up again. And again. Caught in an endless time loop, Rita must navigate the trauma and repetition of death until she crosses paths with Keiji, a shy young man trapped in the same cycle. Together, they fight to break free from the loop and find meaning in the chaos around them.

All screenings will be presented in the film’s original Japanese language with English subtitles.

Banned in Francisco Franco’s Spain and denounced by the Vatican upon its premiere, Luis Buñuel’s irreverent Virdiana is coming to The Frida Cinema in a brand new 4K restoration!

Viridiana is preparing to start her life as a nun when she is sent, somewhat unwillingly, to visit her aging uncle, Don Jaime. He supports her; but the two have met only once. Jaime thinks Viridiana resembles his dead wife. Viridiana has secretly despised this man all her life and finds her worst fears proven when Jaime grows determined to seduce his pure niece. Viridiana becomes undone as her uncle upends the plans she had made to join the convent.

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, Viridiana is as audacious today as ever.

The extraordinary, internationally embraced Yi Yi, directed by the late Taiwanese master Edward Yang, is celebrating its 25th anniversary at The Frida with a brand new 4K restoration via our friends at Janus Films!

The story follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a funeral. Whether chronicling middle-age father NJ’s tentative flirtations with an old flame or precocious young son Yang-Yang’s attempts at capturing reality with his beloved camera, the filmmaker deftly imbues every gorgeous frame with a compassionate clarity.

Warm, sprawling, and dazzling, this intimate epic is one of the undisputed masterworks of the new century.

Our second Volunteer Of Month comes courtesy of our pal Tyler, who has chosen The Coen Brothers’ bittersweet valentine to the folk scene before it broke big: Inside Llewyn Davis.

Oscar Isaac delivers a revelatory performance as Llewyn Davis, a brilliant but self-sabotaging musician orbiting the edges of success in a world of smoke-filled cafés and battered guitar cases. A portrait of artistic struggle without the mythmaking, it would be underselling the movie to tell you the plot instead of just selling the miserable vibe, which only The Brothers Coen could pull off. 

The T Bone Burnett–curated soundtrack, a masterpiece in its own right, is worth the price of admission alone.