Twelve minutes into Lift, an Irish-Catholic lady makes a startling confession in the elevator of Denning Point tower block. 'You asked me what was on my mind. Then I thought, nobody had asked me that before,' she says, an epiphany unfolding in the confines of a metallic booth, ascending towards the heavens.

It’s one of many sublime moments in the film, directed by Marc Isaacs and premiered in August 2001. Every day for two months, Isaacs squatted in the building’s lift with a handheld camera, inviting residents to share their innermost thoughts. The resulting vignettes were bolted together across 25 otherworldly minutes, revealing the heterogeneity of London’s high-rises. It was nominated for a BAFTA in 2001, screened across the world and became a cult classic on YouTube.

Now, 25 years on, drawing on recent Instagram interest, Isaacs has compiled 82 stills from the project for a limited run of 100 hand-numbered, signed books. The photographs are introduced with a three-column poem, written by Isaacs, that traverses three time periods: a contemporary part, which sees him observing Albanian-heritage immigrants from his local cafe; a middle part reimagining a dialogue from Lift; and a past part, comprising memories of Isaacs as an eleven-year-old working on a market stall outside the tower block, selling tea towels at four for a pound.

Isaacs, speaking over Zoom from his London studio, remembers Lift’s origin story. Back in February 2001, he had been all set to propose a film for Alt TV, a new experimental strand from Channel 4, about a mysterious fight club for London’s city boys. But the channel’s commissioners, at a meeting, revealed they were already working on the exact same idea.

Thinking on his feet, Isaacs remembered taking a tower block lift up and down every day while working as an assistant on Paweł Pawlikowski’s gritty drama Last Resort (2000). So came his literal elevator pitch: 'I said, I haven't really thought about it at all, but I'm quite interested in making a film in an elevator.' Later that night, at an awards party, he bumped into the commissioning editor in the toilets, who said it had got the green light (budgets were more forgiving, back then).

After enlisting researcher Andrew Hinton to knock on every flat and get a quick bio, Isaacs began to realise that the perfect 'microcosm of London' was hidden away in this Tower Hamlets high-rise. Spontaneity, at first, was key. 'The first two weeks were really exciting. It was really novel. The doors would open, somebody would get in, something would happen.' But Isaacs understood he would have to ask questions to get the main characters talking. It leads to enlightening, miniature conversations. When one gruff man, Peter, is asked what the best thing about his childhood was, his eyes twinkle up and he slurs: 'I’ve seen a golden eagle. It was a big, beautiful thing.' Another man reveals that he was sectioned for schizophrenia after his parents died in the space of a year, the highlight of his life winning a recorder competition in school.

Every night, Isaacs would transfer everything to VHS and watch back what he had been shooting. After a while, several key characters emerged, whom he would sometimes invite back into the lift to build a concrete narrative. If Lift has a protagonist, it’s Lily, an elderly Jewish lady who has lived in the block for 26 years. Positioned as the matriarch of the building, she shoos away tenants at will and leads a rising othering of new tenants. 'It was paradise. Now I've got “troubles” upstairs drilling and banging. Bad health to ‘em all,' she says. At one point, another woman shockingly quips: 'I don’t think we’ve got 20 Jewish people anymore. I was counting the white people when I couldn't sleep last night.'

For Isaacs, who is of Jewish heritage, filming Lift revealed a nuanced form of xenophobia. 'The old Jews would have felt like their world is changing because of the Bangladeshis. Then subsequently, the Bangladeshis would reach to migrant workers from Ireland or Eastern Europeans [...] there were layers to people’s prejudices.' On one occasion, Isaacs himself is even seen as an impostor, perversely framed as a voyeuristic claustrophile. 'What motivates you to want to stand in lifts for 10 hours a day. Is it the confined space you like?'

These stark, often self-sabotaging comments reframe the lift as a confessional space. Lifts are everyday contraptions that get you G to 1 and beyond, but they are also a portal to another world, with a strange limbo between. 'You’re in a completely nowhere space. You’re not in the flat or on the street. You’re suspended in time for 20 seconds. It gave the film a rhythm.' At times, the lift’s mechanical entrails are revealed, breaking this effect like an illusionist exposing their magic boxes.

But it’s the people, rather than the space, that make Lift so special. There’s a surreal romance; one South Asian heritage man, speaking in broken English, continually offers Isaacs food, ending with him teaching Isaacs how to chew betel. There’s optimism; one archetypal New Labour bachelor, who has a sauna and jacuzzi in his flat, shares a carefree attitude. 'I quit my job yesterday,' he says, grinning, returning to talk about Brick Lane curries, his aftershave and going on the pull. But there’s also despair; one man, swaying with a can of super strength lager, can’t bear to show his face to the camera.

At one point, a fly is seen creeping across the wall of the lift. One critic thought it was an ingenious piece of commentary on this point-and-shoot, 'fly-on-the-wall' filmmaking. In reality, they were enlisted as B-roll fodder. 'I wasn't even thinking about that [metaphor]. I bought them in a pet shop in Leytonstone for like 50p for two,' he says, laughing.

Ultimately, like the lift as an object, the film captures a fleeting moment in time, caught between two milleniums. It’s epitomised by one interaction between a man, who owns a local independent coffee shop opposite Starbucks, and a female resident, speaking about the new American franchise’s plans to open 200 more branches in the UK. 'Hopefully they're going to close very soon,' he says, satisfied by the £39 net profit he’s made today. 'Starbucks won't be able to manage against Mr. Coffee,' she says, entirely sincerely. The dramatic irony is piercing.

But Lift’s spirit persists via the medium of YouTube. One woman recently wrote to Isaacs after seeing Lift on the video sharing platform; she had remembered him filming her when she was a little girl. Another has kept in contact with Isaacs and ended up playing a bailiff character in one of his later movies. Isaacs’ latest film, Synthetic Sincerity, set to be premiered at Sheffield Doc Fest in June, imagines him making a deal with an AI research project to use his film’s characters as training data: several Lift characters feature.

Most strikingly, Lift feels strangely zeitgeisty due to its off-the-cuff interviews: it predates and, perhaps, predicts the onslaught of lukewarm TikTok takes, violent vox-pops and Ray-Ban Meta secret filming. Lift now would, perhaps, be called Elevator Takes (there is, consequently, a social media DJ series called Elevator Music.) But Isaacs feels it would be impossible to make a 2026 take on Lift that he would be happy with.

The candour that once met the camera has been replaced by a shared manufactured persona, spoken into a tiny mic. 'They all say the same thing. I need to have healthy eating habits or use the right kind of moisturizer or I learnt to be myself. They talk this Instagram language.' In this sense, the realness that grounds the entire premise of Lift has been lost. 'People were much less bothered about what they were doing. Now, everyone is mediating themselves,' Isaacs says. 'And, with what's happened to the image, you don't even need a camera anymore.'

Pre-orders for 'Lift' are open now

Today marks the release of Backrooms – a film that has generated considerable buzz for – just maybe – redefining the horror genre. This is a new kind of Hollywood movie, born entirely online and made by a 20-year-old.

The film originated from a ‘creepypasta’ – the internet term for an online urban legend. In 2019, someone posted a photograph on platform 4Chan, of an empty room with yellow wallpaper. From this single image, an elaborate mythology took shape across Reddit, YouTube and TikTok: the idea that you could slip through a crack in reality and find yourself in an infinite maze of identical corridors – ‘Backrooms’ from which there was no escape. A sprawling, participatory horror universe was built entirely by strangers online – a ghost story authored by thousands.

Director Kane Parsons was 16 years old when he encountered the image. Armed with the open-source 3D software Blender, he made a nine-minute short based on the Backrooms lore that he uploaded to YouTube in 2022. Dubbed ‘the scariest video on the internet’, it amassed 20 million views in its first two weeks. He kept going, producing 22 more episodes that sent viewers deeper into the Backrooms – each new level more reality-defying than the last. Now, production and distribution company A24 has adapted the series into a feature, with Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) leading the cast and horror world-builder James Wan (Saw, The Conjuring, Insidious) producing.

The leap from fan-driven IP to Hollywood feature could herald a genuinely new model. The talent is self-generative, the audience pre-existing, and studios are taking notice. But beyond the business logic, there is something fresher at work: in a flailing film industry, a channel for genuinely niche, genre-defying creativity to reach a mainstream audience.

The architecture of fear

Backrooms follows Clark (Ejiofor), a furniture salesman who discovers a portal in his showroom basement – a fluorescent-lit threshold opening onto an eerie, labyrinthine office space that appears to go on forever. He enlists his employee Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett) to help chart its impossible geometry, where strange sounds suggest they are not alone.

The horror here is not a monster or a ghost, but the Backrooms themselves. Spaces like these – abandoned offices, shopping centres, hotels, schools, car parks – are known as liminal spaces: ‘threshold’ environments caught between states of use and disuse, presence and absence. They are not inherently supernatural, yet they feel unsettling because they are stripped of their expected function. Research in the Journal of Environmental Psychology has proposed that liminal spaces occupy an uncanny valley not of faces, but of architecture: familiar, but somehow off. ‘The Backrooms feel ordinary,’ Ejiofor has said, ‘but by the very nature of their extreme ordinariness, it becomes quite disturbing. You feel like you should be reasonably safe because you're in an empty office space – but because something isn't quite right within its confines, you feel even more vulnerable.’

The aesthetic is not new. It can be felt in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, David Lynch's Twin Peaks, the 2013 video game The Stanley Parable, the 2022 horror film Skinamarink, and Apple TV+'s Severance (whose creator specifically cited the Backrooms web series as a visual influence). Yet Backrooms marks the first instance of liminal spaces – and specifically their cult online presence, with countless pages, communities and pieces of content dedicated to them (the 'r/LiminalSpace' subreddit draws 232,000 weekly visitors) – being the central inspiration for a major film.

Building the maze

Creating this strange dimension was, understandably, quite a feat – particularly as it was filmed predominantly on real sets. ‘[Kane and I] figured the best way to approach [the build] was to mock everything up in Blender. When he sent over the original Backrooms layout file, it crashed my computer,’ recalls the film’s production designer, Danny Vermette. ‘Operating at the scale that we chose, we had to be particular with what we decided to build practically and what would be VFX.

‘We worked on adding verticality to the 30,000 sq ft practical sets, rather than just a plane of flat endless rooms,’ he continues. ‘We wanted to create something that our talent would be able to interact with in ambitious ways. Climb, crawl, squeeze – ensuring their level of discomfort.’

Vermette, working with art director Alan Derksen and set decorator Trevor Johnston, spent three months constructing those 30,000 sq ft across four soundstages. A total of 32,000 sq ft of wallpaper was printed and 27,000 sq ft of carpet laid. The scale was such that production coordinators had to issue maps to stop cast and crew from getting lost. ‘The layout of the sets kept us on edge during filming,’ says the production designer. ‘There was some comfort to the space because it was recognisable – but it becomes more and more overwhelming as the maze unfurls.’

The wallpaper – and that defining sickly yellow – required a month of development and 50 separate camera tests to perfect. ‘We had to do so many variations because it looks so different on a computer screen versus on a film set under our lighting scheme,’ he explains. Different floral and chevron patterns shift subtly throughout the film, hinting at a space that is not merely abandoned, but actively mutating.

‘I think we're so used to spaces being constructed for our comfort: our homes, our workplaces, the grocery store,’ Vermette adds. ‘Enter a world where the usual rules don't apply, where people and comfort don't exist, and you are greeted with something immediately bizarre and unsettling.’

Sound also played a crucial role. Working with composer Edo Van Breemen, Parsons developed a sonic environment built around low-frequency hums, fluorescent buzzes and distorted ambient textures. The film also incorporates a fan-favourite track, 'Six Forty Seven' by Instupendo, which has become synonymous with liminal imagery on internet platforms – another thread connecting the film back to its online origins.

The modern spectre

Anthropologically, the concept of liminality originated from Arnold van Gennep, who described transitional phases where identity is temporarily undefined – the period between adolescence and adulthood, for example. That underpinning may explain why liminal spaces so resonate with younger generations navigating an increasingly disorientating world.

For Parsons, the Backrooms are a symbol with a sharp contemporary edge: ‘They are the cumulative result of a societal exhaustion with the industrialised monoculture we're slipping into,’ he has said. ‘When people are isolated from society, they become disconnected. How terrifying would it be if that was your existence forever, and all you could do is experience it over and over again?’ There is, he suggests, no more fitting emblem of that monoculture than a drop ceiling.

Backrooms, therefore, defies the jump-scare-driven tropes of its genre. Instead, it is a reflection of of existential dread – the horror of a life defined by repetition, emptiness and psychological disorientation. ‘We are in the midst of an era of profound loneliness, where our lives are increasingly lived online. There is a distinct sense of repetition,’ says Vermette. ‘I think people are resonating with the aesthetic and tone of Backrooms because it captures that feeling. And all of us, in our own way, are looking for the way out.’

'Backrooms' is in cinemas from today.

A deep bond becomes otherworldly in the new A24 film Mother Mary. The psychodrama, directed by David Lowery, follows global pop icon Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) who reunites with her estranged best friend and former costume designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel). When Mother Mary asks Sam to make her a dress for an unforgettable performance, the pair embark on an intense evening of confrontation and reinvention in Sam’s somber workspace, set in a dark barn on an estate somewhere in the English countryside.

In real life, the barn is located not in the UK, but in Germany at a moated castle called Burg Adendorf. The structure became not only a leading character in the film but also a critical cinematic device for UK-based production designer Francesca Di Mottola. ‘The stable is a container where the story unfolds and where the emotions are held,’ says Di Mottola, whose credits include films like the Charli xcx satire The Moment and Luca Guadagnino’s I am Love.

With a soaring 14m-tall ceiling and ample open space, the barn performs like a stage for a revealing dance and séance scenes in the film. To make the centuries-old structure feel more claustrophobic and moody, the design team covered some lighter-toned walls in canvas, divided the room into zones and added an upper-level loft. Drained of colour, the barn offers a neutral atmosphere for vivid fabrics to pop as Sam crafts a garment for Mother Mary. Mannequins wear garments in subdued hues to underscore the effect. ‘They move during the scenes and close in on them,’ says Di Mottola of the mannequins, which represent the haunting recollections Sam holds in her work. ‘It's meant to be imperceptible.’

The barn is just one setting in Mother Mary but its elements act as ‘connecting tissue’ uniting past and present throughout the plot. In Mother Mary’s concert scenes, which were filmed at an arena and on a soundstage, the barn’s rustic wood beams are echoed through lighting design onstage and in a 360-degree mirrored dressing room. For a backstage scene, Di Mottola recreated the wood beams as the backdrop for Mother Mary’s journey to her first séance (led by singer FKA Twigs) in a hotel room. The design team laid the same wood plank flooring they put over the barn’s dirt ground in front of the hotel room set to connect the two thematically.

The barn served practical purposes for the design team, too; Some sets were built inside of it, including Sam’s bedroom where she first encounters the supernatural (the exteriors of the home were filmed at a different German castle called Burg Müddersheim).

To get the details just right, Di Mottola's team intensely studied Sam and Mother Mary's notable real-life counterparts. In fashion, that meant examining the workspaces of Valentino Garavani, John Galliano, and Daniel Roseberry of Schiaparelli through documentaries and short films. In music, that meant analysing stadium-tour footage of Taylor Swift, Madonna, Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga and more. The stage design also needed to complement original songs written by Charli xcx, Jack Antonoff and FKA Twigs. But, after so much research, says Di Mottola, 'we did our own thing.’

Casting away these influences resulted in an atelier that felt real but true to Sam, and simple stage designs that let Mother Mary shine. ‘Despite us being very inspired by huge artists, we then needed to find our artists,’ says Di Mottola. And so they did.

Mother Mary is on limited release in the US from 17 April 2026. It’s nationwide and in UK cinemas from 24 April 2026.

‘I have seen the filming process described as ‘catching a butterfly’,’ says director of the National Film & Television School (NFTS), Jon Wardle. ‘You want to catch it, but without destroying it. It’s delicate. That’s directing, to a certain point, and it is a good analogy for what you have to do.’

I am visiting the NFTS in Beaconsfield, a sprawling complex of theatres, film studios, sets and cinemas located just outside London. Previously a working film studio, students have access to world-class production facilities, including a 7000-square foot main stage built in 1921 as part of the original Beaconsfield Studios, as well as cutting-edge computer labs, cameras and editing studios.

Numbers for students are kept purposefully low, and competition is fierce. While there are around 800 current students, class sizes are capped at ten, with ten students for each discipline, including directing, cinematography, editing and composing. ‘You are then building these collaborative teams,’ Wardle adds. ‘It is central to our model – it is the strength and weakness actually, because the strength is in forming these cohesive teams, and if you don't get on with each other, there's nowhere to go. But the industry requires you to still be able to deliver in those circumstances. Here we say, this is your group. Make something great.’ Typically, there are 500 applications for the ten places on the directing course.

A highlight for students is the school’s Masterclass programme, a popular initiative supported by Rolex. Purely for the students’ benefit only – external filming is banned, to foster an honest and productive atmosphere – it creates an intimate environment with respected names. Past Masterclass guests have included Francis Ford Coppola, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Park Chan-wook. ‘Since Christmas alone, we've had Alex Garland, Asif Kapadia, Tricia Tuttle, Molly Manning Walker, Riz Ahmed and Thelma Schoonmaker,’ says Wardle.

It is a natural alliance for Rolex, who has supported cinema through its Testimonees programme (where connections are created with both established and emerging talent such as Zendaya, Jia Zhang-Ke, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron and Leonardo DiCaprio) as well as by partnering with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation.

‘The relationship we have with Rolex is that they came to us and said, ‘How can we help you?’’ Wardle says. ‘We put a lot of resources into our Masterclass programme, and they have really got on board. They're all about excellence - a really good partner for us. It's nice to see this spotlight on the cultural industries as a whole. They also enable us to provide ten scholarships a year to students.’

‘NFTS gave me the opportunity to combine every single art form,’ says Marcus Anthony, a fiction filmmaker and NFTS alumni who graduated in 2021. ‘I always had a natural desire to tell stories, and I enjoyed doing it through the medium of film. Once I started, it felt like a light bulb went off.’

The experience was an immersive one, he adds. ‘When I got to the NFTS, I had a mixture of creativity that I'd built from being hands-on and doing it, but I also then had the other side of being pragmatic and trying to understand the resources of how we're making the most of it. So when I got here, I suddenly had so many specialist people working with me to deliver on what I wanted, and I could really dig into what I had to do, which was primarily telling the story.’

After our conversation, Anthony is filming tonight’s Masterclass for students, this time with CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada, Cameron Bailey. Film festivals offer a crucial opportunity to set the cultural agenda – for budding filmmakers, they are key.

‘Having Cameron here is really exciting, because the school is a confluence of making and wanting films or TV to connect with audiences,’ says Wardle. ‘And who better to talk about that? Cameron is brilliantly positioned to understand which audience is wanting their taste, and what makes work distinctive and unique.’

In his talk, Bailey discusses the cultural importance of festivals with the students, as well as juggling the needs of industry and audience and the practicalities of curating. ‘There was a 10-year period at the Toronto International Film Festival, where if you won an Audience Award - meaning Cameron had given you your platform at the festival before the film’s release - the film, in nearly every case, went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars. So winning the Audience Award at Toronto was a pretty good indicator that you were going to be in the Oscar mix. His taste, and what he is telling audiences is important, is part of determining the landscape.’

nfts.co.uk

‘I counted all the stripes on the dress,’ shares Pascaline Chavanne. ‘It was scientific, like a historian would do.’ The costume designer is recalling over Zoom the archaeological manner with which she approached Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater’s new film about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s iconic New Wave picture, Breathless (or in French, À bout de souffle).

The frock in question – a typical 1950s style featuring a wide skirt, Peter Pan collar and matching belt – is worn by Jean Seberg’s Patricia throughout the final act of Godard’s film. An anomaly of the production, for which Seberg largely shaped the character’s wardrobe with pieces of her own, the dress was purchased by Godard from Prisunic, a since-shuttered retail store on the Champs-Élysée (we know this because Chavanne found the original invoice in her research for the Linklater project). As the last clothing article on screen in the 1960 film, the dress is not insignificant; its prim collar breaks into the frame of a close-up on Patricia’s face. Her lover, in his own striped shirt, has just been killed, and she stands slowly rubbing her lips with her thumb, a recurring gesture of the dead man, borrowed from Humphrey Bogart.

Originally inspired by a news story with a subsequent treatment written by François Truffaut, whose own directional debut, The 400 Blows, had premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959, Breathless was to be Godard’s breakout from Cahiers du Cinéma, the cult film magazine where many French auteurs were then employed as critics. This is where we meet the would-be director, played by newcomer Guillaume Marbeck, in Nouvelle Vague – galvanised by Truffaut’s success and winding up producer Georges de Beauregard to let him make a film of his own.

‘For French people, the New Wave is an obligatory passage,’ continues Chavanne, who was recently nominated for a César for her work on the Linklater film. Indeed, Breathless would remould cinema and launch Godard as a trailblazing filmmaker. Famously a story about girl and a gun – the key elements for any picture, as per Godard’s interpretation of DW Griffith’s concept – Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) was cast as Michel, a car thief on the run after shooting a police officer, while American Seberg (Zoey Deutch) is a young journalist and the object of his affection. Introduced to the film in her teens, Chavanne remembers it as a revelation, and was initially overwhelmed, on hearing about Linklater’s idea, by its legacy. ‘To work on this kind of movie, in France, first you think it's impossible,’ she notes. ‘With an American director, it seemed more possible.’

Immortalised by on-set photographer Raymond Cauchetier, the film’s sartorial components are similarly influential and continue to be referenced across style and culture today. ‘It seems not so much work – there aren't many costumes in the movie – but to find a good one was very difficult,’ says Chavanne, highlighting the challenges of dressing well known characters. Indeed, Patricia only wears several looks throughout, while Michel’s suit is his uniform. ‘We made the shirt, the tie, we transformed the jacket. We worked on each piece with precision – sometimes it was a question of a millimetre,’ remarks the costume designer. ‘Of course it’s not a real copy, because the actors’ bodies aren't the same. For example, the hat Belmondo wears had specific measurements of the ball and the top of the head, so it was a question about proportion.’

As well making many of the pieces and commissioning others out to artisans in Paris (like the sunglasses Marbeck’s Godard wears near-religiously), Chavanne’s research took her to flea markets, rental houses, and the Chanel archive (in the new film, Seberg wears a second striped dress, for an event, modelled directly after a Chanel piece from the 1950s). For the mood employed on set, meanwhile, the director was keen to mirror the energy of 1959. ‘Richard wanted to keep the légèreté [lightness] and also that naivete, because they’re all new actors,’ shares Chavanne. ‘For me, I gave some outils [tools] to the actors, to work and find their character. It was very important that each sincerely liked their costume, and a lot asked to keep it after.’

With Deutch’s Seberg, a crucial piece was the top with the Herald Tribune logo that Patricia wears when she meets up with Michel for the first time; paired with simple black trousers, flat pumps and a drawstring bag, it’s one of the picture’s most defining looks. ‘We found the T-shirt on the internet, because the Herald Tribune made it again, a long time ago, but when we received it, we saw that it was absolutely not the same,’ says Chavanne. ‘So we made it ourselves, doing a lot of tests with the different lettering, for example.’

Despite this kind of care and attention to detail – counting stripes and becoming a specialist of New Wave for the months leading up to the film (‘you have to enter completely inside’) – the costume designer stresses that the work is ultimately well done when no one notices. ‘I hate when somebody says to me, “Wow, the costume was great”; it's like I missed something or made a mistake,’ she clarifies. ‘We need to believe first in this story, so this is the challenge, to find a good equilibrium and to not disturb the story.’

Nouvelle Vague is in UK cinemas from 30 January 2026

A week of watches

Bill Prince, editor-in-chief

The beginning of the week was spent in Milan at the sixth annual gathering known as LVMH Watch Week. This start-of-year event for the group’s nine watch-producing brands acts as both a showcase and a tip sheet for the year ahead, with brands including TAG Heuer, Hublot, Zenith, Tiffany & Co. and, of course, Louis Vuitton itself unveiling new line-ups of timepieces that – in some cases – pointed to firm trends across the industry: smaller case sizes, wider use of precious metals (Tiffany & Co. revealed a stunning platinum-cased chronograph, the Timer, complete with a 'Tiffany Blue' lacquer dial) and, more generally, a greater emphasis on design. This was evident in a refreshed series of Escale models at Louis Vuitton, an extension of the Defy line at Zenith, and the brace of dial names now housed within LV’s watchmaking centre in Geneva, La Fabrique du Temps.

Here, the celebrated duo of Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini are overseeing the development of Gerald Genta and Daniel Roth – the former now represented by the cushion-shaped Geneva Time Only, the latter demonstrating its mastery of shape with the (literally) dazzling Extra Plat Rose Gold Skeleton. Further props went to TAG Heuer for producing its first split-seconds chronograph in a wristwatch, and to Hublot CEO Julien Tornare for creatively corralling last year’s Novak Djokovic Goat Edition Big Bang Unico into a colour-coordinated continuation model designed to keep pace with the world number four’s tournament wins across all three surfaces.

A sonic homecoming

Gabriel Annouka, senior designer

At Café Oto last week, Majazz Project’s Palestinian Sound Archive spun field recordings, Bedouin yarghoul melodies, radio fragments and carefully restored records from Palestine. It was a joyful listening night celebrating sonic heritage through rare, beautifully designed cassette releases (pure nostalgia), rounded off with a playful DJ set by Daniele Mizar.

A playful pilgrimage

Ailis Bickford, project manager

This week, I braved the rain and ventured to West London for Priest’s exhibition, Paper Cut, at the Saatchi Gallery in Sloane Square. The installation playfully unpacks childhood through a series of life-size renderings of key objects that shape art and creativity in one’s formative years. Priest dissects childhood play by magnifying recognisable objects; as you move through the space, it invites you to evaluate prevalent issues in London, from the housing and education crisis to youth violence. Priest: Paper Cut is a free exhibition, open until January 25.

A lunch that lingered

Ellie Stathaki, architecture & environment director

My photos are never as good as the professional ones, but looking back at my visit to Mezzogiorno a week ago makes me want to go again. The new restaurant has just opened on the ground floor of London’s Corinthia Hotel, designed by Afroditi Krassa to provide expertly balanced, welcoming comfort – and that’s before even trying the food. Seen here: the red shrimp starter, a personal favourite; parmigiana di melanzane; and a generous dollop of tiramisu. For the full review, read here.

A literary looking-ahead

Hannah Silver, art, culture, watches & jewellery editor

For a culture editor, January offers an exciting chance to preview key launches for the year ahead. This month, I have particularly enjoyed reading Granta’s upcoming April release, The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek. Tracing their creative, tumultuous partnership, it offers a rare peek into the lives of two criminally overlooked artists.

An Electric night

Charlotte Gunn, director of digital content

I finally caught Marty Supreme at my favourite London cinema, the Electric on Portobello Road, and it was a riot. Chaotic, original and not really about ping pong at all, the film shares the same farcical, kinetic energy as one of the best flms of last year, One Battle After Another. Ahead of the screening, I stopped by Jackson Boxer’s Dove and found it far more compelling than its predecessor, Orosay. The tuna ragù, in particular, was a standout.

A snowy sojourn

Anna Fixsen, US editor

An assignment for Wallpaper* (no spoilers here!) took me to rural Sullivan County, New York, over the weekend. Unlike other Upstate enclaves, this particular region felt delightfully wild, thanks to its rural setting in a crook of the Delaware River and a refreshing lack of trendy shops and boutique hotels. I took advantage of the slower pace by playing cards with my husband, listening to an audiobook (Belle Burden’s engrossing memoir is a must!) and keeping an eye out for wild critters with my binoculars. It snowed six inches, blanketing the landscape in a fluffy white duvet – perfect when you’re snug-as-a-bug indoors, challenging when you find out your sporty rental car does not, in fact, have all-wheel drive. Fortunately, this hearty Minnesotan knows her way around a snowbank.

The first festival since its founder, Hollywood legend Robert Redford, died in September 2025, this year’s Sundance means goodbye in more ways than one.

Bringing the best and boldest independent filmmaking to audiences, the beloved indie fest will bid farewell to Park City, its home since 1981 (together with an off-and-on location, Salt Lake City). From 2027, moviegoers and critics will flock to another snowy setting as Sundance relocates to Boulder, Colorado.

Until then, Park City is going out with a massive celebration of moviemaking. Running between 22 January and 1 February, this year’s end-of-an-era festival looks back on the event’s rich, rebellious history with screenings of Sundance classics across different genres – from crowdpleaser Little Miss Sunshine to spine-chiller Saw – and an electric line-up of new films.

We’ve rounded up ten of the freshest titles you’ll need to look out for, including a soundscape horror, an erotic thriller and a star-studded grotesque gallery comedy.

The Gallerist

Eight years after her directorial debut, Dead Pigs, writer-director Cathy Yan is back in Park City with a caustic satire of the art world.

Her first film since 2020’s delightfully defiant Birds of Prey, The Gallerist stars Natalie Portman as Polina Polinski, a gallerist who’s readying for her Art Basel premiere. Polina wishes for art influencer Dalton Hardberry (Zach Galifianakis) to review her client, emerging artist Stella Burgess (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), but he gravitates towards another piece.

Investigating the lengths that art can go to in order to shock and sell, Yan’s film sees a corpse becoming the hottest, if dead-cold, artwork on sale.

The cast is rounded out by Jenna Ortega, Charli XCX and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

The Moment

One of three Charli XCX-starring films premiering at Sundance 2026, mockumentary The Moment chronicles the brat star’s meteoric rise as she prepares for her arena tour.

Charli taps into Millennial Cringe to portray an 'exaggeratedly manic' version of herself, as the official synopsis puts it. Swept up into a dazzling, destructive circus, she’s joined by Alexander Skarsgård as her manager, Kylie Jenner as her bestie, and Hailey Gates as the only sane presence for miles.

The feature debut of prolific music video director Aidan Zamiri, The Moment dials to 11 the filmmaker’s blend of nostalgia and tongue-in-cheek, previously seen in Charli’s 'it girl' manifesto video for ‘360’.

The Moment is released in US cinemas on 30 January. In the UK, the film arrives on 20 February.

Wicker

Olivia Colman’s feisty fisherwoman challenges medieval marital conventions in flippant fairytale Wicker, an adaptation of The Wicker Husband by Ursula Wills-Jones.

Married filmmaking duo Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer co-write and direct this spirited take on the canonic happily ever after, as the protagonist asks a basketmaker to weave her a husband.

Enter Alexander Skarsgård’s wicker man. Despite conjuring eerie memories of folk horror, he’s a composed, devoted partner to Colman’s character. If the original short story is anything to go by, the real threat comes from the villagers, jealous of the fisherwoman crafting her own romantic destiny – quite literally.

zi

Kogonada’s Sundance comeback is an experimental drama playing with our sense of time and memory as it delves into the relationships of three ‘romantic misfits’.

Portrayed by the filmmaker’s frequent collaborators Michelle Mao, Jin Ha and Haley Lu Richardson, the trio is at the centre of a recursive love dynamic across the streets of Hong Kong.

Not much is known about the plot at this stage, but the intriguing premise hints at a young woman seeing glimpses of her future self and meeting a stranger who may alter the course of her life.

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

Oscar-winning documentary Navalny’s director Daniel Roher teams up with Charlie Tyrell (behind Oscar-shortlisted short, My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes) to dig deeper into one of the most polarising topics in our current cultural landscape.

Father-to-be Roher interrogates himself and a host of experts about the ways AI will shape our future and that of generations to come.

A thought-provoking film aiming to expand on the ‘good-bad’ dichotomy simplifying the AI debate, The AI Doc explores the possibilities and risks connected to a tool that’s entering our day-to-day.

undertone

Competing in the Midnight category this year is Ian Tuason’s horror undertone, loosely inspired by the filmmaker’s own experience as a caregiver.

No stranger to fear on screen after garnering big viewership numbers with his live-action virtual reality horror shorts, the writer-director makes his feature debut with a one-character scary show.

Snapped up by A24 after its Fantasia International Film Festival premiere, undertone follows Evy Babic (Nina Kiri), the skeptical co-host of a paranormal podcast and primary caregiver to her dying mother.

Relying on an unsettling soundscape, the film records Evy’s descent into paranoia when a series of disturbing audio files is sent her way.

undertone is released in US cinemas on 13 March. A UK release date is TBC.

Saccharine

Another Midnight contender, Natalie Erika James’ third feature promises to be a stomach-churning fare.

Following her acclaimed debut Relic and the uneven Rosemary’s Baby prequel, Apartment 7A, James continues tackling the horrors of womanhood through the story of Hana (Midori Francis), a body-dysmorphic medical student.

Determined to attain her weight goal, she partakes in a weight loss craze involving the consumption of human ashes, unleashing some malevolent spirits.

It’s a delicate, ever-relevant subject James is magnifying through the lens of body horror, spinning the Buddhist myth of the hungry ghost as a poignant, horrifying metaphor.

I Want Your Sex

On his 11th Sundance premiere, New Queer Cinema’s Gregg Araki presents I Want Your Sex, a freeing, frank study of the state of sex, on and offscreen.

Cooper Hoffman stars as fresh-faced Elliot, a young man who can’t believe his luck when renowned provocative artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde) chooses him to become her sexual muse.

Set in LA, the film revolves around a sadomasochistic happening held at a sex-positive art gallery, with Elliot being pushed to the edge as the game turns deadly.

A thrilling, playful, erotic affair in pure Araki style, the film also stars Chase Sui Wonders, Mason Gooding, Daveed Diggs and this Sundance’s wild card, Charli XCX.

Frank & Louis

Petra Biondina Volpe makes her English-language debut with an intimate prison drama based on real events.

Kingsley Ben-Adir stars as Frank, a man serving a life sentence. After taking a job caring for fellow prisoners diagnosed with dementia, he’s assigned to Louis (Rob Morgan), a once-feared inmate who’s turned paranoid and frail.

What started as a shortcut to parole for Frank becomes an unlikely friendship that prompts him to face his own regrets.

More than ten years in the making, Frank & Louis, which Volpe co-wrote with Esther Bernstorff, celebrates the power of connection and caretaking as a pathway for rehabilitation. The film is inspired by the Gold Coats programme, based at the California Men’s Colony State Prison in San Luis Obispo.

Antiheroine

One of the buzziest titles in this Sundance’s remarkable documentary slate, Courtney Love’s Antiheroine sets the record straight on over three decades of public scrutiny for the pop and rock icon.

As Love is about to release new music for the first time since Hole’s fourth and final album, 2010’s Nobody’s Daughter, the doc follows her relocation to London in 2019 and her sobriety.

Directed by Edward Lovelace and James Hall, the film hands the microphone back to the singer as she discusses the high-octane romance with Kurt Cobain, her multi-hyphenate career and a newly gained self-awareness in her signature husky, unapologetic voice.

Bonus – Five more films to have on your radar: lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer's documentary Barbara Forever, starry comedy Chasing Summer, coming-of-age Extra Geography, childhood trauma study Josephine, and queer horror Leviticus.

Sundance Film Festival 2026 runs between 22 January and 1 February in Park City and Salt Lake City. Full programme at festival.sundance.org

Ira Sachs’ latest feature makes its artifice clear from the start. A clapperboard shuts as Ben Whishaw steps into the persona of Peter Hujar, the queer, black-and-white photographer who frequented, and captured, an exuberant 1970s New York cultural set. Peter Hujar’s Day – adapted from author Linda Rosenkrantz’s book of the same name – reenacts verbatim a conversation from morning to sunset between the two friends, at once a precious window into their world and a self-aware spinning of fiction.

Besides the transcript, the resources Sachs and Whishaw had to draw on to summon Hujar were scant, with only a single interview with David Wojnarowicz (then his friend and mentee) to listen to. ‘I think that was probably a good thing,’ reflects the Passages director, when we meet in The Londoner Hotel. He took some liberties with biographical details; ‘the good idea of having a Scotch in the middle of the afternoon’ despite Hujar not drinking, for example. What the duo could glean about his life suffused the atmosphere onset, including, says Whishaw, ‘a kind of spaciousness, a sort of time, actually, in the way [Hujar and Wojnarowicz] talked.’

Though he only published one book during his lifetime and all but vanished from the cultural consciousness after his death in 1984, Hujar’s work has been enjoying a resurgence of popularity thanks to recent major retrospectives in London and Venice. The film, in which Hujar name-drops Susan Sontag, Allen Ginsberg, Fran Lebowitz but also dozens of forgotten creatives, raises the question of ‘when someone appears, why does everyone else disappear?’, says Sachs. Hujar helped to document a transient artistic scene, but that doesn’t alter the fact that it was fading.

‘I didn't know him, and I don't feel like I know him any better now,’ insists Sachs. ‘I know parts of him, but I don't feel close to him in any way – and so maybe I still want to. I drive by his apartment almost every other day, driving my kids to school, I see the windows that he lived in, and that's a very nice, funny, weird connection.’

Alex Ashe’s sunlight-permeated cinematography brings another artistic dimension to the film, though Sachs and Ashe were ‘consciously not looking at [Hujar’s] work’ for inspiration, but directors like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jean-Luc Godard and Chantal Ackerman ‘who create their own forms of portraiture’. It was important to Sachs that Whishaw and Rebecca Hall, who plays Rosenkrantz (and is also a painter), were primarily interested in leading creative lives, so they would commit to the filmmaking ‘process’ over the product with ‘complete abandon’.

If there’s a theme running through Hujar’s day, it’s self-doubt. ‘We don't often see that in artists, except in very melodramatic ways,’ says Sachs. ‘He is continually coming back to the question of whether or not on that day he made a good photograph.’ Whishaw adds that, though essential, insecurity is ‘torture’, precipitating a ‘change of perspective’: ‘You have to have this kind of questioning, reflection and striving to reach something that feels unrealisable.’

The film has a note of nostalgia for Hujar’s heyday, pre-global art market. ‘I had a sense that the parameters of value were more local,’ explains Sachs. ‘There is a depth that comes from that where there is a community of people who are actually going through a lot of similar things, politically and socially. That's where movements come out: a group of people in one location coming into conversation with each other. That's very hard to do now.’

Death was a constant theme in the photographer’s oeuvre – his book, interspersed with catacombs, titled Portraits in Life and Death. Sontag observed that his subjects ‘appear to meditate on their own mortality’. This is something which rises to the surface during the film’s melancholy final sequence, amid ‘the waning light, the gathering darkness,’ says Whishaw. ‘It was lamplight and candles and the conversation turns to Peter's health. There was just a shift in atmosphere.’

Sachs looked to Elizabeth Taylor’s final scene in the Tennessee Williams adaptation Suddenly, Last Summer, her tone ‘purely theatrical’, with a touch of melodrama – creating a heightened interiority. ‘I knew that the whole film spoke to the impact of Aids and the loss without saying anything [directly], and that somehow Peter's soon-disappearance was an element in what we were making.’

Peter Hujar's Day is released on 2 January 2026

This has been a watershed year in fashion. A quarter of the way through the 21st century, 2025 saw the industry hit refresh: in September alone, 15 designers made their debuts as creative directors of fashion’s major houses, ushering in a bold new era in style (and, as with any such change, prompting passionate – and oftentimes divided – online commentary).

Here, as selected by the Wallpaper* style team, are the 25 fashion moments that defined the zeitgeist in 2025 – from a viral Marty Supreme track jacket and Saint Laurent’s thigh-high wader boots, to big-name buyouts, runway returns and, of course, all those debuts.

Willy Chavarria made his mark in Paris with a powerful duo of shows

In January, CFDA Award-winning designer Willy Chavarria chose to shift his runway show from New York, where he lives and works, to Paris. A striking first show, held at the American Church on Quai d’Orsay, came just a few days after Trump’s inauguration, with Chavarria – whose runway shows have long been a clarion call for the rights of immigrants and the queer community – soundtracking the show with Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon imploring the incoming president to ‘have mercy’ towards marginalised communities. ‘It was so beautiful, and it fell exactly in line with what we were doing,’ he told Wallpaper* of the speech. ‘I wanted to show that everyone is welcome, and to do that in a church seemed like the most pronounced way of showing queer people, trans people, in this environment where they were the saints’. His sophomore Paris show, this summer, was similarly impactful: it opened with 35 kneeling men wearing white T-shirts made in partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a reference to those being unlawfully detained by ICE in the United States.

READ: Willy Chavarria: ‘We’re still so stuck in fashion’s old guard’

Faux fur and shearling took over the runway

Not a moment, per se, though the proliferation of faux fur and shearling on the runway – spanning both the men’s and women’s collections – was one of the year’s undeniable style takeaways (so much so, we even spotted it on the spring/summer runways). ‘When worn, it becomes a heady meeting place of signifiers – luxury, wealth, power, but also protection, armour against the elements, an ancient and primal urge to be swaddled in the spoils of the hunt,’ we wrote earlier this year of the renaissance of fur – albeit in imitation fabrics – which seemed to a response to the tumult of contemporary living. Indeed, at Prada, where co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons presented a collection of ‘Raw Glamour’, ‘fur’ coats – constructed from cleverly manipulated shearling – had strange protusions at the collar or were trapped under plastic. ‘We asked ourselves, what is femininity today? It is a constant questioning,’ said Mrs Prada. ‘It is not my job to be political, but when you open a newspaper – oh my God! Our job is to think about what clothes a woman can wear, about what kind of femininity makes sense in this moment.’

READ: Faux fur and shearling dominated the A/W 2025 runways – these pieces capture the material’s ‘raw glamour’

Alessandro Michele entertained with a showstopping haute couture debut for Valentino

Haute couture was always going to be a medium which suited Alessandro Michele, the former Gucci creative director who now heads up Valentino. For his first couture collection for the house – presented this past February – the Italian designer, known for theatrical runway shows and richly imaginative collections, hit new heights, employing the ‘petits mains’ of the Valentino atelier to create a series of showstopping gowns. In a style typical to the deep-thinking designer, they were explained in the book-length collection notes through the language of philosophy and semiotics – Homer, James Joyce and Italo Calvino were all mentioned – with each gown representing a ‘list’ of words and influences (‘[lists] confine the infinite extension of the existing within a meaningful framework… to bring some order to the chaos of the universe,’ Michele wrote, quoting Umberto Eco). These surreal lists scrolled across the show’s set on a series of ticker-tape screens as the dramatic looks wandered across the stage, a millefeuille of satin, lace and tulle – eclectic, intricate and, as fashion sleuths showed after the show, rooted in the Valentino archive. ‘To attempt to describe each look – and its multitude of elements – would require a pages-long list of its own,’ we wrote at the time. ‘It was best to simply let yourself be entertained.’

READ: Inside Alessandro Michele’s showstopping debut haute couture show for Valentino

Martine Rose held her first gallery show – an ode to Bronski Beat’s radical energy

During London Fashion Week in February, Martine Rose hosted her first gallery show at Sadie Coles HQ, revisiting her 2016 film Everything Must Change – a Sharna Osbourne-shot short starring Bronski Beat frontman Jimmy Somerville. ‘Pop charts at the time I was introduced to Jimmy Somerville’s voice were dominated by gay musicians: Erasure, Bronski Beat, Marc Almond,’ Rose told Wallpaper*. ‘Mainstream pop by out and proud gay men making serious, respected pop music – not tokenistic – which can never be replicated. It was a radical time for music, all about individuality, no stylists, all genuine expression.’ It’s a statement that captures the radical, subculture-infused energy of Rose’s own work: later that year, in June, she staged a one-off show in an abandoned west London job centre, adorned for the occasion in boudoir-style ruffled curtains. ‘I was exploring this new shrunken silhouette,’ she said after the show. ‘Everything feels a bit cinched, a bit too tight, slightly awkward, but somehow still sexy, I hope.’ It is this idiosyncratic approach – at once strange, sexy and real – which has made Martine Rose one of London’s defining voices, doing things her own way for close to two decades.

READ: Martine Rose’s first gallery show celebrates the radical queer energy of Bronski Beat

Calvin Klein returned to the runway with a new ‘sexitude’

In February, Calvin Klein hosted its first runway show since the departure of Raf Simons in 2018 (under him, the runway collections went under the moniker Calvin Klein 205W39NYC; now, they are back to being called Calvin Klein Collection). In one of the year’s first notable debuts, it was former The Row designer Veronica Leoni who took the helm, seeking a mood of sensual minimalism she dubbed ‘sexitude’ – a nod to the pulsing undercurrent of eroticism which ran through the brand’s advertising campaigns and collections in the 1990s. ‘When it comes to sexiness, it’s more like an attitude,’ the Italian designer said backstage. ‘You own it in the way you wear the clothes. I think it’s really intimate being sexy – regardless of the silhouette, the amount of skin, it’s about the confidence.’ The collection came with the blessing of Mr Klein himself, who watched on from the front row. ‘He told me he was happy he had found a new coat to buy,’ she said. ‘I’m really proud for him to feel at home again.’

READ: For her Calvin Klein debut, Veronica Leoni stripped it all back

Fendi celebrated its centenary with a blockbuster show in Milan

2025 was a definitive year for Fendi: not only did it mark a century since the fashion house was founded in Rome, but, after the departure of artistic director of womenswear and couture Kim Jones in October 2024, the beginning of its new chapter. As such, in February, Fendi opened the doors to its newly renovated Milanese headquarters for a celebratory runway show, seeing house scion Silvia Venturini Fendi take the reins for the blockbuster spectacle which included a cast of Fendi muses, past and present. The granddaughter of house founders Adele and Edoardo Fendi, Venturini Fendi started at the house in the 1990s under Karl Lagerfeld, and would go on to head up menswear and accessories, though this was just the second time she had also designed the womenswear line (the first was after Lagerfeld’s death in 2019). Talking to Wallpaper*, she said that it was an honour to head up such a definitive show for both her family and the house – but was adamant this was not about living in the past: ‘I tried to avoid any precise reference because, to me, anniversaries are beautiful, but you don’t want it to be a retrospective or nostalgic’. After presenting a second co-ed collecti on in September, she stepped down from the creative role to become ‘honorary president’. Her successor will be former Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri in a much-rumoured move.

READ: Silvia Venturini Fendi on luxury, lineage and looking to the future: ‘If it reminds me of something we’ve already done, we move on’

Prada agreed to purchase Versace for $1.375 billion

The subject of much speculation and rumour after Donatella Versace stepped down from her role as creative director the month prior, in April, it was confirmed that the Prada Group reached an agreement to purchase Versace after the Italian house was put on sale by former owner Capri Holdings earlier in the year. Agreeing to a deal of $1.375 billion for 100 per cent of the company – well below the initial $2 billion asking price – it marked a definitive move from the Prada Group to establish an Italian luxury conglomerate (The Prada Group comprises Miu Miu, Church's and Car Shoe; in 1999, it purchased controlling stakes in Jil Sander and Helmut Lang, though they were later sold). ‘We are delighted to welcome Versace to the Prada Group and to build a new chapter for a brand with which we share a strong commitment to creativity, craftmanship and heritage,’ said Patrizio Bertelli, Prada Group chairman and executive director, at the time (the deal was completed in December). ‘We aim to continue Versace’s legacy, celebrating and re-interpreting its bold and timeless aesthetic; at the same time, we will provide it with a strong platform.’

READ: Donatella Versace is stepping down as creative director

The Met’s Costume Institute explored the figure of the Black Dandy

In a year which was notable for its slew of fashion exhibitions – from the confection-like gowns of ‘Marie Antoinette Style’ at London’s V&A to a Rick Owens retrospective featuring a lifelike sculpture of the designer ‘urinating’ water into a trough below – the Metropolitan Museum’s annual Costume Institute exhibition in May still demands the most attention. This is largely because of the accompanying Met Gala – the starry event heralds the exhibition’s opening – though it is also down to the Costume Institute’s head curator Andrew Bolton’s eye for finding intriguing subject matter in the Met’s extensive archive. This year, he drafted Monica L Miller, author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, to help curate the exhibition, which traced the sartorial history of the Black Dandy from the 18th century to the present day. Titled ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’, alongside historical garments, it featured the work – or personal wardrobes – of Virgil Abloh, Andre Leon Talley and Grace Wales Bonner, among others, with set design for the arresting exhibition courtesy of artist Torkwase Dyson. ‘I clocked into how people have fashioned themselves as a manipulation of autonomy and ownership in which clothing is a resistance,’ she told Wallpaper* of the design, which riffed on her signature trapezoid sculptures.

READ: Torkwase Dyson’s set design for ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ at The Met meditates on ownership, charisma and histories

Saint Laurent’s viral knee-high boots heralded menswear’s dark, sensual mood

At Cannes film festival, while promoting queer ‘dom-com’ Pillion – a film which explores a dom/sub relationship between a shy parking attendant and a biker – Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård donned a thigh-high leather wader boot by Anthony Vaccarrello for Saint Laurent. Shown at the house’s runway show earlier that year, it became one of the viral accessories of the year, worn by everyone from Pedro Pascal to Marc Jacobs, and ubiquitous in magazine spreads. Inspired by an imagined meeting between two men who designed the aesthetic of the 1980s – Yves Saint Laurent and Robert Mapplethorpe – the collection captured a mood of dangerous sensuality which ran throughout the season, from Prada’s patchworked leathers to Maximilian Davis’s S/S 2026 Ferragamo collection, inspired by the languid sensuality of Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater Wuppertal. Vaccarello dubbed it a ‘menacing, seductive elegance’ – classic menswear with an inflection of kink.

READ: Inspired by Robert Mapplethorpe, Saint Laurent’s surprise menswear show captured ‘a menacing, seductive elegance’

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake channelled la dolce vita in Florence

It would prove one of the most memorable show locations of the year: unfolding against a painterly Florentine sky at sunset, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake staged its S/S 2026 show at Medicea della Petraia, a former Medici residence on Monte Morello in the rolling Tuscan countryside. A guest of Pitti Uomo menswear fair, the Issey Miyake offshoot used the occasion to introduce a new roving format of runway show: eschewing its usual place on the Paris Fashion Week schedule (its position has been taken by IM Men, another brand in the Issey Miyake family), it will show in a series of locations around the world in the coming seasons. As such, collections will draw inspiration from local landscapes: here, it was done via an evocative use of colour, utilising hues sourced through trips the design team had taken around Italy (from ’Cinque Terre Yellow’ to ‘Zucchini Flower Orange’). The result was a collection which fused Italian charm with Homme Plissé’s pioneering fabrications: played out in the villa’s winding, maze-like gardens, it was impossible not to be seduced.

READ: With an ode to Italy, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake brings its brand of fashion magic to Florence’s Pitti Uomo

Rick Owens spread the love with a Paris retrospective

‘I’m surprised I got so far,’ Rick Owens told Wallpaper* in a wide-ranging conversation to mark the opening of ‘Temple of Love’, a career-spanning retrospective at Paris’ Palais Galliera. A celebration of the American designer’s singular approach – one laced with both subversion and wit – the exhibition took attendees on a trip from his early years on Hollywood Boulevard in the 1990s (a recreation of his Los Angeles bedroom of the time appears in the exhibition) towards his blockbuster spectacles at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo (indeed, in June, an opening party took place just after his S/S 2026 menswear show, with guests simply having to cross the road from one institution to another). ‘Michèle [Lamy, Owens’ wife] kept telling me, ‘You gotta stop calling it a retrospective!’ She doesn't like the finality – I'm leaning into it,’ he said. ‘A retrospective implies a decline, it makes you think about legacy and mortality and ageing, and how long do you stay relevant, and how important is that? I don't have the answers to any of those things, but I am thinking about them and addressing them publicly.’

READ: ‘I’m surprised that I got this far’: Rick Owens on his bombastic Paris retrospective, ‘Temple of Love’

Jonathan Anderson rebooted his brand – and debuted at Dior

It was a busy June for Jonathan Anderson. Alongside his much-anticipated debut show at Dior – a menswear offering for S/S 2026 presented at Paris’ Hôtel National des Invalides, which astutely reworked formal dress codes – the Northern Irish designer also revealed a rebooted vision for his eponymous, London-based label JW Anderson, which propelled him to renown after it was established in 2008. Doing away with the label’s usual seasonal runway shows, the new vision centres on the idea of the shop: in Paris, during haute couture week, he constructed a simulacrum of a new store concept by architects Sanchez Benton which included not only a fashion collection (a greatest hits of sorts, seeing signature pieces imbued with a greater commitment to craft) but a curation of intriguing objects and curiosities, from ceramics and vintage gardening tools to furniture, art, even honey. 'I like change. I have wanted to change things around for two years now, and finally I feel at one with who I am today and what the brand means,’ he told Wallpaper*. ‘It’s things that I either want to wear or want to live with.’

READ: Jonathan Anderson’s Dior debut: ‘bringing joy to the art of dressing’

Craig Green returned to the runway – and to Paris

After just over a decade in business, Craig Green remains one of British fashion’s definitive voices – a singular creative force whose imaginative collections transform humble menswear archetypes (workwear, uniforms, biker jackets) through imaginative construction and unusual fabrications, oftentimes evoking sculpture. This year, he made his return to Paris Fashion Week, having shown a year prior in his London studio, and elsewhere via lookbook (Green is one of a handful of designers who seem to be flourishing outside of the typical fashion calendar). The show was one of our highlights of the year: a poetic, free-thinking collection inspired by The Beatles, psychedelics and 1960s bed sheets – albeit in his typically inventive style. ‘Creativity how everything moves forward,’ Green told us in the October 2025 ‘Long View’ issue of Wallpaper*, in which we documented the process behind the collection. ‘You need creative thought for things to progress, and for new things to happen. You have to have the freedom to make mistakes, to create work and not live in fear.’

READ: ‘You have to be fearless’: inside the free-thinking world of Craig Green

Glenn Martens unveiled his vision for Maison Margiela

The task was unenviable: as the new creative director of Maison Margiela, Belgian designer Glenn Martens would not only have to follow the house’s namesake – arguably the most influential designer of recent times – but also John Galliano, his predecessor, whose final collection, which conjured a troupe of contorted dolls on the drizzly moonlit banks of the Seine, was a true fashion epic. But Martens, who comes with a pedigree of his own after zeitgeist-defining stints at Y/Project and Diesel, was more than up for a challenge. His own creatures were sheathed in masks (a nod to a Margiela hallmark, that of anonymity) and appeared pulled through the the walls of history – quite literally, with a melange of jacquards, Renaissance motifs and embossed leather (inspired by 16th-century Flemish wallpaper), evoking the faded grandeur of abandoned stately homes (indeed, the show set was a series of ‘palatial interiors’ printed on crumpled and crased paper). We called it a ‘thrilling’ debut, a task of ‘reinvention and reconstruction – a precarious balance of what to take and what to leave behind’.

READ: Glenn Martens’ thrilling Maison Margiela debut was a balancing act between past, present and future

Fashion East celebrated a ‘rowdy and raw’ 25 years of nurturing emerging talent

In September, Fashion East’s S/S 2026 runway show doubled as a celebration: 2025 marked 25 years of the Brick Lane-based talent incubator, which was founded by Lulu Kennedy to help forge the careers of London’s rising stars. The roll call of names which have passed through its doors is proof of its success: Jonathan Anderson, Martine Rose, Kim Jones, Craig Green and Grace Wales Bonner are all alumni of the unique scheme, which has long encapsulated London’s unique brand of young talent – defiantly creative, ‘rowdy and raw’ (as Kennedy herself described in a letter distributed to guests at the show). Taking place at the ICA, this season’s show – comprising collections by Nuba, Jacek Gleba and Mayhew – doubled as a Nike-sponsored exhibition tracing Fashion East’s impressive quarter century through its memorable clothing and ephemera, from Green’s ‘broken-fence’ chestplates to a leopard-print cake by Mowalola. Later in the year, in December, Kennedy and her creative partner Raphaelle Moore collected a Special Recognition Award at the 2025 Fashion Awards. ‘We’re proud to have created a unique space where designers have both the freedom to create fearlessly, and a family unit to uplift them,’ they said.

September’s fashion week saw almost too many debuts to count

2025 was fashion’s big reshuffle, seeing an unprecedented number of designers making their debuts at fashion’s biggest houses – from Dior to Chanel, Gucci to Celine. It was September fashion month, though, that was a true changing of the guard moment, with over 15 designers presenting their first collections as newly installed creative leads. These spanned an energetic and playful debut from Nicholas Aburn at Area in New York (the former Balenciaga designer riffed on the figure of the party girl in irreverent style), Simone Bellotti’s masterful first outing at Jil Sander, which saw him astutely explore ideas of modernity and lightness (staged in the brand’s white-walled Milan headquarters, it was a true clean slate momet), or Pierpaolo Piccioli’s typically heartfelt first collection for Balenciaga (an appearance from the Duchess of Sussex ensured column inches).

Elsewhere, notable debuts included Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta, Glenn Martens at Maison Margiela, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe and Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier. And, while these debuts were largely lauded – particularly by critics – fiercer debates broke out online in the depths of Instagram comment sections. ‘I have read some really heinous comments about the work of many designers in these last few days,’ wrote Perfect magazine’s Edward Buchanan, former design director of Bottega Veneta, in a much-shared post. ‘It is not always perfect, and it is not always what you personally imagined it to be. You don’t have to like everything… but why not celebrate and talk about what you love?’

Though in Paris, it was Chanel and Dior which commanded the most attention

There were two debuts, though, which commanded the most attention: Jonathan Anderson’s womenswear debut for Dior (he had previously shown his first menswear collection in June) and Matthieu Blazy’s opening act for Chanel. Shrugging off the weight of expectation, both collections provided an astute and contemporary viewpoint on the future of two of fashion’s most storied houses – Anderson through a fearless ‘recoding’ of the house’s archive in his idosyncratic style (we said it was a collection of ‘bravery, vision and instinct’), Blazy through a collection of unbridled freedom and optimism (a twirling Awar Odhiang in a gown of kaleidoscopic feathers, the model who memorably closed the show, encapsulated the ‘triumphant’ mood). After Chanel, which marked the end of fashion month, we said that after all of the debuts, it finally felt like a ‘weight had been lifted’. ‘There will be no more anticipation or speculation, no more guessing games or gossip. The designers are in place, and a new chapter of fashion has begun – from there, the hard work begins.’

While Demna marked his Gucci debut with a Demi Moore-starring film

In what proved an astute move, the Georgian designer Demna – previously of Balenciaga – got ahead of the season’s other debuts by presenting his first collection as creative director of Gucci on the first day of Milan Fashion Week, allowing him a moment in which he dominated the narrative (and, of course, social media). Revealed first through a lookbook of Gucci ‘archetypes’, rewritten in his typically irreverent and subversive style (he called it a ‘bold, sexy new chapter’ for the house), it was followed up by a Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn-directed short, premiered at Milan’s Palazzo Mezzanotte. Titled The Tiger, it starred Demi Moore as the fictional ’head of Gucci international and chairman of California’ whose world begins to unravel at a family gathering. Even cleverer? Demna will get another ‘debut’ in 2026 when he holds his first runway for the house during Milan Fashion Week, in February.

READ: Gucci reveals its ‘bold, unapologetically sexy’ new era under Demna

The fashion world mourned the death of Giorgio Armani

In early September, the fashion world mourned the death of Giorgio Armani, an arbiter of Italian style who founded his eponymous house half a century ago, in 1975. One of fashion’s great success stories, Mr Armani began the label using funds made from selling his old Volkswagen Beetle; on his death, he left behind a multi-billion dollar empire spanning not only fashion but homeware, hotels, restaurants, fragrances and cosmetics. To mark his death, after a private funeral held earlier in the month, well-wishers gathered at Milan Fashion Week in September for his final Giorgio Armani show. Originally intended to celebrate 50 years in business, it took place at Brera’s Pinacoteca di Brera, where an accompanying exhibition unfolded in the galleries above. As ever, the S/S 2026 collection – modelled on a cast of Armani models past and present and watched on by muses Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton and Cate Blanchett – encapsulated Mr Armani’s brand of soft elegance, culminating with model Agnes Zogla in a glimmering gown adorned with his face. Afterwards, guests milled the galleries, where the designer’s work took its fitting place amid the great Italian masters – from Bellini to Raphael.

READ: In Milan, the fashion world gathers to say goodbye to Giorgio Armani at his final show

A Virgil Abloh exhibition celebrated his landmark legacy

Just over four years since his death, American designer Virgil Abloh leaves behind a towering legacy – one which was celebrated this September in Paris with the opening of an exhibition at the Grand Palais. Open for just a few days (cue a sold out booking system and snaking queues around the block), the exhibition opened the doors to his prolific archive of objects, clothing, ephemera, furniture and art, displayed across sprawling tables and shelves as if stepping into his headquarters. Indeed, one senses the polymathic designer – who made history as the first Black creative director of Louis Vuitton – would enjoy the exhibition’s approach, which eshewed the behind-glass formality of the traditional museum (only self-restraint stopped you from picking up the objects on display). Titled ‘Virgil Abloh: The Codes’, the idea is for it to go on display around the world. ‘This is a true celebration of Virgil's vision and ethos,’ said the late designer’s wife, Shannon Abloh. ‘This offers an invitation to the world to engage and to build upon his ideas.’

READ: Inside the Paris exhibition cataloguing Virgil Abloh’s extraordinary archive

Grace Wales Bonner is appointed at Hermès

In late October, Hermès announced the appointment of Grace Wales Bonner as the house’s head of menswear, replacing Véronique Nichanian who made the choice to step down from the role after a record-breaking 37-year tenure (the longest of any working creative director at a fashion house). It felt long overdue for the British designer. An LVMH Prize-winning designer whose deeply felt collections for her eponymous label Wales Bonner – exploring themes of Black masculinity, migration and luxury – have consistently won plaudits for rich storytelling and meticulous craftsmanship, leading many to question why she hadn’t been chosen for a creative director role sooner (she had been rumoured for roles at both Louis Vuitton and Givenchy which went to Pharrell Williams and Sarah Burton respectively). On social media, there was a rare positive consensus on the decision: in her own post, the designer, who was born in South London to a British mother and Jamaican father, expressed her ‘deep honour’ at being chosen for the role. ‘It is a dream realised to embark on this new chapter, following in a lineage of inspired craftspeople and designers,’ she wrote.

READ: Lauded British designer Grace Wales Bonner is the new head of menswear at Hermès

1980s ‘architect of glamour’ Antony Price returned to the runway

The fashion critic Alexander Fury – who is an avid collector of his work – has called Antony Price, a British fashion designer who came to prominence in the 1980s, as ‘criminally underrated’. Best known for creating the visual universe of Roxy Music, and staging similarly dramatic runway shows in the decade, the ‘architect of glamour’ made a welcome runway return in November, courtesy of a one-off salon show with London-based label 16Arlington. Staged in the latter’s east London studio, the high-profile cast – from Lily Allen to Adwoa Aboah – prowled the runway in the high-voltage creations, puffing on cigarettes before posing for photographer Felix Cooper. ‘I personally felt Antony never really received his flowers,’ Capaldo told Wallpaper*. ‘To have been able to witness such a legend at work has probably been one of the most incredible and pivotal moments in my career. It's been really magical.’ Sadly, it was announced that Price passed away at the age of 80 on 17 December 2025.

READ: ‘Architect of glamour’ Antony Price makes a high-voltage return to the runway with 16Arlington

Dario Vitale said goodbye to Versace

It was to be one of fashion’s shortest tenures – just a few short months after his debut, in December, it was announced that Italian designer Dario Vitale would be exiting Versace. The former design director of Miu Miu, and the successor to Donatella Versace, the news came as some surprise: Vitale’s debut show at Milan Fashion Week, though divisive, had won over critics and was already being worn by celebrities (Olivia Dean wore custom Versace for a recent SNL appearance, while Addison Rae was also an early adopter). We said that Vitale had ‘stripped back conceptions and ushered in an energetic new vision: sexually charged and ‘reckless’, one that harkened back to the dress codes of Gianni Versace without nostalgia.’ On social media, the announcement came with some disappointment at the way in which designers are given so little time to make their mark: ‘There’s a disturbing pattern across the fashion industry: giant companies, plucking creative directors, placing them on a pedestal, parading them as the future, and then discarding them just as quickly,’ wrote casting director Anita Bitton in a much-shared Instagram post.

In Vienna, there was a chance to see Helmut Lang’s fashion archive for the first time

Though he exited the industry 20 years ago, Helmut Lang’s influence on fashion remains palpable. A definitive figure of the 1990s, he proposed a vision of sensually-charged minimalism and utility which continues to define the way that we dress today. He also changed the way we consume fashion, too: his memorable New York runway shows stripped back the artifice of the 1980s and its elevated runway, drafting friends to walk alongside supermodels, while stripped-back campaigns were captured by a young Juergen Teller. This revolutionary spirit is celebrated in ‘Séance de Travail 1986-2005’, an exhibition which opened in December at MAK in Vienna, which marks the first time Helmut Lang’s fashion archive is on show to the public – from memorable garments to archival film, ephemera, even recreations of elements from his equally definitive stores (Lang donated his archive to the institution in 2011). ‘Looking at Helmut Lang’s store architecture, it became obvious: his stores were all about directing the gaze. This is also what exhibitions need to do, but here it was essential. A photo wouldn’t suffice; you have to experience it,’ curator Marlies Wirth told Wallpaper* of the exhibition, which is designed to immerse you in the Lang universe – all the way down to the floor, which features a seating plan from a runway show.

READ: Inside Helmut Lang’s fashion archive in Vienna, which still defines how we dress today

Marty Supreme birthed the year’s viral garment – thanks to Timothée Chalamet

The Marty Supreme press tour has already come with some memorable sartorial moments – the film’s star Timothée Chalamet and girlfiend Kylie Jenner in matching orange Chrome Hearts for one – though it was more humble track jacket which went viral in December (the Josh Safdie-directed film is out on Christmas Day in the United States). The nylon windbreaker, created by the film’s production company A24 alongside California-based label Nahmias, was part of a merch drop for the film – adorned with ‘Marty Supreme’ and three gold stars, Chalamet has barely taken it off since. Pop-ups in New York and London have seen queues around the block to lay their hands on the $250 jacket – with resale sites selling the garment for up to for up to £4,366 (that’s over 20 times its original price). It speaks not only to A24’s marketing prowess, but also to the rise of movie merch – at the end of 2024, Mary Cleary explored its rise for Wallpaper*. ‘How it will continue to play out is yet to be seen, but one thing is almost certain: movie merch will continue to take over fashion,’ she wrote – and was right.

For more than 40 years, LA-based set decorator Lauri Gaffin has quietly shaped the worlds we see on the silver screen – from the frozen expanses of Fargo to the sun-soaked beaches of Thor. But Gaffin is also a photographer who's turned her lens toward the backgrounds of popular culture.

Now, that photography has been collected in a new book, which launched during Paris Photo, Moving Still: A Cinematic Life Frame-by-Frame. Gaffin captures the fleeting, unguarded moments that often go unseen, transporting readers from Edmonton’s icy plains to Louisiana’s swamps and the Martian landscape of the Mojave Desert. Beyond extraordinary sets, Gaffin documents the intricate interplay between directors, actors, designers and crew on projects ranging from The Pursuit of Happyness to Iron Man – the moments of laughter and stillness amid the chaos of production.

The book chronicles the reptilian alien from 2001 sci-fi film Evolution, discarded on the floor between takes, and the submerged plane that strands Harrison Ford and Anne Heche in the survival odyssey Six Days, Seven Nights (1998), swarmed with crew trying to navigate the challenging set. Gaffin also captures the stylised, high-gloss milieu of Charlie’s Angels (2000), the bizarre alternate world of Land of the Lost (2009) and the shiny, futuristic universe of Captain Marvel (2019).

The book functions as a behind-the-scenes retrospective, pairing Gaffin’s photographs with personal reflections from the moments they were taken, as well as candid insights into her own life – navigating her parents’ declining health, complex relationships and the emotional demands of filmmaking. Moving Still also includes texts by writer and fellow set decorator Florence Fellman, with a foreword by LACMA curator Britt Salvesen.

Gaffin’s photography balances spectacle and intimacy, becoming both a record of her craft and a medium of personal expression. The book celebrates the magic of cinema, honours those who bring it to life, and offers a deeply human story told through the lens of one of Hollywood’s keenest eyes.

So this is Christmas, and what have you done?

In Sean Ono Lennon’s case, he’s taken one of his parents’ defining pieces of musical activism, recontextualised and reinvigorated it in a powerful mini-movie with the help of Peter Jackson and a Pixar legend, then won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film at the 2024 Academy Awards, and now made the prize-winning animation freely available to watch on YouTube, with a built-in mechanism for viewers to donate to Warchild.

The apple, clearly, brilliantly, doesn’t fall far from the tree.

‘The idea was to do a music video for the song,’ begins Ono Lennon of a five-years-in-the-making project that resulted in War Is Over!, a beautiful, 11-minute feature – as its subtitle has it, ‘Inspired By The Music of John & Yoko’ – that launched online this week. The song is 1971’s ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s deathless, seasonally ubiquitous and thereby very familiar anti-war anthem. That inciting idea was to mark the song’s half-century, in 2021. But heading into that 50th anniversary four years ago, their son wasn’t feeling that particular idea. Or, as he puts it, 'I personally might not be interested in watching a regular music video for a song that I knew that well. We all hear that song every Christmas. It's sort of a standard at this point.

'So I thought it would be more interesting to do a short film that supported the message of the song. But then have the actual song drop in [at the end], like the score of a film would do. That was the basic idea: to make it more interesting to watch.'

The 50-year-old New Yorker – a musician and filmmaker in his own right, and careful curator of his parents’ artistic and personal legacies – partnered with Dave Mullins. The latter is an animator/director/writer whose storied CV includes Pixar favourites Ratatouille, Up, Cars 2, Incredibles 2 and Soul. Together, they imagineered a story set in a First World War-type battlefield, the action rendered in a combination of animation and the performance-capture perfected by computer-game creators. A pigeon carries messages between the trenches, with the story’s universalism and contemporaneousness underscored by the combatants and their uniforms/insignia carefully designed not to evoke particular nations. But rather than carrying battle orders, as these service animals did on the Western Front, this pigeon is carrying instructions for chess moves to and from two soldiers stuck on opposing sides. They're locked in a game of brotherly competition despite their armies being stuck in mortal combat.

'That was mainly because my parents love chess, and my mum is a big chess fan,' Ono Lennon says. 'And I love chess, too. So it seemed like a nice metaphor. And I liked the idea of a messenger pigeon, because, well, I just love birds. I always thought it was touching that so many pigeons sacrificed their lives to help humans through World Wars One and Two.'

Heavyweight help making War Is Over! also came from New Zealand’s Wētā FX, the digital visual effects and computer animation company. It was co-founded by Jackson, the filmmaker who pivoted from one epic fable series (his Tolkien adaptations) to another (his revelatory Beatles documentary trilogy Get Back). Without spoiling this perfectly executed miniature’s ending – which also features a score by 15-time Oscar-nominee Thomas Newman – the result is a film that delivers the never-more-urgent message of 'Happy Xmas (War Is Over)' but sweetened in a compellingly persuasive new way.

In that regard, Ono Lennon is following in his father’s spirit. As John Lennon said after the success of his peacenik anthem ‘Imagine’, written earlier the same year as 'Happy Xmas (War Is Over)': “Now I understand what you have to do. Put your political message across with a little honey." In the artfully crafted, elegantly told, intensely emotional War Is Over!, Ono Lennon and his collaborators have done exactly the same: kids who've grown up with The Incredibles and Cars will come to watch this movie initially as a wonderful piece of animation in and of itself – and they'll come to the anti-war message secondarily.

'Well, thank you for that comparison,' says Ono Lennon. 'That is the best-case scenario for me. If this short film can be one more vehicle through which we can introduce people – young people especially – to the ideas and the message of John and Yoko's music and political activism, then we really succeeded. That would be, for me, an even bigger success than winning the Oscar.'

Watch War Is Over! here. Warchild donations link here.

In Hamnet, director Chloé Zhao’s new film based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name, there’s a moment when William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) stages one of his first performances. It isn’t yet at London’s Globe Theatre, but in his own backyard in the English countryside. He leads his wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley), out the back door, blindfolded. When the cloth is lifted, she finds herself the audience to a small epic: their son, the titular Hamnet, wears a woven sack turned cape, while their daughters dart through makeshift parapets of brush and bloom.

As Hamnet moves between the intimacy of family life and the spectacle of theatre, every location reads as a kind of stage; a distinct zone in which a drama unfolds. 'From beginning to end, it was a process of uncovering and discovery,' says production designer Fiona Crombie. She and Zhao often discussed how the visual world could perform for the narrative as much as the actors themselves.

Crombie, known for her work on period films such as The King and The Favourite, admits she once had little affection for Tudor architecture, that hallmark of Shakespeare’s era, with its whitewashed walls framed by heavy timber. Returning to the period for Hamnet, she found new meaning in its strict geometry. As Mescal’s Shakespeare moved through the domestic space, she began to see ‘boxes everywhere – all these lines where he’s constrained by a building’. That confinement became a counterpoint to Buckley’s Agnes, whose spirit is inseparable from the forest bordering their home. ‘There ends up being this interesting visual contrast,’ Crombie says, ‘of Agnes being out in this rambling nature and then coming to be contained by these boxes.’

Whereas the traditional forms of Tudor architecture fit naturally into the story’s dynamics, the iconic Globe Theatre required subtle adaptation. Crombie repositioned the Globe’s dressing room from its traditional perch overlooking the stage to a more grounded, eye-level view so that William could be closer to, and connect more intimately with, Agnes as she experiences his play from the audience.

‘You research, you understand, and then you extract what you need and bend it,’ she says of not strictly replicating the historic theatre. 'It’s to serve the story – to serve how you want your audience to feel.’ In Hamnet, this idea extends beyond architecture. The stage becomes a place where life shapes art and art, in turn, reshapes life. The theatre offers structure, a container for narrative, yet that narrative constantly strains against its frame, spilling outward into lived experience. Crombie’s imagined world for Zhao’s Shakespearean tale captures that tension: a space grounded in history, yet flexed to hold emotion, memory, and invention all at once.

Hamnet is on limited release in the US from 26 November 2025, and wider US release from 12 December. It’s in UK cinemas from 9 January 2026

Margot Tenenbaum’s Fendi mink coat is one of the most instantly recognisable pieces of clothing in contemporary film. Worn by Gwyneth Paltrow in 2001 movie classic The Royal Tenenbaums, the coat now sits in an expansive exploration of US director Wes Anderson at the Design Museum in London. The exhibition also features a set of bespoke Louis Vuitton suitcases, stamped with miniature safari animals and featured in 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited. In another space, an intimately scaled puppet used to bring George Clooney’s titular character to life in the 2009 stop-motion animation Fantastic Mr Fox is on display. The show is an in-depth ode to hands-on filmmaking, and a welcome antidote to our CGI and AI age.

The curatorial team were granted full access to Anderson’s prolific archive, creating vignettes for each film that form a chronological display. ‘There are so many aspects of his work that are connected with design and architecture,’ says Johanna Agerman Ross, who curated the show and catalogue alongside Matthieu Orléan and Lucia Savi in collaboration with La Cinémathèque Française. 'As a design museum, we wanted to make that a prominent part of the exhibition.'

The lived-in tactility of Anderson’s films is evident throughout. Costumes are made from sumptuous furs and bobbly felts, creating authentic textures and personalities for each of his characters. The Scout outfit worn by 12-year-old Sam (Jared Gilman) in Moonrise Kingdom (2012) is casually styled, with rolled-up cuffs and jaunty accessories, as a child – especially one as rebellious as this lead character – may dress themselves. Willem Defoe’s chilling family fixer in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), meanwhile, is brought to life with sinister intensity by his tailored leather costume and knuckledusters. Mr Fox’s tiny soft corduroy suit was not the simple creation of his puppeteer but designed by Savile Row tailor Scabal.

The props are equally evocative. While many films utilise props for background world-building, Anderson brings an at times obsessive depth to his creations. The young-adult fiction books featured in Moonrise Kingdom were all designed from scratch, with constructed plots, making the eventual titles and covers seem authentic. The show also features a miniature replica of Anderson’s own childhood copy of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox. This movie and his other famous stop-motion film, Isle of Dogs (2018), are explored in highly technical detail, with skeletal inner workings highlighting the depth to which each character is articulated and considered, their intricate, kinetic facial features and unkempt fur adding a touch of realism and character.

The exhibition, designed by Ab Rogers, paints a view of the director as both compulsively precise and playful, refusing to cut corners when an original form of expression might be possible. 'I think he became keener about commissioning items as he went along,' says Agerman Ross. 'With his first film, Bottle Rocket (1996), he commissioned some things, but it was all returned to the prop house. With Rushmore (1998), he decided to keep everything because he was quite upset to find that when he needed to reshoot, things weren’t there. This became the starting point for the archive, and I think he got a taste for commissioning.'

The show highlights how Anderson’s process has evolved, from his early explorations of playful stop motion in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) to his recent work on Asteroid City (2023), which richly combines live action and more imaginative use of design. 'It’s a crescendo of all the techniques he has used, from puppets to miniature models and props and original costumes,' says Agerman Ross.

Anderson is now at a point in his career where he is trusted to fulfill his wildest ambitions. Agerman Ross hopes that this exhibition highlights the creative possibility that still exists in the film industry. 'Filmmaking is a deeply collaborative process. The world of design is vast and film is its own universe; we hope to make it intriguing for young people. How do you become a puppet maker or a set designer? When people see it played out through these objects, they can become more informed about these roles.'

‘Wes Anderson: The Archives’ at the Design Museum from 21 November 2025 – 26 July 2026, designmuseum.org

Wicked is back, and with it its uncanny world of magical realism. But how were the worlds of Oz and the Emerald City brought to life? And how has Dorothy's journey been brought into the 21st century? Here, British production designer Nathan Crowley tells us what it takes to create a world both familiar and whimsical.

Wallpaper*: What were the main considerations in bringing this world to life?

Nathan Crowley: I think the main consideration was being respectful of the stage show, Wicked, and of the great history of the film. I spent every Christmas watching it with my parents, who have nostalgia about it, as do my grandparents, but my kids also all have nostalgia for Wicked. So you are trying to find a look for Oz that tells the story of this epic journey. The considerations are treading lightly and finding a way through it all and re-designing it for us, because this is the first time that Wicked has been told cinematically, so that's a long journey and we have to really start to understand what Oz is, what our theories of Oz are and what best represents it.

W*: What were the challenges in creating worlds of good and evil in a non-literal way?

NC: We have to redefine the yellow brick road as a form of oppression. How do we visually tell you that story? This is one of the many things that Wicked brings – it says the yellow brick road isn't what you think it is. We tell that story by showing you how it's made. They have to enslave the animals to make it. The munchkins have to get all the yellow tulips we grew and turn them into a yellow dye and make bricks with them, rather than making all the colours of the rainbow for their clothes, it’s now enforced colour to make the bricks, and all their colour is taken away. Munchkin Land becomes monotone yellow. So even when the house lands and Dorothy goes on her journey, she's really becoming an agent of the wizard. She's now working for the wizard. So it's just a very different point of view. And I think that's where you start. What are the visual signatures of showing you that oppression?

W*: What references inspired you?

NC: For Emerald City, it was the Chicago World Fair in 1893, where the great modernists built the White City, that's now long gone. But they built a dream. Edison and his electricity lit it. You look at Sullivan and especially Burnham, who built the White City and is the father of American modernism. The underlying thing that I took to Emerald City was a dream and the White City was a dream. And because we're an American fairy tale, I needed something like the Chicago World Fair to give me that dream.

With Sullivan and Burnham, their architecture was so detailed, but yet because it was en masse, it became simplistic and modern. So that's what I had to do for the Emerald City. I've got to build my green city. But I took inspiration from America, and then I had to add the whimsicalness, taking architecture that feels like it's verticality [using height in architecture] and then twisting them together. I had to form a new type of architecture, which was very exciting actually.

W*: How closely did you work with the director and members of the production team in the design? How flexible were you required to be as the story took shape?

NC: We had many months of prep before we even started building anything. So we worked in this visual room, all together, with Jon [M. Chu, Wicked director] and the producers. You look at it as a whole. I do everything practically and I start building with my giant construction group: it's like a piece of sculpture and it develops, like the dancers. Then the choreographer Chris [Scott, Wicked choreographer] comes in and says; 'Well I've got this idea for this dance, but I need a bridge.' Things change halfway through filming. We always develop it. And Jon would come and say, 'Oh, for this scene I need a giant fountain that rotates.' And yes, I've got a great special effects team. I can build your rotating fountain – but maybe it could open, and flowers and a balloon could come out!

On our crew, we have all the people who can do that stuff. We have engineers and sculptors and artists and prop makers who get excited because it's a challenge. So I don't do it alone. I have this army of people. At one point, we were running a thousand people in my department. And it's the most wonderful thing when everyone is moving. It's so fluid.

Wicked: For Good is released on November 21

In the early 1970s, as a child in the city of Guadalajara, west Mexico, Guillermo Del Toro spent his Sundays worshipping at two hallowed grounds: the church and the cinema. In the latter, he was drawn to classic Universal monster movies. One fateful Sunday, he watched director James Whale’s legendary Frankenstein (1931) and its even more iconic 1935 follow-up The Bride of Frankenstein.

'In the first film,' he has said, 'I saw Boris Karloff cross a threshold as a living cadaver, and saw the glazed, undead eyes glitter and gaze at me.' The director went on to describe this as a Damascene moment, as the image struck him much more sharply than the bloody images of Jesus on the cross that were inherent to his Catholic upbringing: 'I felt the jolt of recognition in that seminal moment. Gothic horror became my church, and that figure, right there, became my shepherd.'

In the latest version of the much-filmed tale – which won three Oscars at the 98th Academy Awards, for costume design, make-up and hairstyling, and production design – the (strangely beautiful) titular creature is played by Jacob Elordi, while his single-minded, egotistical creator Victor Frankenstein is portrayed by Oscar Isaac. Mia Goth is Elizabeth, Victor’s soon-to-be sister-in-law, his unrequited feelings for whom influence his mania for creating new life from assorted cadavers. He’s helped in this unholy mission by wealthy benefactor Henrich (Christoph Waltz), who has reasons of his own for playing God.

It’s not a totally faithful adaptation – Del Toro, who wrote the script and has longed to make the movie for decades, invented Waltz’s character in one of many narrative tweaks – but visually it summons all the gothic flamboyance of Shelley’s book. In the text, when Victor first looks upon his creation, he describes his horror in grand, gothic terms: 'His yellow skin scarcely covered the works of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivel-led complexion and straight black lips.'

Del Toro maintains the astonishingly vivid tone of the 18-year-old Shelley’s prose by drenching his film in hyper-real colours (including his signature blood-red), extravagant costumes and an almost steampunk aesthetic. Christopher Young, head of archives and design at Tiffany & Co., worked with Del Toro and his costume designer Kate Hawley to provide jewellery such as Elizabeth’s darkly beautiful scarab beetle necklace, which dates back to around 1905 and is rarely shown. 'The scarab beetle necklace, Hawley says, 'is Guillermo’s language.'

When the auteur watched the Universal adaptation of Frankenstein as a child, he was marvelling at James Whale’s cartoonish iconography: Karloff’s slab-like forehead and the bolts through his neck, Victor’s art deco-style lab. This remains the definitive interpretation, but Del Toro has done just as much to visually reimagine the novel. Although Shelley never describes the tools that Victor uses in his ghastly endeavour, the director and production designer Tamara Deverell filled the scientist’s laboratory (which features a circular window, another Del Toro motif) with equipment that’s all the more menacing for its realism.

A key moment in this telling of the 207-year-old tale occurs when Victor’s angelic brother (Felix Kammerer) asks if he ever stopped to consider whether his creature possesses a spiritual essence. For its grandiosity, Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein is never a case of style over substance. In summoning all the flamboyance and wonder of Shelley’s novel, he’s imbued his extraordinary film with lashings of soul.

Frankenstein is on Netflix 7 November

A corresponding exhibition, 'Frankenstein: Crafting A Tale Eternal,' is at The Old Selfridges Hotel in London until 9 November

Since its inception in 2013, Doc’n Roll festival has sought to provide a platform for some of the music and art world’s most niche and underrepresented figures, putting the stories of marginalised voices and new documentary-makers onto the screens of some of the UK’s most respected cultural institutions, from the BFI to the Barbican.

Co-founded and programmed by Vanessa Lobon-Garcia and Colm Forde, what began as a low-key attempt to help screen a handful of subcultural films outside the capital has turned into a year-round project, with premieres up and down the country alongside screenings around the globe, from New York to Dubai. At the centre of it still, however, is Doc’n Roll Festival: a programme of 20-plus films, including world and UK premieres, which will show at cinemas in London, Brighton and Dublin from 23 October to 9 November.

Though the project has scaled up, the idea at the heart of it remains the same. ‘We're looking for things that aren’t the classic, cookie-cutter stuff that would go straight to Sky Arts, that’ve been made by the labels to help sell records,’ explains Forde. ‘It’s about showing people that wouldn’t normally get a look in, like the Big Mama Thornton film this year. I'm really happy to bring that to the Barbican because I know there's an audience there for it, but that kind of thing really flies under the radar of other film programmers. They look at these films and think they’re too much work to market. But that's where we really found our niche: giving a break to subjects and filmmakers that really deserve it.’

Doc’n Roll aren’t trying to compete with the current London Film Festival, or any of the circuit’s major players; instead, they’ve carved out a space of their own based on intense fandom – the kind that’s willing to travel. Last year, they had people fly over from Ireland to the capital just to watch a 23-minute short about punk band Fat White Family; he’s already been messaged by one fan this year who is planning on driving 238 miles to get to a screening of Felix, Dare To Dream – a doc about tattooist Felix Leu. There are bigger names amongst the 2025 programme – the UK premieres of Glenn Matlock’s Sex Pistols documentary, and another about Boy George and Culture Club – but it’s in the embrace of the true underground that Doc’n Roll stands apart.

They operate independently, without corporate sponsors – Forde would be open to working with the right people but has also readily turned down the wrong ones, who’ve tried to put restrictions on their decidedly leftfield programming. ‘If you look at the medium to large festivals across the world, they're all sponsored by banks who are art-washing all of them,’ he says. ‘I would love to be working with a brand that I really believe in, that isn't a bank or an insurance company. But the silver lining of not currently having a sponsor is that we don't have to bend the rules to accommodate any bullshit.’

Instead, Doc’n Roll’s ethos remains impressively pure: to create, as Forde describes, ‘a bit of a vibe for people to meet like-minded people who are into weirdo stuff’. In a saturated market of big-budget Hollywood biopics, Doc’n Roll is the antithesis – a decidedly DIY-minded festival creating a space for the misfits. ‘Those biopics are so drained of the real spirit of it all,’ Forde says. ‘Whereas we just wanted to put our love of leftfield alternative music and independent documentary film together in this crazy thing.’

Colm Forde’s picks of Doc’n Roll Festival 2025

Big Mama Thornton: I Can’t Be Anyone But Me

'Big Mama Thornton influenced people like Elvis, but she would play what they called the Chitlin’ Circuit back in the day, when Black artists couldn’t stay in the same accommodations as the white artists they were touring with. She’s doing what she loves, but as a queer, butch, Black woman, even within her own community, that would have been pretty daunting. It’s a real story of resilience and survival, and then unfortunately, the classic story of white artists coming in and making money from her art and her brilliant songs.'

A Way To Die: The Short Films of Coil

'It’s a collection of seven short films that were all shot in Hackney in the late ’70s/early ’80s, showing the deindustrialisation of the area but through quite a heavy, queer, sadomasochistic point of view. It was shot in Super 8 and 16 by the band – Peter Christopherson and John Balance – back when they were art school kids and just starting out, filming the antics of what they were getting up to behind the scenes of their gigs. There’s a hilarious short film in it that shows the industrial extraction of semen to be sold on; it’s some mad, weirdo shit but it’s hilarious if you’re into dark humour.'

Move Ya Body: The Birth of House

'It’s coming from the political aspect of the birth of house, and the gerrymandering within the southern Chicago ghettos where the music came from, which is still a deeply deprived area. The film isn’t just an A–Z of how house music then spread into London and Manchester and Ibiza; it’s told from a very political angle, in terms of the Black voter and the lack of access to real democracy that the Black voter still has.'

Rockers Don’t Stop: The Revival of Rockers Revenge

'The film is a production by record producer Arthur Baker, who was their key patron back in the mid-to-late ’80s when he found the band working in a record store. The band influenced a lot of early house music; they had a great break in the UK on Top of the Pops but couldn’t afford to fly to London for four nights, so they passed on it and petered out. It’s an interesting story about second chances, and about working-class voices.'

Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt

'The documentary sets the scene for the legendary Texan punk band and through the perspectives of other musicians, comedians and people that got swept up in the whole buzz of their live shows. As well as the music, there’s the context of them going against the grain of Reagan and Reaganomics, which paralleled what was going on at the time in the UK with Thatcherism.'

In Kelly Reichardt’s latest film, The Mastermind, Josh O’Connor plays JB, a listless, out-of-work carpenter whose plot to loot four paintings by Arthur Dove becomes an act of rebellion.

Considered the first abstract artist in America, Dove offers a warped mirror image of Reichardt’s disillusioned protagonist, JB (Josh O’Connor): both hail from lucrative families; both diverge from the political and entrepreneurial ambitions their rich parents have laid out for them; and both harbour grand aspirations, but lack political drive. Dove becomes a shorthand for JB’s lack of ambition in an acerbic, brisk and barbed wrestling with apathy and autotelic art amid the political unrest of 1970s America.

Revolving around the fictional Framingham Art Gallery, The Mastermind's unglamorous art heist is an amalgamation of a series of crimes that took place throughout the 1970s. Reichardt draws direct inspiration from the Worcester Art Museum robbery of 1972, the first armed robbery of art in history, taking place in broad daylight. At a time when most art heists were the work of petty criminals, JB’s decision to steal the paintings isn’t driven by money or notoriety. Instead, his plan – conceived almost as a creative act in itself – reflects his self-entitlement and disillusionment with a broken system.

Unlike the anti-war and civil rights protestors that provide the turbulent backdrop to the film’s action, JB is at a loss as to how to channel his anger. In the same way that art heist films of the time (The Thomas Crown Affair, Le Cercle Rouge) would glorify robbers, JB views himself as an anti-establishment figure. But his rage is misdirected. Despite his skill, JB’s plan unravels and the ensuing chain of events is comically futile. Even his choice of paintings to pinch, meticulously sketched for his stooges, points towards his inward gazing: Willow Tree (1937), Yellow Blue Green Brown (1941), Tree Forms (1932) and Tanks & Snowbanks (1938) are selected because they once hung on his art professor’s walls, but the thieves are instructed to ignore the works of Paul Gauguin and Dove’s better-known work Red Sun (1932). As JB’s father comments, the heist is a lot of trouble over only an obscure abstract painter.

Like JB, Dove was missing political motivation throughout his life. The initial stages of his career saw him struggle to find his artistic register. Going to Paris in 1907, he was inspired by the Fauvists and American experimentalists, but it was through Alfred Stieglitz, a Jewish photographer and art promoter, that Dove was able to discover his artistic identity, culminating in the pastel collection 'The Ten Commandments'. He later inspired Georgia O’Keefe (Stieglitz’s wife) and Julian Hatton, but is undeniably less well-known in his own right. And yet, Dove being one of Reichardt’s own favourite painters, her film demonstrates that his worth as an artist and art more widely is not so easily ascribed to political resonance.

Beneath its sympathy for both Dove and JB, The Mastermind operates as a shrewd satire of privilege, art and politics. Reichardt dissects the workings of class in times of crisis: the middle and upper classes, cushioned by their privilege, are unable to see beyond their own problems to anything collective. In the latter half of the film, JB hides out in a bedsit lined with kitsch rip-offs of Marc Chagall paintings. The irony is clear – Chagall, a Jewish artist who escaped Occupied France, fleeing real persecution. The paintings serve as another reminder of how the plight of artists and the politics of their times affect how their work lives on.

Beneath its sympathy for both Dove and JB, The Mastermind operates as a sharp satire of privilege. Reichardt dissects how, during times of crisis, class divisions distort empathy: the middle and upper classes, cushioned by their advantages, can’t see past their own frustrations to anything collective. When JB hides out in a bedsit lined with cheap Marc Chagall reproductions, the irony is clear — an imitation of an artist who once fled real persecution. Reichardt’s image underlines how art, like class, is never free from the politics of survival.

The Mastermind is released on October 25

curzon.com

Running for the hills

Anna Fixsen, US editor

This Sunday, I drove four hours outside of New York City to run the Guthrie Wineglass Marathon in the quaint town of Corning in the Finger Lakes region of New York state. No, there was not wine served along the 26.2-mile route (for that, you’ll have to head to France); the race gets its name for its coveted glass medals, an homage to the town’s status as a glass-making capital of the US (if you go, be sure to check out the Corning Museum of Glass designed by architect Thomas Phifer). While the weather wasn’t as cooperative as I would have liked (the temps peaked at a sweaty 26°C) the course was fast, the scenery epic and the crowd support inspiring. I cruised my way to a PR (marathon speak for ‘personal record’) and promptly made a beeline for – you guessed it – a glass of Finger Lakes Riesling.

A powerful debut

Sofia de la Cruz, travel editor

I’d been anticipating Harris Dickinson’s directorial debut, Urchin, and finally had the chance to watch it last night. The film offers a raw, intimate portrayal of a young rough sleeper in east London, struggling to rebuild his life while battling a tendency toward self-destructive behaviour. It’s a deeply empathetic exploration of cycles, faith, and the complex journey of sobriety. Rather than romanticising hardship, Urchin presents a brutally honest narrative. Dickinson’s profound understanding of social realism shines through every frame.

A mechanical wonderland

Ellie Stathaki, architecture & environment director

A visit to the new Power Hall in Manchester on Monday reminded me how much I love science museums. ‘I like a noisy gallery,’ the museum director, Sally MacDonald, told me – and you know what? I think I do too. There are large locomotives, some older, some newer, and the world’s first passenger station is on site. There’s also a whole new eco-friendly heating system, with its pipes and equipment on full display for all to see and celebrate (thank you for the tour, Iain Shaw!). Big machines, refined architecture by the lovely Carmody Groarke, and an upcoming new public space will no doubt be well received by locals and visitors alike.

A Frieze countdown

Hannah Silver, art, culture, watches & jewellery editor

London is gearing up for Frieze which means exhibitions are opening everywhere. I’ve been lucky to see some brilliant artists’ works this week, from Joy Gregory at the Whitechapel Gallery to Marina Abramovich at Saatchi Yates, Nicolas Party at Hauser & Wirth and Lee Miller at Tate Britain. I particularly loved Wayne Thiebaud’s gorgeously painted American pies at the Courtauld – don’t miss it!

A reflective publication

Gabriel Annouka, senior designer

I had the pleasure of attending the launch of Are You Comfortable Yet? at ArtHub, New Cross, where Em—Dash – a South London publishing studio founded by Saundra Liemantoro and Aarushi Matiyan – presented their latest publication. The creative duo worked alongside artist Anahita Harding, translating her durational performances (of the same name) into print without losing their sense of tension or scale. Blueprints, signage, and architectural fragments sit alongside drawings of bodies and text, making the book feel less like documentation and more like an encounter, while prompting reflection on who public spaces are built for and how bodies move through them.

A recalibrating album

Jamilah Rose-Roberts, social media editor

I wasn’t able to make it down to CKTRL’s recent concert at London’s ICA, as I was tied to my desk with both work and personal commitments, but his new album has been on repeat in my headphones since its release. Spirit is music that settles in the body, recalibrates the breath, and restores focus. Each track feels composed to be absorbed as much as heard – a current of sound that restores balance from within.

Bradley Miller, known artistically as CKTRL, announced his debut album Spirit a few months ago. With its arrival, he released ‘Rush’, a single that draws together the emotional threads woven throughout the record. Spirit is his first full-length work since 2022’s Yield, and it carries the sensation of something refined over time – another project distilled through patience, sharpened by reflection, and charged with clarity. Guided by bell hooks’ words, ‘Healing is an act of communion’, Spirit turns toward connection as its foundation.

I first encountered CKTRL years ago in a dimly lit Shoreditch House set. In the famous 'Library', a modest crowd gathered – yet the performance was spellbinding. He drew silence into the space and made it resound. That intimacy remains in Spirit; it is a record that expands slowly, allowing each phrase to unfold with patience.

Listening to it is a delicious experience: strings that rise and dissolve, melodies sculpted with precision, arrangements that hold weight and openness in equal measure. It is music for communion – with oneself, with others, with the possibility of healing.

Spirit is available now – listen on Spotify or Apple Music.

The BFI’s London Film Festival (LFF) began, as the story goes, after one Sunday Times film critic at a dinner party in the 1950s lamented the dearth of film festivals in the capital. While this is not a complaint that can be made today, as the city is now home to Queer East, BFI Flare, and SXSW London, LFF is unique in offering a huge variety of titles. From blockbusters to indie UK premieres, it scoops up the heralded titles from the big five festivals (Venice, Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance) and delivers them to Picturehouse Central. If the plentiful programme of LFF’s 69th year is overwhelming, here are a few of the most unique films in the line-up to add to your watchlist.

What to see at BFI London Film Festival 2025

There are many award-worthy titles at any given film festival, but one director who is continuously snubbed despite his streak of highly acclaimed titles is Park Chan-Wook. His latest, No Other Choice, was widely loved at both Venice and TIFF, and expectations are high. The latest from the Korean director who has triumphed over every genre he sets his sights on – whether that be violent action films (Oldboy), erotic thrillers (The Handmaiden, Stoker) or subversive noirs (Decision to Leave) – returns with a satire of the working world in which one unemployed man seeks to eradicate the opposition by any means necessary. Combining Chan-Wook’s love of slapstick violence evocative of Looney Tunes cartoons, with his longtime cinematographer Woo-hyung Kim’s breathtaking use of dissolves, the film is as devastating as it is hilarious.

Among the many notable directors returning to this year’s programme, such as Claire Denis with The Fence, Mark Jenkin with Rose of Nevada, and Lynne Ramsay with Die My Love, there are those offering up their first feature films to the festival crowds. Kristen Stewart, who has demonstrated her cinematic taste since her YA-vampiric shoot to fame by working with the likes of, among others, Olivier Assayas, Rose Glass, and Pablo Larrain, has decided to take a different position on the film set. Here, she delivers a promising adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s addiction memoir with her directorial debut, The Chronology of Water.

Another debuting film landing in London is Blue Heron, directed by Sophy Rumvaria; it has already flown from Locarno to TIFF, gaining praise along the way. The film blends docufiction and autobiography to deliver a heady recounting of Rumvaria’s dysfunctional family’s migration from Hungary to Canada, with camcorder footage incorporated to give her parents’ reflections on their shared experience as well as the director’s own.

Boundary-defying seems to be the trend of the LFF 2025 programme, as Rumvaria is not alone in her experimentation with form. It is something seen in Left-Handed Girl by director Tsou Shih-Ching, co-written by Sean Baker, which uses iPhone camera to deliver a multigenerational story of three women’s return to Taipei. Also pushing the envelope is the experimental Chinese Bi Gan’s fourth film, Resurrection, which tests the imaginative and critical faculties of cinephiles, as each of its six chapters is devoted to a different cinematic era.

The Voice of Hind Rajab is the undeniably and horrifyingly true story of the murder of a five-year-old Palestinian girl during the ongoing genocide committed by Israel in Gaza; among its violent truths, the film expands the genre of docudrama. This pertinent reminder of the atrocities committed indiscriminately against Palestinians, by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania – twice Oscar-nominated, for The Man Who Sold His Skin and Four Daughters – is filled with painful suspense, dramatising events that have long been an everyday occurrence in Palestine. Hind Rajab’s story and infanticide are no rarity, but a nightmare reality for Gaza’s citizens. If any film on the LFF line-up deserves the moniker ‘must-see’, it is certainly The Voice of Hind Rajab.

The BFI London Film Festival 2025 runs 8 to 19 October

Standing before the Rijksmuseum’s Neo-Gothic façade, film director Steve McQueen presents Amsterdam not as a postcard city, but as a layered palimpsest: a place where beauty and brutality coexist, where the mundane masks the monstrous. His 2023 documentary Occupied City is projected onto the museum’s exterior, a building long associated with the serene, ordered cityscapes of the Dutch Masters. McQueen, however, aims to peel back those layers, confronting the histories hidden beneath the city’s charming surface.

On this occasion, McQueen is screening a previously unseen 34-hour version of the film, a monumental project overlaying present-day Amsterdam with the memory of its Nazi occupation. Filmed over several years, it pairs patient, unhurried images of the city – streets, houses, squares, classrooms – with a voiceover drawn from his wife Bianca Stigter’s meticulously researched book, Atlas of an Occupied City, recounting what happened at these locations 80 years ago. Deportations, torture, denunciation: the past runs directly beneath the everyday.

Where once Amsterdam was captured by Vermeer’s delicate light or Gerrit Berckheyde’s ordered symmetry – images of calm domesticity and civic pride that masked contemporary turbulence – Occupied City shows the same streets today, with 21st-century residents going about their lives. McQueen highlights how deceptive the surface can be: a prison courtyard once used for parades is now a quiet plaza; the former Gestapo headquarters functions as a school. These settings appear banal, yet the histories they contain are anything but.

‘It has definitely changed my relationship to the city,’ McQueen says. ‘It’s made me fall in love with it more.’ As a filmmaker, he was granted rare access: ‘Doors were opened to me which will never be opened to others.’ Yet what lay behind them was often harrowing – classrooms where children now learn once echoed with screams; quiet houses were staging points for deportations; entire neighbourhoods carry the memory of betrayal. ‘Through this film, I could never not think about it. It never gets left behind when I exit my door.’

Occupied City functions as a catalogue of absence. The voiceover enumerates addresses, occupations, and atrocities, while the camera lingers on present-day life – dog walkers, cyclists, children spilling out of school gates. The tension is relentless: between what is visible and what is suppressed, between innocence and violence layered one atop the other.

McQueen insists the project is not only about the past. Premiering in a year that marks both Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary and 80 years since the Second World War’s end, the film feels unavoidably contemporary. ‘Art is one of those things where we have to think of the now,’ he says, citing events in Ukraine, Palestine, and Somalia. ‘To look at where we are now, what we’ve come through in the last 80 years, is testament to the idea of freedom. And we have to continue thinking of what it means. As an artist, I’ve never felt more useful than now.’

The Rijksmuseum’s walls, long home to paintings of everyday life and quiet labour, now host McQueen’s film: a reminder that ordinary spaces can conceal extraordinary brutality. To watch Occupied City here is to see Amsterdam as it is and as it was, a city living with its history in every brick and paving stone. McQueen’s achievement lies in making that doubleness visible, showing how the everyday deceives – and how, once revealed, cannot be unseen.

'Occupied City' will be screened until 12 January 2025, rijksmuseum.nl

The summer may be drawing to a close but for the film industry, things are just starting to heat up. Venice Film Festival, now in its 82nd year, is in full swing with a slate of international premieres, including work from renowned directors such as Noah Baumbach, Park Chan-Wook and Guillermo del Toro. As many of the most anticipated films of the Biennale’s lineup have already promised cinematic releases before the year is out, here’s a look at the films coming out of Venice worthy of your attention.

Although the Venice Film Festival has a dark political past, as it was initially created and controlled by the National Fascist Party, today it is home to cinema committed to exploring issues of injustice, even as political motivations vary amongst filmmakers – a fact equally evident in both documentary and fictional programming.

Earlier this year news circulated about Werner Herzog’s next fiction feature, but few were aware that his return to festivals would come this year with a new documentary. Premiering at Venice, Ghost Elephants follows conversationalist Dr. Steve Boyes as he continues his 10 year search for an elusive herd of elephants. While the cinematography exudes mysticism, Herzog’s immediately recognisable accent and frank interview style cuts through, as man and nature are once again in less than harmonious contact.

Herzog is not the only surprise documentary in the lineup as Sofia Coppola, debuts her first in the format. She may be veering from her well trodden territory in feature filmmaking, but Coppola maintains her sense of style and a unique aesthetic eye by choosing fashion designer Marc Jacobs as her focus in biographical documentary Marc.

Documentary is also key for Laura Poitras, who continues to favour the medium that exposes corruption. Since the critical success of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Poitras has turned her gaze from art world activism to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s coverage of the Vietnam, Iraq War and uncovering further atrocities being committed by Israeli forces in Gaza. Through Hersch's incredible career, audiences are reminded of the barbaric torture habits of American military, while the documentary explores the failings of the US Press and those that would rather Hersch’s many damning findings never see the light.

As the festival has expanded over the years, it has become a home for many of the world’s renowned auteurs. This summer American society's posturing of individualism and optimisation is under direct scrutiny from many angles this year at Venice, beyond the documentary format. From Yorgos Lanthimos’ comes Bugonia, an absurdist science fiction film focusing on a vengeful beekeeper (Jesse Plemons) who becomes convinced a prominent CEO (Emma Stone) is in fact an alien, questioning the hive mind and the deep disparities in the working world.

Meanwhile Benny Safdie’s first solo-foray into cinema, The Smashing Machine, is a biography on UFC fighter Mark Kerr (played by Dwayne Johnson), prioritising the brutality of the scene over the hagiographic tendencies of the sports drama. And of course Kathryn Bigelow continues her career-long, somewhat controversial, focus on the American military, with her latest political thriller House of Dynamite. As Bigelow returns to the director’s seat after a decade, attendees are curious about her long awaited comeback and what she plans to do with it.

Alongside bold political voices, this year’s Venice film festival offers many recognisable names in the industry making pivotal creative choices, such as Coppola, or branching out on their own like Safdie. With this incredible line-up from contemporary cinema’s leading auteurs, as well as some returning titans at Venice Festival, and the welcome news that there will be no superheroes taking up programming space in cinemas for six months, there is much contextually rich and beautiful filmmaking for cinephiles to look forward to in the coming months.

The myth of the American dream has been pulled apart no more so onscreen than in the gangster genre. Street-smart kids and savvy opportunists – usually from immigrant backgrounds – rise through the ranks of a society hostile to outsiders by sidestepping its rules. Once they become kingpins of their own murky empire, they search for the capital, power or acceptance they were once denied, only to meet their downfall. It’s a narrative arc traced again in Darren Aronofsky’s latest, Caught Stealing, an often brutal, gonzo rollercoaster through 1990s New York and its grimy criminal underbelly.

But Aronofsky’s protagonist is no disenfranchised anti-hero. Hillbilly, baseball obsessive and mummy’s boy Hank (Austin Butler, in a near antithesis to his slick role in The Bikeriders) lives in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. After he agrees to cat-sit for his British neighbour (Matt Smith) – a punk in more sense than one – Hank is caught in the crosshairs of the city’s warring drug lords, unwittingly reeled into a battle between the Russian mafia, a Puerto Rican gun toter (Bad Bunny), a corrupt cop and two fraternal Orthodox thugs (‘the Hebrews’).

Subverting the immigrant gangster sub-genre, where the main character is forced to outwit everyone else to stand a chance of survival, the uninitiated Hank makes a catalogue of clumsy mistakes which cost him dearly. Those naive choices shove him into the path of gangsters from different communities, representing ascending levels of danger. Roman (Regina King), the shady detective sent to investigate after Hank is clobbered by Russians outside his flat, warns him that the Jewish drug barons (who Hank hasn’t yet encountered) are the real ‘monsters’ at the top of this fearful ladder.

This could have resulted in a semi-farcical, bloody satire of white privilege, except Aronofsky fumbles where our allegiances lie. The earliest entries in the gangster film canon (Little Caesar, The Public Enemy and Scarface) were accused of generating sympathy for cold-hearted Italian and Irish mobsters, winding up at the epicentre of a tussle to crack down on movie violence under the Production Code. This shaped the tragic trajectory of their stories, where the onscreen violence was justified as long as the big shot lawbreakers got their comeuppance.

In the latter half of the 1930s, gangster films gained a new social consciousness. Dead End reckoned with how poverty can fuel crime, and soon the gangster genre began to see its fallen heroes as victims of circumstance. Since gangsters were some of the earliest cinematic immigrants, the genre itself has become a parable of outsiders trying to become insiders, and the perils of cultural assimilation. Often critiquing the foundations of American society and values, the likes of Once Upon a Time in New York serve as an indictment of individualism, while Gangs of New York focuses on the rifts between immigrant communities and how racism perpetually rears its head. Takeshi Kitano, with Brother, reimagined the gangster genre as a means to explore the immigrant experience and how the past catches up with you; American Gangster exposed the tyrannical power double-dealing police held over migrant communities.

Aronofsky clearly wants Caught Stealing to be both a love letter to pre-gentrification New York and a homage to the immigrant gangster canon. But by placing our sympathies with an all-American protagonist, he sidesteps the very communities the genre has historically explored. In an era when questions of belonging, migration and cultural identity dominate the political stage, the gangster film could feel newly urgent. Instead, the film struggles to articulate anything new about the various subcultures that make up the Big Apple – falling far short of the greats it echoes.

Caught Stealing is released on August 29

odeon.co.uk

The opening shot of David Cronenberg’s latest film, The Shrouds, is of a withering body in an underground cavern. The camera pans and settles on a man peering through a gap in the earth above, before he widens his mouth and the camera zooms into his scream. It’s an image that sums up the unsettling strangeness of grief in this film, where mourning is as bizarre and unmooring as the unwieldy digital sphere.

With echoes of the Canadian director’s classic erotic drama Crash and more recent dystopian Crimes of the Future, The Shrouds descends not only into burial grounds but the murky world of online conspiracies. Karsh (Vincent Cassel) is a self-absorbed entrepreneur still reeling after the death of his wife, Becca (Diane Kruger). He has lavished money on his invention, ‘the shroud’ – named after the Shroud of Turin, of which Karsh is sceptical – an innovative mantle whose radiation allows the decomposition of the departed to be tracked in real time, honouring his Jewish wife’s belief that body and soul are intertwined. An entire, exclusive cemetery, ‘GraveTech’, complete with restaurant and bar (sombrely decorated with the high-tech, grim-reaper-like cloaks), is scattered with coveted burial plots for this purpose.

But Karsh soon learns the unruliness of the tech domain. When GraveTech is vandalised – recalling real-life, antisemitic defacements of Jewish cemeteries – and hacked, Karsh is ensnared in the shady realm of the dark web. A client lets him in on a possible plot by Russians – or an Icelandic eco-activist group, or the dodgy doctor who treated Becca’s cancer, or GraveTech’s Chinese investors – to hijack the burial grounds as a communications network. GraveTech’s decaying bodies start to become patterned with mysterious, tumorous lumps, suggesting after-effects of the shroud’s radiation or the manipulation of the shroud’s digital images by menacing outside forces. And Karsh’s AI assistant – designed to look like his deceased wife – goes rogue. Meanwhile, in the romance Karsh starts up with Becca’s doppelganger-like sister (also Kruger), conspiracy theories take an erotic turn.

Given Cronenberg’s own recent experience of grief after the death of his wife from cancer, Cassel’s salt and pepper hair and Cronenberg reportedly training the actor to speak with his Toronto accent, it’s hard not to see The Shrouds as a mocking self-portrait of a man doubly clueless about the internet and how to grieve. Unlike other recent films about grief (Bring Her Back, Smile, Hereditary), The Shrouds is less in the language of horror – striking a newly pensive, otherworldly and odd tone, a step apart even from Cronenberg’s own output.

A techno conspiracy thriller that equates the bewildering post-truth internet world with the senselessness of death, The Shrouds is a deliberately illegible film. It does, however, continue Cronenberg’s career-long concern of what happens to intimacy when enmeshed with racing technology. Tech in its different, dubious and uncontrollable forms provides a high-voltage pulse throughout this meditation on sorrow, but otherwise, for a thriller, the stakes are strangely low. Karsh’s dentist, whose aphorism is ‘grief is rotting your teeth’, and the shrouds themselves offer a reminder that the body is always in a state of steady decay. The key players are either waiting for death or already in the ground. Ultimately, GraveTech, despite its promise of bringing us closer to our loved ones, epitomises a futile desire for intimacy that can never be fulfilled.

The Shrouds is released in the UK on 4 July 2025, whatson.bfi.org.uk

In a curiously telling move, Hot Milk, adapted from Deborah Levy’s 2016 Booker-shortlisted novel, opens not with the novel’s quote from Hélène Cixous – ‘It’s up to you to break the old circuits’ – but with an epigraph from artist Louise Bourgeois: ‘I have been to hell and back. And let me tell you, it was wonderful.’ Where the film could have been a searing portrait of a young woman trying to break a cycle of matrilineal trauma, Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s directorial debut takes such liberties with its source material that any sense of this gets lost. Like the medusa jellyfish populating the Spanish coastline, Hot Milk drifts aimlessly.

Sofia Papastergiadis (Emma Mackey) is a wounded twenty-something anthropology student accompanying her paralysed mother Rose (Fiona Shaw) to a mysterious clinic in Almería. Dr Gómez (Vincent Perez), who runs it, offers no diagnoses – only cryptic pronouncements and strange treatments. Sofia drifts into a romance with Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), a German seamstress with a dark secret, and briefly flirts with lifeguard Juan, whose cameo is so short he wasn’t billed in the Berlinale or BFI Flare programmes. Where Levy’s novel lingers on erotic tension – ‘I was flesh thirst desire dust blood lips cracking feet blistered knees skinned hips bruised,’ Sofia tells us – the film moves too fast to register the same intensity. Ingrid’s other lovers are mentioned, but Sofia’s reasons for tolerating them are left vague. So too is the motivation behind her emotional shifts, and gone is the novel’s voiceover and elliptical narration.

But it takes a sharper script to convey the plot's Freudian drama without them. While Sofia’s love for her ‘mother is like an axe. It cuts very deep’, we see little of this in the film. Shaw is tragically wasted as Rose, reduced to a wailing caricature at times. No wonder Sofia loses her temper – it’s just a shame these scenes are so abrupt that they read more comic than dramatic.

Still, there are moments of beauty. When the pace slows, the film captures something of Levy’s dreamlike prose. Lenkiewicz’s visuals – sun-bleached and strange – are underscored by an eerie soundtrack. As the summer heat intensifies, so does the tension between mother and daughter.

Though Lenkiewicz relies heavily on subtext over story, she comes close to redeeming herself near the end. The final scene gestures toward an explanation for Rose’s trauma-induced hypochondria – her own mother’s time in a Magdalene Laundry – before ending on a cliffhanger the novel moves beyond. If only Lenkiewicz had given this moment the gravity it deserves. As it stands, Hot Milk remains an enigmatic, occasionally beautiful film – but one that ultimately struggles to break the old circuits of trauma it seeks to examine.

Hot Milk is released on 4 July 2025, mubi.com

It is 1972, and Miss World is everywhere. Sculptor and performance artist Andrew Logan, meanwhile, has spent the day at Crufts Dog Show. He wonders, what would happen if you were to combine the two, blending swimwear and evening wear criteria with the poise demanded of the well-behaved hounds? And lo, Alternative Miss World is born.

Contestants in the first Alternative Miss World stood on a stage of vegetable boxes in Logan’s studio, in a bid to impress judges including David Hockney. Its reputation ballooned – the following year, people squeezed through the windows to get in. In 1978, Logan went public, renting Clapham Common for £200 for the event. Judges vied for a spot – so far, co-hosts and contestants have included Divine, Leigh Bowery, Zandra Rhodes, Jarvis Cocker, Derek Jarman, Brian Eno and Grayson Perry. Events were themed, becoming a massive party. For 1978’s extravaganza, the circus theme was resided over by Logan in full regalia. Judges, perched in lion cages, led proceedings alongside guest of honour Divine. Filmmaker Richard Gayer was on hand to record the spectacle.

Gayer’s finished film was scheduled to premiere the same evening as the Miss World televised event. But competition organiser Eric Morley had a different idea, putting a stop to the planned showing with a threatened litigation, arguing Logan was not entitled to use the Miss World name. Ignoring an invitation to a private screening from the filmmakers, the case went to court.

The filmmakers hired the barristers they could afford, including one Tony Blair, future prime minister and then in the early stages of his legal career. He didn’t utter a word the whole trial, says Logan. But, ‘I do remember him for his teeth. Wonderful teeth. Great big smile.’

The judge agreed if the public confused the two events it would be financially and reputationally damaging to Miss World, and granted an injunction – the filmmakers could go ahead, but couldn’t use Miss World in the title. When their promotional bus arrived, it advertised ‘The Alternative’ with ‘Miss World’ casually crossed off.

The case returned to court. Logan wore a jacket made of pieces of disco balls, as well as an eye brooch that winked at the judge throughout. This time, they won, with the judge noting it wasn’t a film about beautiful girls, but a film of the grotesque. But, the distributors were spooked, and the film didn’t go ahead – although, 50 years later, Logan and Alternative Miss World are still going strong.

It’s a great story, and one which continues to resonate, particularly with filmmakers Maya Avidov and Savannah James-Bayly, who tell the story in documentary short, Too Disgusting to be Confused, which will premiere at Raindance Film Festival ahead of its launch.

The duo got to know Logan before, picking out the strands of the story in the creation of a comprehensive narrative. ‘He's so good on camera,’ says Avidov. ‘He’s very charismatic and very happy to be there. He's totally happy in the present and happy to talk about the past. I’d say the hardest part was letting go. There's so much to tell.’

‘We were very lucky in that we managed to get in touch with Richard Gayer, who made the film that caused the backlash, and he was able to fill in a lot of the gaps,’ adds James-Bayly. ‘There was no shortage of content. Our initial cut was much longer than 12 minutes.’

Too Disgusting to be Confused is part of the Netflix Documentary Talent Fund 2025. All films from this year's cohort will be premiering at Raindance Film Festival on the 26th June

The films will be available to stream on Netflix’s Still Watching YouTube Channel from 27th June 2025

It has often been said about the 21st century, that we are living through unprecedented times, so much so that the statement has become a meme. But as director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland return to the apocalyptic Britain he created at the turn of the century, all that feels different also feels incredibly similar. Even in a zombie infected nation, the crimes people are capable of have been committed many times before.

Just off the coast of Northumberland on the Holy Island, one community has survived thanks to their watery degree of separation from mainland Britain. Here Spike (Alfie Williams) lives with his sick mother Isla (Jodie Comer) and his tough father Jamie (Aaron Taylor Johnson), more like a drill sergeant than a dad. Fighting the infected is a part of every child’s education on the Holy Island, but Jamie’s desperate search for glory means that Spike will be initiated with his first kills years before his classmates. Heading onto the mainland, with his father, at just 12 years old, Spike is forced to hunt the infected he has been taught to fear his whole life.

As the pair head out across the tidal walkway, a recital of Rudyard Kipling’s poem Boots plays over old film footage of soldiers (including a company of archers from Laurence Olivier’s Henry V), serving as a reminder that there is nothing new in human history, the violence of mankind never ends. At their core, 28 Days Later and its successor 28 Weeks Later (directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo), are criticisms of the military industrial complex, from the lab that leaked the virus attempting to turn rage into a weapon to the United States army whose inhumane procedure controls the spread. 28 Years Later returns once again to this criticism from a fresh perspective. Through Jamie’s aggressive form of parenting, we see the roots of militarised indoctrination. 28 years on from the infection, fear has become a foundation for humanity's survival.

But it’s on this bloody pilgrimage that Spike discovers something even more human. The news of a doctor living on the mainland gives him hope and he soon returns with Isla to get her medical attention. Everyone needs a purpose. No one in Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later is above this distinctly human need. Jamie searches for purpose by teaching Spike to kill mercilessly, Spike hopes to cure Isla’s illness and the Swedish soldier Erik (Edvin Ryding), who Spike and Isla meet along the way, confesses he had only joined the navy in an attempt to give his life meaning. The existential dread that drives us all is never in question but the resulting actions, such as Jamie’s executioner philosophy and the evidence of other human’s crimes found on the mainland, are silently judged.

Alongside misguided habitual cruelty there can be found moments of kindness. And it is here where Boyle and Garland reveal a flicker of optimism for humanity. Jamie may be a brute but Spike and Isla have not totally hardened under his patriarchal rule. Isla reminds her son of his capacity for empathy even when it comes to the infected and Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) is the only one to treat humans and infected alike with the same bedside manner. Inspiring Spike not to lose his humanity even as those around them do. 28 Years Later it may be, but in returning to this dystopian vision of Britain once again it feels as if Boyle never left this often barbaric world behind. And while continuing a brutal critique of the militarised mind, Boyle has not forgotten that there are those that choose kindness.

28 Years Later is on show at cinemas now

Among the most enigmatic figures on screen, nuns have enjoyed renewed cinematic popularity and a delicious secularisation in 2025. This year, nun characters are having their moment in the spotlight, featuring in films and series beyond the traditionally nun-friendly genres.

Caving to earthly delights has never been more radical as the brides of Christ are considering divorcing God in an appreciation of material pleasures. It’s not just sexual satisfaction at play here; it’s the enjoyment of beauty in all of its tangible forms.

There’s no more appropriate way to usher in the Year of the Nun than having a novitiate tiptoeing into the carefully curated world-building of Wes Anderson’s latest, The Phoenician Scheme. Pipe-smoking nun Liesl (Mia Threapleton) is central to the contrast between spirituality and the ritualistic, wealthy aesthetic of Catholicism.

The movie plays with the ambivalences of religion in Anderson's signature darkly humorous tone. As such, it includes a cheeky jab at nuns administering sacraments, leaving conservative cardinals everywhere shaking at the thought of being upstaged by a woman in a veil.

Whisked off to an aviation adventure by her estranged father, reckless entrepreneur Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), Liesl gets a taste of the riches she will have to renounce. Her humble rosary is soon replaced by a “secular” one — a diamonds, emeralds and rubies custom piece made by Cartier. By clutching onto her new, unbelievably precious cross, Liesl uncovers a rebellious side of her that would’ve risked being squished under the nuns’ vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Her faith remains unwavering, though her trust in the Church as an institution falters in her final confrontation with Mother Superior (Hope Davis), as greedy as she is practical.

Not everyone is fit to be a nun, she tells Liesl, and Sister Agnes from season 2 of Nine Perfect Strangers would agree. Chapter two of Nicole Kidman’s trippy thriller relocates to an exclusive resort in the Austrian Alps. Amongst the guests willing to try psychedelics to heal is former nun Agnes (Dolly de Leon), disillusioned with the Church’s dogmas.

After years of self-inflicted uncomfortableness to atone for a past sin, episode three (‘The Field Trip’) ends with a simple pleasure for the nun. Getting a good night’s sleep symbolises Agnes finally forgiving herself and moving on.

A different hotel bed brings about another nun’s self-discovery in season 3 of And Just Like That. Episode one (‘Outlook Good’), guest star Rosie O’Donnell cameos as Mary, a Canadian sister on her first trip to NYC.

Mary has temporarily traded Dunnottar for the Big Apple to do some sightseeing but gets more than she bargained for when she picks up Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) in a queer bar. The next morning, Miranda is stunned to learn her lover is (or, well, was) a virgin married to Jesus Christ.

As Miranda fears to have hit a new low after the Che Diaz disaster and Carrie makes fun of Mary’s NYC bucket list, the nun is genuinely having the time of her life. “I would never leave God. We’re married,” she replies when a cocky Miranda begs her not to sacrifice her faith for her.

“I always knew this person was somewhere inside of me. And now I’ve met her, thanks to you,” Mary adds, then serenading the lawyer with a rendition of ‘For Good’ from Wicked. Mary returns to Dunnottar a changed nun with a deeper knowledge of herself. Miranda, on the other hand, is left to check her bias and assumptions.

Sexuality and repression in religious stories are hardly new themes, as both were crucial to the nunsploitation of the 1970s and its earlier example, 1947’s electrifying classic Black Narcissus. The subgenre’s criticism of the Church’s misogyny to be inferred in between the male gaze-y nudity, the gore or the heteronormativity has endured, taking newer, more articulated pathways to come to light today.

A juicy, overtly queer entry in the 2025 Year of the Nun canon, the limited series The Art of Joy is inspired by Goliarda Sapienza’s seminal novel about joie de vivre and sexual pleasure. Three decades after the book’s posthumous, difficult publication, the time is ripe for the first adaptation of this feral tale of sexual, financial and cultural independence.

Set in 1900s Sicily, Valeria Golino’s series follows novitiate Modesta (Tecla Insolia), with the first episodes focusing on her fixation on luminous Mother Leonora (Jasmine Trinca).

‘Mother’ in more ways than one, Leonora silently encourages Modesta, with their mostly caste relationship defined by physical touch and proximity.

While the nun may be unaware, even frightened by her own queer desire — particularly when aimed at her teen protégée — Modesta lives hers unapologetically. The protagonist’s North is the pursuit of pleasure, whatever form it may take. When chartering more traditional horror territory, 2025 has managed to offer a poignant commentary on the nuns’ ancillary role in two scary flicks.

Even a tepid, textbook exorcism affair like The Ritual owes its nuns some of its most terrifying scenes and an exhilarating line of dialogue. In a chat with Father Steiger (Dan Stevens), Patricia Heaton’s stern Mother Superior tells him how she’s had enough of taking orders from men who are nowhere near as smart as her and her sisters.

However, it’s another nun-centred horror that takes the 2025 crown. South Korean exorcism sequel Dark Nuns breaks ground when Sister Junia (Song Hye-kyo) wears a stole to cast the demon out. A symbol of the priestly office, the stole makes Junia a de facto minister of religion.

Both these examples fuel the debate about the possibility of women being ordained as deacons and priests, a point of contention in the Roman Church. At present, nuns are too often seen as little more than glorified carers — as Isabella Rossellini’s Sister Agnes in Conclave pointed out.

In May, the election of the new Pope and the memeification of the Conclave redirected the spotlight onto nuns.

Calls for nuns to graduate from brides of Christ to ministers continue off-screen via groups like the Catholic Women’s Ordination (CWO). Yet, female priesthood seems a long shot, even under Francis and Leo XIV’s somewhat more progressive papacies.

In January this year, nun Simona Brambilla became the first woman to head a major Vatican department, splitting the public opinion about the appointment being a huge win or a “too little, too late” move. Albeit continuing in Francis’s footsteps in having more women in posts of authority, Leo’s comments about female clerics creating “a new problem” suggest a conviction that nuns should stay in their lane.

A convent revolution may have started on film, but whether this internal questioning of the Church’s male-centric leadership and power dynamics will give way to real progress remains to be seen. In the meantime, movies and series, as well as the cultural phenomenon that is NunTok, offer more personal, fictional or otherwise, accounts of nunhood.

It’s a reversal of the 1970s nunsploitation — nuns are done being exploited for the plot and are calling for more prominent roles, on screen and in the Church’s ranks.

‘Years ago, I saw a still image of a high diver suspended mid-flight – caught between the platform and water below,’ says photographer and director Geordie Wood. It was an image that stayed with him, leading him from photography to his first film, Divers. ‘Something in the expression on their face – a kind of ecstatic surrender – lodged in my mind and never left. It was so beautiful but also perilous. When I began thinking seriously about making a short film, that image came back to me, and I started searching for a place where divers train.’

And so was conceived the short, seven-minute film Divers, which premiered at Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland, as part of the festival’s International Medium Length & Short Film Competition. It considers the training required at elite high-diving camp in Fort Lauderdale, observing athletes as they prepare to launch themselves from one of the tallest diving boards in the world.

Wood was invited to visit the tower by a former professional diver named Steve LoBue, whom he had come across in his research. ‘I’d seen old footage of Steve – in one dive, he clipped his head on the platform while exiting from 27m, then somehow reoriented like a cat in mid-air and landed feet-first,’ says Wood. ‘It was incredible. I was especially drawn to the fact that his tower was outdoors, set against the open blue sky and sun – something I felt the film needed. Steve kindly invited me to visit the tower. When I did, I told him I was interested in diving as a way to explore fear and the noise of the mind. Those themes resonated with him, and he suggested I return to shoot during a training camp over the winter – a time when athletes from around the world would be training together.’

The juxtaposition of strength and vulnerability, grace and chance, is something Wood unpicks in his film. His first outing in the medium felt ‘exhilarating and disorientating’, he says. Being used to creating visual landscapes, he found the format wholly new.

‘The concept itself was also a leap of faith. We weren’t following a single subject or a traditional narrative arc. I wanted the piece to sit somewhere in-between a gallery wall and a traditional documentary. There’s no voiceover in the film, no dialogue to anchor the viewer – so the process became about collecting material, like gathering raw clay.

‘I wrote a script of sorts, but it was more a guide for what to capture than a specific blueprint for what the film would become. The real shape emerged later, through editing and specifically by trimming away everything that felt unnecessary. The goal was to let the imagery speak for itself and arrive at something that felt effortless, even if it was anything but.’

As in his photography work, Wood made a conscious effort to retain total control over the project, keeping his team small and ensuring he oversaw every element. ‘I didn’t want to feel comfortable. I knew I was stepping into unfamiliar territory, and staying hands-on felt like the only real way to learn. It was scary – I found the story, financed the film, assembled the team, and carried both the logistics and creative. I know this isn’t a feature film, and I’m still quite young in this space – but for me, this was a huge step. I learned every part of the filmmaking process intimately through making this one project, and I’m proud of that. I carry those lessons with me now – not just technically, but in a deeper sense of knowing how I want to work, and having the confidence to approach whatever comes next.’

It is a deeply personal project. In scrutinising being a perfectionist, Wood was forced to confront his own process. ‘The downside of being a perfectionist – or someone who craves control in their creative work – is that your mind rarely rests. There’s a constant hum of evaluation, comparison, refinement. And while perfectionism can drive high standards, it’s also built on a foundation of fear and a need to manage outcomes. In recent years, I’ve been actively trying to invite more presence and flow into my life – to balance my instinct for control with a deeper sense of trust and surrender.

‘In that way, diving became a kind of metaphor. I saw in these athletes – launching themselves into open space, exposed and in motion – something I was craving for myself. That feeling of pure presence, of being fully in the moment, is rare. I’ve touched it a handful of times in my life, and I’m always trying to find my way back. Making this film was, in many ways, a mirror of that act: preparing carefully, walking to the edge, and then leaping – not knowing exactly what the outcome would be, but jumping in faith nonetheless.’

geordiewood.com

When Dal Chodha stopped Marketa Uhlirova in the corridor at Central Saint Martins (CSM) last year, he didn’t expect the exchange to lead to curating an entire film festival. ‘I just sort of said, “Well, what's happening with the Fashion in Film Festival? You haven't posted anything on Instagram for ages”,’ says Chodha. ‘I think I might've inserted myself in.’

‘You did,’ Uhlirova replies. ‘You said, “Let’s do something.” It's been a very organic collaboration.’

The conversation between the pair, both tutors at CSM – Uhlirova is an art historian who founded the Fashion in Film Festival back in 2005, and Chodha is a writer, consultant and Wallpaper* contributing editor – spiralled into a year-long rabbit hole of research, film-watching, and debate that culminated in the 2025 edition of the festival, ‘Grounded’. Taking nature as its theme, the programme uses cinema as a lens to explore the complex entanglements between fashion and the natural world.

While the industry’s environmental impact might seem like an obvious focus for the programme, the pair have taken the curation down more expansive and surprising roads. Rather than using research to reinforce what they already knew, their curation was shaped by perspective-shifting discoveries – from salvaged VHS films to beautiful animations and sobering documentaries. Spanning from the early 20th century to the present moment, the resulting programme groups 80 films into five thematic strands that traverse not only ecological and geopolitical themes, but also stories of visual splendour, comedy, horror and transgression.

‘I’m quite tired of the ways the fashion industry talks about climate challenges,’ says Chodha. ‘It often lacks any sort of nuance, hope or positivity. I think this is where we had the chance to really just open up that conversation and try to find other ways in. Obviously, we found the films through this lens [of nature], but then also allowed [them] to kind of expand that lens – to offer us new avenues of thinking.’

With screenings, panel talks, and live performances taking place at the Barbican, BFI Southbank, ICA, and the Horse Hospital throughout this week, here Uhlirova and Chodha select five highlights from this year’s festival that are not to be missed.

Five to watch from the Fashion in Film Festival 2025

Dust to Dust (2024)

Dal Chodha: Dust to Dust is a documentary film about the only Japanese couturier currently showing at Paris Fashion Week, Yuma Nakazato. He travels to Nairobi in Kenya, which is now the number one African country to receive clothing waste from Western countries. We see him buy bales of discarded clothing, take them back to Japan, and process them using a new machine to make fabric, which he then shows at Paris Fashion Week. It's not uncommon to see documentaries like that from a sort of BBC white European angle, but the fact that it was coming from Japan added a different philosophy on textile waste. He comments in ways that we felt captured the complexity and the ambiguity around these issues, and that nuance really appealed to us. It's exciting to [be showing the UK premiere], and Alex Musembi, who is part of one of the organisations on the ground in Kenya, will be in conversation with me and Jawara Alleyne and Tamsin Blanchard.

UK premiere and panel at Central Saint Martins, LVMH Lecture Theatre, 20 May 2025, 6.30pm, book tickets here.

Into the Garden of Chimerical Delights (Various, 1897–1913)

Marketa Uhlirova: This was a collaboration with the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam and curator Elif Rongen. Chimerical Delights is a programme of shorts made before the First World War. They examine a post-Victorian obsession with women as flowers and insects, which in this period of cinema was explored by filmmakers through the genre of the trick film, where a magician would conjure women to emerge from flowers or as butterflies from cocoons. A kind of eroticism is present in them, where women are portrayed as somehow dangerous, just like a flower can be quite erotic if represented in a certain way. We’re juxtaposing them with films where women walk through flower fields or smell flowers or pick flowers. We approached an experimental choir Musarc, based in London, to try and help us tease out some of the weirdness and strangeness of these films that might otherwise get lost, if you just had a piano accompaniment. The choir highlights the lyricism and the sensuality of these amazing images, which have been restored in colour by the archives.

Panel, screening and live choir at Barbican, Cinema 1, 30 May 2025, 7pm, book tickets here.

Veruschka: Poetry of a Woman (1971)

Dal Chodha: This has been such a hilarious and wonderful labour of love for us both in various ways. Veruschka is a model that lots of people will know or recognise. She's still alive, lives in Paris. Years ago, I remember discovering a period of her work, in the 1970s, where she was very heavily into body art [and] would paint herself like her environment. Marketa said, ‘You know, I think they made a film of it too.’ We eventually were led to this. Someone had put a really poor-quality version on YouTube, and then weirdly, Marketa one day got out this VHS and threw it on the desk and said, ‘I bought this randomly years ago.’ It’s kind of a long-form essay where nothing particularly happens, but we see Veruschka having this argument with her boyfriend, driving through the Italian rural countryside. In the film, she muses on this idea of being a commodity. It has these amazing vignettes where she is painted like a plant or an animal and she's rolling around in trees. We're showing it in the Horse Hospital, which aptly has this 1970s kind of energy to it as a space.

Screening at The Horse Hospital, 24 May 2025, 7pm, book tickets here.

Youth (Spring) (2023)

Dal Chodha: Youth is part of a trilogy of films from director Wang Bing. What we loved is this gonzo, fly-on-the-wall energy. You're just watching these young textile workers, who are based outside Shanghai and make children's clothes, living their lives. What it doesn't necessarily do is go, ‘Look at these poor people who work so you can buy a two-pound T-shirt for your child.’ It doesn't do that. It allows them to just be human beings who are falling in love, eating, arguing, moving home, hating their parents, and all of the things that most of us have felt at some point in our lives. So it's a really interesting viewpoint on the people who make these clothes that we buy for very little money. Perversely, as a tutor, what I also liked is that it's quite a commitment for the viewer – it’s three hours long. I think so much of culture has just gone towards making things as easy as possible and I am quite anti that. There are other exposés on the fashion industry that tackle these themes. But I think the temporality of this film makes it something extraordinary.

Screening at Garden Cinema, Screen 3, 25 May 2025, 2pm, book tickets here.

Animal Matters (Various, 1910–1950)

Marketa Uhlirova: Animal Matters is a selection of short films shot between the beginning of the 20th century and 1950, exploring animals as a resource in fashion. In the silent period, the Pathé and Gaumont company released newsreels using material from around the world. Fashion was a really important kind of mainstay in these newsreels, often being the less serious but the most pleasurable item shown at the end. A lot of [the examples] showcase really beautiful animal products – feathers, skins and snakeskin shoes. We took the idea of the Soviet montage, which becomes important in this period, to create this kind of visceral collision between different views, so that you are kind of forced to synthesise them. We focused on the industrial, the hunting of animals and stripping of skins and stuff like that, and the glamourisation of these materials in fashion. We end on a fun note with a film called The Dancing Fleece that has been in my archive for years and has now been beautifully restored by the British Film Institute. It's a colourful ballet of sheep who perform the production of woollen textiles, from shearing all the way through to the finished garment.

Screening and live music at Garden Cinema, Screen 3, 25 May 2025, 6.30pm, book tickets here.

Grounded: Fashion’s Entanglement with Nature takes place at various locations in London from 20 May – 1 June 2025.

The first image Amalia Ulman dreamed up while writing her sophomore feature involved a radiant green field and a bright blue sky. In Magic Farm, which the Argentine-Spanish filmmaker and conceptual artist also directs and stars in, the scene features her real life grandmother driving a motorcycle, the surrounding landscape an echo of the Windows XP wallpaper introduced by Microsoft in 2001. ‘I always saw it as colourful,’ Ulman shares over Zoom. ‘Stylistically, El Planeta [her debut feature, released in 2021 and shot in black and white] was formally very Argentinian, whereas this one, though it's shot in Argentina, has a Spanish feel. It's very camp and colourful, responding more to mid-80s, early-90s cinema.’

Ulman, who grew up in Gijón in Spain before studying at London’s Central Saints Martins, later moving to Los Angeles and eventually arriving in New York, has long gravitated towards explorations of class, image and identity in her practice, often in the realm of digital media: for 2014’s Excellences & Perfections, she spent several months performing various influencer archetypes on Instagram. With Magic Farm, she introduces us to a Vice-adjacent, New York-based production company comprised of Chloë Sevigny, Alex Wolff and Joe Apollonio (Simon Rex plays their boss, and Sevigny’s partner, who’s on the cusp of being cancelled; Ulman’s Elena takes camera and interpreting duties).

Perpetually on the hunt for ‘crazy subcultures around the world’, the group travels to a remote town called San Cristóbal, where they believe lives a musician who wears bunny ears; their intel, however, is based on social media videos reposted by a woman who works at the church, and they quickly learn that not only is he not a local, but San Cristóbals exist all over Latin America. After some moping, primarily by Wolff’s incompetent producer Jeff, they decide to fake a trend and pass it off as authentic, helped by their hostel receptionist (Guillermo Jacubowicz) and Popa (Valeria Lois), a local woman whose home is an homage to Paris, and whose adult children mostly live online, climbing trees to post selfies to their socials. In the immediate background is a genuine health crisis (and potential human interest story), that the crew are seemingly oblivious to.

‘I've always been surrounded by hipster types, because of my family and friends that went to art school, worked for Vice or American Apparel,’ reflects the filmmaker. ‘I saw the first thing in my head – my grandmother going through the fields to the church – then I thought of the documentary crew, because that's a world I understand. I don't think I'm necessarily interested in social media, that's something that’s always been misinterpreted in my work. I truly don't give a shit about technology; I hate art shows about the intersection of art and technology – I like paper books and receive a newspaper every morning. I have used these tools because they're contemporary, and that's what people use.’

While internet culture is a compelling vehicle for her interests, Ulman is most actively engrossed in the way people relate to and understand each other, and the film employs several layers to this point. ‘A lot of that interest comes from being Argentinian, it's a place where everyone's trying to pass as something else – there's all this myth and masking. Definitely, in my family, there’s things they do to seem less indigenous,’ she says, relaying that her mum’s side is predominantly Guarani Indian. Popa’s home – where the kitchen is filled with stereotypical French phrases and a picture of the Eiffel Tower decorates the fridge – was inspired by Ulman’s great aunt. ‘She looks very indigenous, so doubles down on this idea that she has French blood. You go to her house and she’s listening to Baroque,’ offers the director. ‘Argentinians save for years to go to Europe, it's very important for them.’

‘I learned from an early age about code switching, for example I changed my name when I went to art school,’ she continues, ‘because people couldn't pronounce my name, but also because of the associations with being Latin American.’

The need to have, or absence of, these kind of internal negotiations was something Ulman leaned into with the film, and informed not only the way the New Yorkers behave but how they dress and subsequently are perceived moving through the world. Sevigny’s Edna, for example, casually strolls down a dirt road in pristine white Margiela Tabis. ‘I thought there was a level of comedy to that. Personally, when I travel, I like to be invisible,' says Ulman. 'So that's something I was playing with – the idea that they never have to code switch, because I find that fascinating.'

Magic Farm is released on 16 May 2025

curzon.com

The pastel-tinted world of Wes Anderson is celebrated in a retrospective coming to London’s Design Museum in November 2025. In collaboration with La Cinémathèque Française, and in partnership with Wes Anderson and American Empirical Pictures, this is the first exhibition dedicated to the director that looks at the evolution of his films.

'Wes Anderson: The Archive' at the Design Museum

The Design Museum exhibition titled 'Wes Anderson: The Archives', will showcase over 600 models, props and costumes from Anderson’s films, from his first experiments in the 1990s right up to his most recent Oscar-winning The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Accompanying this, the exhibition will also feature his first drafts and work-in-progress material, including small-scale models such as the 3m wide model of The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Other highlights include the vending machines from Asteroid City; a Fendi fur coat worn by Gwyneth Paltrow as Margot Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums; and Mr Fox wearing his signature corduroy suit. The museum says this is the first time these items have been displayed in the UK.

The filmmaker is known for his eye for symmetry, long takes and a postmodern aesthetic. With everything steeped in pastels, his signature style has inspired boutiques, bakeries, hotels and showrooms around the world. Now, Anderson sees his aesthetic in the context of an upcoming espionage black comedy, The Phoenician Scheme, which hits cinemas 30 May.

The exhibition journeys through all of the films, every one unique, yet together entirely cohesive and notably ‘Wes’. Explore the director's inspirations and homages, from his first feature film Bottle Rocket to the globally recognised The Grand Budapest Hotel and the melancholic charm of The Royal Tenenbaums.

The exhibition, which will run until 26 July 2026, is set to offer behind-the-scenes insight into Anderson's fascinating world and celebrates his influence on contemporary cinema.

'Wes Anderson: The Archives' will run at the Design Museum from 21 November 2025 until 26 July 2026. Tickets are available to pre-book here: designmuseum.org

There are very few directors that can build tension with just the scroll of a mouse or the click of a button, one of which is Kiyoshi Kurosawa. From the Japanese director known best for techno-thriller Pulse and j-horror Cure, Kurosawa's latest techno-thriller Cloud follows a young reseller, Yoshii (Masaki Suda), in his descent into the black market world of merchandising.

The quality and authenticity of the products Yoshii resells are of little importance to him, and yet the final number on his screen is. Kurosawa presents blackmarket dealing as a gambling addiction inviting audiences to watch Yoshii’s dead eyed glance as he watches the products on the screen. When the anonymous item is desirable Yoshii’s screen quickly fills with red 'sold out' labels, but his products don’t always sell and as his reputation as a dodgy dealer spreads online the obsessive reseller is left desperately chasing his purchasing high.

Cloud stands in bleak contrast with modern media's obsession with scammers, gamblers and thieves (Uncut Gems, Bling Ring) partly because despite exploring greed, Kurosawa paints a very bland portrait. What makes Cloud different from these financially motivated thrillers is its lack of aspirational opulence. Where Uncut Gems has gaudy diamond encrusted accessories and Spring Breakers has bags of cash, Cloud only offers an unending number of boxes that are loaded onto Yoshii’s shelves unopened and return to his car and onto the courier in the same condition. Their value is deemed by what the market for them is making them Schrodinger’s boxes, an infinite number of unseen goods that matter only because of the demand of unseen buyers.

It is never entirely apparent whether Yoshii wishes for wealth in any extreme sense. He clearly wishes for more than the exhaustion of the daily grind of the average worker with nothing to show for it. A crime that we are all guilty of. Yoshii has some assemblage of aspirations beyond being a factory worker, but he doesn’t yearn for material wealth. His growing addiction to reselling goods seems instead to be his attempt at gaming life. Yoshii’s downfall is not particularly unique or special. Nor is there anything extraordinary about Yoshii’s desires or ambitions, which is very much in keeping with Kurosawa’s characters. Alongside an electronic hum that haunts much of his filmography, Kurosawa remains grounded in the mundane, even while descending into a protagonist's personal hell.

Kurossawa’s latest techno-thriller Cloud is arguably two movies in one. The first act is a slow yet engaging crawl as Yoshii finds himself quickly entangled in the sticky matter of the dark web, while the second is a brutal shootout sequence in which the people Yoshii has disregarded in his financial climb seek their revenge. The resell market Cloud depicts, alludes to the vacuous desperation of our online worlds, bringing strangers together in a chaotic bid for revenge, apt for these digital outlaws. Cloud is Kurosawa's latest film to critique digital society, demonstrating how the internet casts a bleak shadow over our reality, hollowing out its key players and leaving them stuck in a world where a win means more than life itself.

Cloud is released on 25 April 2025

picturehouses.com

It is, by now, a well-known fact that Yorgos Lanthimos’ films are not for the faint of heart. Delighting in the strange and absurd, he first made a name for himself with Dogtooth (2009): a film in which a domineering father imprisons his three adult children in a fenced compound, cut off from the outside. If Poor Things (2023) was a Victorian sadomodernist twist on the ‘Born Sexy Yesterday’ trope, his latest, Kinds of Kindness (2024), offers up a spectacle of cruelty – featuring, among other kinds of evil, brainwashing sex cults, murder, rape, domestic violence, and cannibalism. In Lanthimos’ worlds, humanity is stripped of moral pretension; his characters obey inscrutable logics, inflicting Haneke-like violence with malevolent glee.

Given the content of these films, it might then seem an odd choice to describe the behind-the-scenes stills from these productions as beautiful. But two books, Dear God, the Parthenon is still broken (Void, 2024) – shot during the filming of Poor Things – and i shall sing these songs beautifully (Mack, 2024) – made alongside Kinds of Kindness – prove otherwise. Now, an exhibition at Webber Gallery in Los Angeles, in collaboration with publisher Mack, collates images from both books in the first public presentations of Lanthimos’ photography.

While his films use visceral grotesquery to unsettle, his photography adopts a radically different strategy: one of absence and suggestion. An empty pool – familiar to those who’ve seen Kinds of Kindness – is bathed in afternoon light; a desolate film-set town with buildings clad in scaffolding. Drawing from Sappho’s surviving fragments, Lanthimos’ photographs, in their stillness, take on a life of their own: self-contained places, uncanny and unresolved, that ask the viewer to sit with their strangeness.

Much was made of Poor Things set design at the time of its release: conjuring a world that is at once extravagant, delirious, and pieced together like a dream hoarded in Bella’s mind. Lanthimos, chasing the uncanny gloss of Old Hollywood, shot on a studio lot, where painted backdrops stood in for sky and horizon. In Budapest, four vast, Escher-esque sets sprawled across giant soundstages to create London and Lisbon. In Lanthimos’ photos, we see the making of Bella’s universe; a cherry picker against a blazing amber sea, Jerrod Carmichael (who plays a noble philosopher in the film, introducing Bella to ideas of socialism and existentialism) leaning against the cruise ship’s railings. Photos of limp legs, limbs, and obscured faces channel Kubrick’s penchant for the eerie, using bodies as objects suspended between life and artifice. Unlike the controlled chaos of his films, these images capture something quieter – a moment between action and inaction, between performance and reality.

There is, however, a different story at play on the Kinds of Kindness sets. Lanthimos’ eye lingers on the in-between spaces here: vacant rooms that once held spectacle and the detritus left in the wake of storytelling. It’s a new kind of world-building – not the feverish excess of Poor Things, but something more ghostly and forensic. What does it mean to make a world within a world, then, only to abandon it? In Lanthimos’ films, illusion is heightened to the point of absurdity. Yet his photography strips that deception bare, inviting us to consider what he has discarded: the melancholy of a half-built dream.

Yorgos Lanthimos: Photographs is on from 29 March until 24 May 2025 at Webber Gallery LA, in collaboration with Mack, webberrepresents.com

i shall sing these songs beautifully is published by Mack, £40 from mackbooks.co.uk

When a customer orders a cherry coke in Alonso Ruizpalacios’ new film, La Cocina – a politically pertinent, oftentimes feverishly paced reworking of Arnold Wesker’s 1957 play, The Kitchen – it sets in motion near inevitable chaos. The drinks machine is broken (just a hairband prevents it from flooding the entire kitchen), so the moment a preoccupied waitress pushes the lever, it’s game over: the sticky brown liquid starts gushing, making a paddling pool of the floor. A chef shouts at the waitress, another waitress stumbles over a kitchen porter then immediately begins to cry (it’s her first day); two others are celebrating something unrelated with a kiss across the work stations, and eventually the head chef will break into song. The ticket machine continues to beep throughout, spitting orders for burgers, pizzas and cheesecake.

Ruizpalacios was initiated into the pressure cooker of the commercial kitchen in the early 2000s, when he got a job at the central London tourist trap known as Rainforest Cafe, to subsidise an acting degree at the prestigious Rada. Around the same time, he read Wesker’s play. ‘I was struck by the complex caste system that still exists in kitchens, and that are an essential part of what keeps them functioning,’ he observed in a director’s statement that accompanies the release. ‘As with the crew in a ship, hierarchy is not something that is taken lightly behind those swinging restaurant doors.’ Indeed, it’s a prime venue for storylines that riff on the sociopolitical, and the filmmaker’s contemporary retelling addresses immigration, abortion, racism and capitalism. Leaning into this latter arena and the gulf between work and living, early on he sets the tone by inserting a passage from Henry David Thoreau’s 1863 essay, Life Without Principle.

More frenetic episodes follow, punctuating the picture’s two-hour, 20-minute run time (like the foul-mouthed but wholly playful chorus that announces the lunch shift, and the ostentatious self-sabotaging performed by a single chef at the film’s finale), while a series of softer moments offer temporary tenderness. Swapping London for New York, Ruizpalacios sets the action in a fictional Times Square restaurant called The Grill. Here, the waiting staff (exclusively female, largely but not solely white) don politely striped dresses and carry aggressively large trays, while the kitchen’s workforce are predominantly immigrants from South America, the Caribbean and North Africa, mostly undocumented. Burger guy Max (Spencer Granese) is the lone white American back of house, and his dissatisfaction at the situation he makes clear with a sharp tongue and uncomfortable body language.

Newcomer Estela, played by Anna Díaz, leads us to The Grill and subsequently the nucleus of Ruizpalacios’ story: her first day introductions provide a tour of the various work stations and their occupants, and eventually we arrive at Pedro (Raúl Briones, familiar from the director’s 2021 picture, A Cop Movie). Alongside anguish, she has brought him old photographs and, most significantly, hoja santa leaves from his mother’s garden in Puebla, which he will use in the film’s single concession to food porn, delicately constructing a sandwich for his girlfriend Julia (Rooney Mara), a waitress. The pair’s romance is La Cocina’s central thread, and begins with a meet-cute that recalls Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet, the warmth and smiles of the iconic fish tank scene from 1996 replaced by a frosty reception and industrial tank of lobsters to be served at lunch. It quickly transpires this isn’t actually their first meeting at all, and she is pregnant with his child.

The film is elegantly shot in black and white, which lends it a clever atemporal quality (see also the absence of mobile phones and the persistent smoking by all parties), additionally underscoring the weight of the smaller choices Ruizpalacios makes in manufacturing a portrait of the invisible workforce that the film aims to highlight. The streaming liquid, for example, could have just as easily been regular coke, but the cherry factor speaks to the all-American façade being sold by The Grill. Elsewhere, Max’s more elaborate uniform, which features an armour-like apron, further distinguishes him as separate from his colleagues, hinting at career aspirations less readily available to those around him.

Perhaps the most telling background work, however, is reserved for the screensaver on a manager’s computer: as Pedro is interrogated about some missing money, a maze on the screen beside him replicates hitting a wall, mirroring the situation for so many in the building. ‘The world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle!’ Thoreau once wrote. ‘I am awakened almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams.’

La Cocina is released UK-wide on 28 March 2025

lacocina.film

For most film festivals queer cinema is either intertwined with the overall line up or given its own category, but few dedicate their lineup entirely to LGBTQIA+ cinema. One festival which does is the BFI Flare festival in London, which annually offers a wide variety of independent films and those already highly accoladed in the industry, explicitly platforming queer cinema. As BFI Flare gears up for its 11th year it brings to the capital a lineup filled with energy, political expression and love in all its forms, taking the community beyond shallow representation into a rich tapestry of queer experience through international cinema.

I was lucky enough to catch Viet and Nam at LFF and I wish this achingly beautiful film wasn’t hovering below the radar of most film festival attendees. Following two young coal miners who face the possible collapse of cave systems with each passing day, the young men’s relationship blooms as they trace their lineage through a nation struck by grief, hoping an understanding of collective past will light the way for their future.

Much like Viet and Nam, many of BFI Flare’s titles already have a number of festival garlands adorning their film posters. Really Happy Someday, which debuted at Toronto International Film Festival, follows a trans masc singer, shunned by his agent post transition, and fighting for a career in the music industry. Although it is not a musical, J Stevens’ dedication to the trans community’s rightful place in the scene is shown through the huge array of trans artists featured on Really Happy Someday’s original score.

Love and sex are prominent themes in queer identity, centred above all else mainly to mainstream media’s focus on romance and the ongoing cliche of the homosexual tragic romance film. But as BFI Flare annually dedicates its line up to queerness, the nuances of identity are shown, with many of the films of the festival looking beyond sexual passion to the power of queer friendships and the inherent necessity of political stance. Tensions arise in smalltown South Korea when lesbian bar-owner decides to run for Mayor in Manok, Canadian entry Lakeview follows a bisexual divorcee as she reconnects with her friends and her youth, while Shatara Michelle Ford’s Dreams in Nightmares, is a kinetic road trip film exploring black queer friendship.

Narrative cinema may be at the forefront, but there are also a great number of vibrant documentaries on offer at BFI Flare. Including a memoir of the outrageous electroclash musician Peaches in Peaches goes Bananas, and two documentaries exploring queer nightlife, How To Live reporting from Nairobi’s ballroom scene and Truth or Dare depicting Berlin’s public and private sex positive world. Alongside a host of new releases, the BFI brings the recently restored Winter Kept Us Warm (1965) to a modern audience. Known best as Canada’s first gay film, set in the snow-covered campus of the University of Toronto, a senior and junior college student’s playful friendship turns into romance and young lovers struggle for independence.

Queer cinema is so often limited to Hollywood’s cis, monogamous narratives in which romance and prejudice are its dominating themes. Of course bigotry plays a role in the lives of the community but in dedicating itself entirely to LGBTQIA+ cinema, BFI Flare offers an expansive exploration of the many vital facets of queer experience far beyond its denouncers.

BFI Flare Film Festival runs from 19 - 30 March in London

whatson.bfi.org.uk

It’s been five years since Bong Joon Ho made Oscars history in 2020 with Parasite – a contemporary classic of social satire, and only the second film in history to win both the Cannes Palme d’Or and the Academy Award for Best Picture. Now, the wait for a follow-up is finally over as the long-delayed sci-fi romp Mickey 17 hits the big screen in the UK (7 March 2025).

To mark the occasion, the BFI invited the Korean filmmaker to reflect on his career via an exclusive ‘In Conversation’ event ahead of a series of retrospective screenings in March and April. Wallpaper* was on hand to indulge in his wisdom – find out what we learned below.

Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000)

Bong’s feature debut was, in his words, ‘a complete box office disaster’. Even today, this dark comedy about missing dogs in an apartment complex feels like the black sheep of his canon. But the BFI London Film Festival thought highly of it in 2000 –prompting a memorable occasion for the visiting filmmaker that year.

‘It was an exciting time for Korean cinema,’ Bong explains – so the ambassador of South Korea came to see the film at that year’s festival. ‘But he was very anxious because there was this documentary out about Koreans eating dogs. It was a sensitive issue – and then this film of mine was all about serial puppy killing. I remember him being so nervous and tense. I felt incredibly bad!’

Memories of Murder (2003)

Bong’s 2003 detective thriller was his native breakthrough – and it’s still considered one of the greatest Korean films of all time. Its rich, detailed plotting was largely inspired by meticulous research into a series of shocking crimes that rocked the country in the late 1980s.

‘There were ten confirmed victims over six or seven years,’ says Bong. ‘And at the time of filming, the case was unsolved. Before I could start writing, I was investigating and meeting detectives and journalists – but I really wanted to meet the killer himself. I even carried a list of questions in my pocket just in case I ran into him by coincidence. I was obsessed with this man and this case.’

Profilers assumed that he was either dead or abroad when the killings stopped in the early 1990s, but it later turned out that he was already in prison. In 2019, Lee Choon-jae – incarcerated for the murder of his sister-in-law in 1994 – was implicated by new DNA technology that connected him to one of the unsolved murder cases, leading to an admission of responsibility for the deaths of 14 other women.

The Host (2006)

True crime was a running theme for Bong in the early 2000s. ‘In 2000, there was a case where a US military doctor gave orders to pour formaldehyde into the Han River,’ he recalls. ‘The MacFarland case was done quite seriously on the news – but I kept feeling like I was watching the beginning of a sci-fi film…’

The events were recreated for the opening of the director’s international breakthrough, The Host – a monster movie otherwise remembered for its unique, tadpole-like creature design. The key concept was ‘a sick fish’, says Bong, praising the work of ‘genius’ Jang Hee-chul – who also designed the creatures of Mickey 17 and Okja.

‘If you look at contaminated rivers, a lot of the fish have bent spines – that was the starting point for this design,’ he says. Up to 1,500 different sketches were made, with the winning idea taking further inspiration from an unconventional source. ‘We had a lot of photos of Steve Buscemi in the office,’ says Bong. ‘Especially from Fargo, when he’s bloody and hysteric.’

Mother (2009)

Music plays a vivid role in Bong’s films – from the unexpected John Denver needle-drop in Okja to Jung Jae-il’s baroque score for Parasite. But landing famed Korean guitarist Lee Byung-woo for 2009 thriller Mother was a real coup for the director: ‘I remember buying his vinyl records and excitedly unwrapping them. I’ve been a fan of his since high school.’

Lee played guitar for the movie’s memorable opening sequence, which features veteran actress Kim Hye-ja dancing in a meadow. ‘We shot that scene in broad daylight,’ Bong recalls, ‘and she felt quite awkward. So she had me and my producer – who’s quite a big man – dance along with her behind the camera. It was… not so beautiful.’

Mickey 17 (2025)

‘My producers were quite surprised when I took on this project,’ says Bong – whose only previous adaption was 2013’s Snowpiercer, based on a French graphic novel. But when the book Mickey 17 landed on his desk, it was a no-brainer: ‘The story, the concept, and the character of Mickey Barnes were captivating.’

Ashton Edwards’ original novel is based on the concept of ‘human printing’. Bong mentions Hewlett-Packard in his explanation. ‘That in itself is quite funny,’ he says. ‘It’s inhumane to think of Robert Pattinson getting printed out to do these failed missions and to die over and over again, but I was fascinated.’

In the novel, Mickey is killed seven times – ‘But my film is called Mickey 17.’ The penny drops: ‘It’s not that I wanted to create a serial killer movie – it’s simply his job to repeat the routine!’

The BFI are celebrating the work of Bong Joon Ho with a season of films screening at BFI IMAX now, including Mickey 17, and throughout April at BFI Southbank

whatson.bfi.org.uk

Ranger is a documentary about East Africa’s first all-female anti-poaching unit, but it opens with a rite of passage for men. In its first few minutes, viewers watch as members of the Maa community in Northern Kenya take part in a circumcision ceremony, a ritual that initiates them into the community as warriors. The purpose of ceremonies like these, explains one of Ranger’s central characters, Virginia, is to illustrate that these men possess the qualities the community prizes: physical strength, fortitude, and bravery.

‘The men, they have a sacred story about their lives. About how they handle things as men,’ she says. ‘For example, if you kill an elephant when you are a warrior, they will put a mark downwards on his right side so everyone can see that he is brave and courageous.’ There are many ways men can announce their courage, their importance. For women, however, there has never been any such tradition, but the introduction of a female wildlife ranger programme to the area, as the film shows, changes that.

Ranger: watch the trailer

Ranger: the story

Ranger follows Virginia and 11 other women as they undergo a year-long, therapy-like training programme to protect endangered species, such as elephants and lions, from poachers in the Laikipia region. To prepare for the gruelling physical and mental challenges of this work, the women are forced to confront their fears, address their greatest insecurities, and share the hardships they have undergone as wives and mothers. They do this through trauma-release exercises, survival training in the jungle, vegan cooking courses, meditation sessions and more.

The result is a documentary that offers a look into a community that, for many viewers, will feel dramatically different from their own and yet, at the same time, relatable. As the producer, Kate Garwood, says, ‘this film really touches on universal themes. I think it's really amazing to see a completely different perspective, in a very different part of the world, but at the same time recognise struggles that almost all women face: taking care of your kids, keeping a roof over your head, working and going through relationship issues.'

Garwood is the driving force behind the creation of Ranger. Most of the film takes place on the small-footprint eco-safari retreat she runs alongside her husband, a passionate conservationist who purchased eight contiguous, overgrazed, and derelict cattle ranches about 20 years ago. At the time, the land was barren, with eroded soil and no wildlife, making it unsuitable for farming or ranching. Determined to restore it, he spent the next two decades rehabilitating and rewilding the area, allowing nature to reclaim the space. In the first year, he saw just one lion, but today, the land is home to at least 50 lions, leopards, giraffes, Grevy's zebras, and endangered patas monkeys. His efforts led to the establishment of a 50,000-acre conservancy, where rangers patrol the land, engage in anti-poaching efforts, and support the local community.

For Garwood, this is the unique power of documentary filming. When the couple met Damian Manda, who runs Akashinga, a programme for female rangers in Zimbabwe, at Sundance, they realised there was an opportunity to create a similar initiative at the reserve. ‘We were deeply inspired by the idea of women becoming primary guardians of the land, and when we expressed interest, he helped design a similar initiative for us – the first female conservation ranger programme in East Africa.’

Up next for Garwood is a documentary called The Librarians, about women in the United States public school library system from Florida to Texas, New Jersey and Louisiana who are working to protect the rights of kids to be able to read all kinds of literature, including books by Tony Morrison and Judy Blume, as well as those that reference Black history and tell LGBTQ stories. The documentary, which was recently screened at Sundance 2025 and has been accepted to South by Southwest, will be available to audiences later this year. For Garwood, creating films like The Librarians and Ranger is important because telling localised stories that touch on universal issues makes it easier, ultimately, for us to understand perspectives that are not our own.

‘It’s a very difficult landscape to make films about subjects outside the narrow lens of crime, cults, or celebrities, which dominate the documentary space right now,’ she says. ‘But I think it’s really important that filmmakers continue pushing forward, even in these complicated times. When people become real to you, empathy comes in. It’s very different from seeing someone as just an “other.” It’s easy to dismiss those far away, but when you witness their lives and struggles, you realise – oh, I connect to this person, I see something of myself in them. And that’s where all these vital lessons come from.’

rangerfilm.com

Hollywood loves to present Las Vegas as a bejewelled land of hedonism, where dreams come true and the party carries on long after your exit. While cinema usually leaves us with this eternal image of Sin City and the knowledge that the roulette wheel just keeps on spinning, the reality is rather different for those who permanently inhabit this strange city. The Last Showgirl, directed by Gia Coppola and written by Kate Gersten, offers a depiction of Las Vegas long after the party has ended. Centring on a bewildered Shelly (Pamela Anderson), who has worked as a showgirl for 30 years and is struggling to accept the final curtain call.

Nightclub Le Razzle Dazzle’s impending closure affects many members of staff besides Shelly. Fellow dancers Jodi (Kiernan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song) are on the hunt for other jobs along The Strip, and showrunner Eddie (Dave Bautista), who's been with the show almost as long as Shelly, is reminiscing. Meanwhile, ex-showgirl Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), is Shelly’s rock and crystal ball to a future devoid of rhinestone bras that she’s not willing to give up.

Shelly has a stubborn quality to her ambition, one that may have served her well in the early days of her dancing career, but at the tail end of it appears petulant. Refusing to believe it, she attends the same auditions as the younger dancers and is bluntly told she no longer has her sex appeal.

The choice to cast Pamela Anderson is clear, as an actor who has spent her career underestimated and valued for her beauty alone. Her performance of Shelly offers a nuanced portrayal of an emotionally stunted individual. Shelly has spent so much time in the spotlight that the dazzling brightness has affected her ability to truly see others – not the young Jodi who comes to her for comfort, nor her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourde), who has learnt not to expect such maternal instincts. The Las Vegas dancer is often portrayed as cutthroat in their ambition, but what exists once you reach the top? A drip feed of attention while you stagnate. Anderson’s interpretation of Shelly is what might happen if Showgirls’ Nomi never quit the stage, and like a hypersexualised version of Wendy, chose to stay in Neverland – forfeiting her future for the promise of eternal glamour.

A heavy layer of nostalgia coats the film, evident in the original Bob Mackie costumes for The Last Showgirl, acquired by costume designer Jacqui Getty and stylist Jose Rodrigo. Cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s decision to shoot on film adds a saturated, textured quality, that encourages a rose-tinted perspective, through which the Vegas pyramids seem as monumental as the world wonders they impersonate.

One of The Last Showgirl's most memorable scenes is of Jamie Lee Curtis, in a red leotard tuxedo she’s required to wear while she works the Casino floor, performing a slow dance to the tune of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. It’s a moment that encapsulates the dream-like potential of this high-stakes city and the possible tragedy of committing your life to its kitsch opulence. In Gia Coppola's sophomore film, nostalgia is a drug just as stultifying as any other.

The Last Showgirl is on general release 28 February 2025

odeon.co.uk

From the earliest beats of The Last Showgirl – Gia Coppola’s third directorial feature, originally conceived by Kate Gersten as a play, now largely revered as Pamela Anderson’s comeback vehicle – it’s established that the film’s extravagant outfits will play a vital role, and that the choreography required to navigate their excess, introduced via an obstructive door handle, carries subtext. ‘That thing is asking for ripped costumes,’ vents one Las Vegas dancer to another near the picture’s beginning, her demeanour already tense on account of a costume change. Barely seconds after, having ripped a substantial hole in a wing on the same lever, Anderson’s protagonist echoes the accusation, quietly lamenting that it’s the oldest wing in the show.

‘The important thing was to make sure we got the right showgirl clothes. Without that, it was going to be a problem,’ says costume designer Jacqueline Getty, who collaborated with Rainy Jacobs on the film’s sartorial components. The ripped wing in question was an archive piece borrowed from Caesars Palace: all of the film’s stage costumes, with the exception of the wing, were Jubilee! originals, designed by Bob Mackie and Pete Menefee for the long-running production, which shuttered in 2016 after 35 years. A friend of Coppola’s, Dita Von Teese, was already using Jubilee! pieces in her Vegas residency in late 2023, and ultimately made the connection. ‘It was incredibly lucky,’ acknowledges Getty, ‘and really set the tone, the realness.’

‘The Last Showgirl’: the story behind the showstopping costumes

Shot on 16mm, The Last Showgirl is visually rich and tenderly observed, leaning into the nostalgic lens of Lisa Eisner and David Hickey’s 2006 monograph The Book on Vegas, with a dreamy, feminine aesthetic that’s attuned to the feathers and rhinestones worn on stage and screen. ‘We were ambassadors for style and grace,’ observes Shelly (Anderson) at one point, highlighting to her young counterparts, played by Brenda Song and Kiernan Shipka, the former influence of their revue show, Le Razzle Dazzle. In the film’s present, the show is about to close and Shelly, its most senior dancer at 57, is realising she’s ill-equipped for much else, having given 30 years to it, effectively rejecting a marriage and life with her daughter as a result. Much of the film’s action subsequently takes place in the show’s dressing room, the centre of her world, where glittering gowns provide a sugar-coated backdrop.

‘A month before shooting, my best friend Arianne Phillips [costume designer on A Complete Unknown] flew up to Vegas with me,’ continues Getty. ‘We got to go through the archives and pick what we wanted; it was complete candy. Pam tried all the pieces and you could see her posture change – those headpieces are really heavy. On movies you wear those things for ten hours – they're meant for wearing on stage for ten minutes.’ While a seamstress was on hand to alter garments for the actors’ frames (dancers are usually around 5ft 10in suggests Getty, actors between 5ft 2in and 5ft 6in), the vintage nature of the pieces meant all those on set were party to their preservation. ‘If crystals fell, everyone would dive [to catch them], because you've got to sew them back on – they were museum pieces, they don't make them anymore.’

Off stage, Shelly’s life remains tethered to the show – her best friend Annette, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, is a former dancer now working in the casinos, while ex-boyfriend Eddie (Dave Bautista) is the stage manager. Her wardrobe reflects this too, with details like the diamante fringe that adorns an otherwise plain denim jacket. ‘Pam went through everything, she knew pieces of Shelly and would say, “Shelly wouldn't wear this”, or, “she would like this”,’ notes Getty, who kept everything second-hand. ‘Shelly’s heyday probably was in the late 1990s, so she would have those silhouettes in her closet, with things from the early 2000s. She wouldn’t have anything brand new.’

Annette, whose trajectory is some years ahead of Shelly’s (and affection toward the show, dwindling at best), dons her own outfit for entertaining, serving drinks to handsy gamblers in a shiny bellhop uniform with glossy, flesh-coloured tights. ‘Jamie is the best person ever to do costumes with, she’s such a character actress,’ enthuses Getty. ‘She wanted to know Annette’s perfume – she came up with Opium – and had the idea that Annette wouldn't wear jewellery because she’d probably sold her pieces to make money. Also, that Annette all the time would have stockings underneath her pants, the shiny stockings waitresses in Vegas wear – compression stockings for serving drinks – it holds them, and their legs get tired walking around for ten hours. They're like a bathing suit.’

In her own downtime, over the compression stockings, Annette’s wardrobe features floral jeans and cut-out tops, the look’s dated nature underscored by dyed orange hair and frosted make-up. With Bautista’s Eddie meanwhile, whose backstage uniform is filled with darker tones and bold shirts, there’s a vague mirror to Shelly’s favourite era – a nod to their shared history – and perhaps one of the more surprising references, a 1990s pop star, provided Getty’s source material. ‘The silhouette of the jeans is like what you would see Peter Andre wearing in the early 2000s, that vibe,’ she says. ‘They were so unattractive, but [Bautista] was incredible. Eddie has that bit of edge going on, and you’ve got to make it happen fast on camera, so the shirts and leather jacket were a kind of read of his character. He was amazing, how he transformed. I was shocked he got into the character pieces.’

The Last Showgirl is on limited release now, with a full UK release on 28 February.

Watch the trailer below.

When thinking of Mike White’s hit HBO series The White Lotus, two things immediately come to mind: Jennifer Coolidge – aka the fabulously unhinged Tanya McQuoid – delivering her now-iconic one-liners in that signature husky drawl, and the Four Seasons. Two seemingly unrelated things that, in true The White Lotus fashion, fit together perfectly in its darkly comedic, twisted world.

Though The White Lotus is a fictional luxury hospitality brand, audiences didn’t take long to recognise the real-life locations behind the drama after its premiere in 2021. Season one unfolded at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea, where the pandemic closure granted the production team rare access to film across the entire property – an ideal setting for a story steeped in wealth and power dynamics.

Season two transported us to Four Seasons Taormina at San Domenico Palace, where the magnetism of a reimagined 14th-century Sicilian convent set the stage for a season fixated on desire and deception. As anticipation builds for chapter three, the show heads to the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui in Thailand, where the tropical setting and deep-rooted cultural influences will complement White’s next thematic pivot: a satirical exploration of death, Eastern spirituality, and religion.

What started as Four Seasons properties simply providing ethereal backdrops for the first two seasons of The White Lotus has since evolved into a strategic marketing partnership with HBO and Max, bringing the Canadian luxury hotel and resort company’s quintessential luxury straight into viewers’ living rooms.

Ahead of the new season’s release this Sunday (16 February 2025), we asked Marc Speichert, executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Four Seasons, to get the inside scoop on the brand’s perfect synergy with The White Lotus.

Four Seasons and ‘The White Lotus’: a perfect match

Wallpaper*: Each Four Seasons property featured in the series almost feels like a character in its own right. What’s the process for selecting which hotel will play this starring role, and how do you think each location captures the theme of its respective season?

Marc Speichert: From Maui to Taormina and now Koh Samui, each Four Seasons property featured in The White Lotus immerses viewers in the essence of its destination, capturing its unique culture, natural beauty, and atmosphere. With 133 properties around the globe, we operate in the most dynamic and compelling destinations, each with its own story to tell and something to offer travellers of all kinds.

The destinations were also carefully selected to match each season’s distinctive theme. For example, Koh Samui was not only chosen for its visually stunning environment overlooking the Gulf of Thailand but also for its thematic alignment with the season’s exploration of Eastern spirituality and existential themes. The Resort was designed by Bill Bensley, inspired by traditional southern Thai architecture with thatched roofs, indoor and outdoor spaces, and constructed into the hillside to ensure exceptional views no matter where you are.

W*: Four Seasons tends to keep its promotional efforts quite understated – does this partnership with a high-profile, dramatic show signal a shift in the brand’s marketing strategy?

MS: The marketing partnership with HBO and Max represents an exciting milestone for our brand, embracing a cultural phenomenon that celebrates extraordinary storytelling and the universal passion for travel. It also underscores the growing connection between travel and pop culture – two worlds that naturally complement each other, as travel fuels creativity and sparks curiosity on a global scale.

Our partnership with The White Lotus is a testament to the dynamism and quality of our hotels and resorts. As we grow towards the future, we continue to focus on destinations that are most important to luxury travellers, while creating exclusive opportunities to explore the world with Four Seasons.

W*: Since the partnership with The White Lotus, have the Four Seasons properties featured in the show (as well as others) attracted a different type of guest?

MS: Four Seasons has observed significant interest from guests eager to explore Hawaii and Italy following the first two seasons of The White Lotus. We’re already seeing a similar positive response for Thailand as excitement builds around season three.

The growth in visitor numbers after The White Lotus has been truly remarkable, with a substantial surge in interest and bookings observed during and after the airing of both the first and second seasons. For example, Maui experienced a 425% year-over-year increase in website visits and a 386% increase in availability checks during season one alone, an indicator of the impact that The White Lotus has had on overall property interest and brand enhancement.

Gen Zs and Millennials are certainly a target for our brand, as they represent the next generation of luxury travellers. These demographic groups are crucial to our growth plans, aligning with broader trends and given generational wealth shifts. With a strong interest in film, television, and culture, set-jetting has been an incredible platform for us to tap into the interests of these generations. Our internal research shows that 88% of Millennials who watch the show and are aware of Four Seasons associate it positively with the brand, while 71% express a strong likelihood of visiting the featured properties.

As enthusiasm for The White Lotus continues to translate into real-world travel demand, we’re excited to bring these experiences to even more guests around the world.

W*: What’s been your favourite aspect of the partnership so far?

MS: Our connection to The White Lotus has had an incredible halo effect across our brand. With the rise of ‘set-jetting’, we know that travellers are making destination decisions based on their favourite films and TV series. It has opened the doors for even more people to experience our beautiful hotels and their surrounding destinations.

W*: Is there a particular experience, as seen in the show, that you’d recommend trying?

MS: Having travelled to each of our properties that play backdrops in The White Lotus, there is so much to explore in each of the destinations. The outrigger canoe experience in Maui, exploring the cobblestone streets and the Teatro Antico in Taormina, and taking a lesson at the Muay Thai boxing ring in Koh Samui would all be highlights.

For those travelling with Four Seasons in other parts of the world, we are introducing exclusive guest experiences and bookable offerings to celebrate season three of The White Lotus, including screening events, pop-up bars and poolside escapes.

W*: For devoted fans of the show, what sort of special experiences or events can they look forward to at Four Seasons properties in celebration of the new season?

MS: To celebrate this new season, we will be introducing exclusive on-property experiences across our portfolio. Soon to be unveiled, these include exclusive screening events in Prague, Koh Samui, and more; Poolside Escape Cabanas in Palm Beach, Napa Valley and Dubai; The White Lotus-inspired pop-up bars in Thailand and Singapore; and The White Lotus Afternoon Tea at Four Seasons Hotel London at Park Lane and select Thai resorts.

W*: With the renewal of The White Lotus for a fourth season, what can we expect? Could the next destination be a shift away from the sun-soaked locations?

MS: We are thrilled that The White Lotus has been renewed for a fourth season and look forward to seeing how the story unfolds.

The White Lotus Season 3 premiers this Sunday, 16 February 2025 at 9 pm EST/PST on HBO and Max

‘Martin Parr shows the way the world is, not the way we want it to be,’ says director Lee Shulman on the eve of the release of I Am Martin Parr. ‘He's not showing a fake. It's not always comfortable viewing – a lot of people don't like to look at themselves. When you're eating a sandwich, you've got your mouth open, that's the way you eat a sandwich. He challenges our notions of beauty, and what is beautiful. It’s tender. I think there is a genuine love for these people. These are everyday people. People are crazy and mad. And he shows this incredible world we live in.’

To make the film, Shulman accompanied British documentary photographer Parr on a roadtrip across England, from his Bristol hometown to New Brighton, where Parr shot his famous photography series The Last Resort 40 years ago. How did Parr handle being the subject for a change? ‘Terribly!’ says Shulman. ‘He's the worst person in the world to make a film on because he doesn't do anything for the camera. Half of the shots were bribery – you know, have an ice cream to sit there. We lost him all the time on the shoot, because he kept wandering off when he'd seen something, he was totally detached from the filming of it. When he walks through the frame, it wasn't like – now, can you walk through the frame? Instead it was, he's off again, let's run and we’ll go ahead. And so he walked through the frame.’

This instinctive nature is at the heart of Parr’s distinctive documentary style, which sees him take endless photographs, rather than waiting for the light or moment to be right. He’s obviously interested in people, stopping to ask questions and chat in between photographs. ‘It's interesting [to see the process],’ says Shulman. ‘Seeing him work, it looks so simple, and then you see the result, and you think, oh my God, I get it. Here, you also see the idea that he is constantly out there photographing non-stop to get one good image. He doesn’t think every image he takes is wonderful. He's like – it's all terrible. The other day, someone asked, what's a great Martin Parr photo? And he looked at me and said, I'll tell you when I've taken it.’

Parr’s early photography, including his lesser-known black and white images included here, came under fire for seemingly trivialising the working class, an accusation Shulman addresses in the film. ‘I'm happy that he’s now rightly in the place where he is,’ he says. ‘I think he still has his detractors. There are people who love Martin and people who don't get it, but that's fine. He doesn't really care – he's not got that ego of wanting to be loved by people. It's just the way he sees the world. He is really unique. He doesn't modify the way he sees the world to anyone but himself, and that's the genius of him. It’s brutally honest in some respects, and it can be funny, or uncomfortable, and that's why his work has become so loved, because it reflects a lot of what people live.’

For Parr, a documentary photographic language is the only possibility. ‘I’m trying to show the ying and yang of British society, and to show it as I find it, rather than being romantic or good or bad, I’m trying to show both things,’ he says in I Am Martin Parr. ‘One of the good things about Britain is we do have a good sense of humour; I’m trying to show the things I think are interesting too, and sometimes they’re funny. People are funny, so how can the work not be funny? I don’t think of myself as a humorous photographer, but life is strange and life is funny.’

Adds Shulman: ‘With your heroes, you expect it to be so complicated. But with him, it's not. His camera's falling apart, he’s on his own when he could have all these assistants. There’s no ego. It's so simple, and that's what makes it great; he gets in there and he’s almost camouflaged. He's just like everyone else.’

I Am Martin Parr will be released in the UK and Ireland by Dogwoof on 21 February 2025

dogwoof.com

‘I realised I was of great value, but sensed at the same time I was worth nothing at all, unless I was useful.’ These are the inner thoughts of a white matelassé leather handbag with gold hardware by Miu Miu, thoughtfully expressed in a new short film by British director Joanna Hogg that will premiere in London tonight (13 February 2025).

Autobiografia di una Borsetta is the 29th commission from Miu Miu’s ‘Women’s Tales’ initiative, set up by Miuccia Prada 15 years ago as a platform for female-led films, and which has featured previous works by the likes of Agnes Varda, Chlöe Sevigny, Lynne Ramsay, Miranda July and So Yong Kim.

Joanna Hogg on Autobiografia di una Borsetta, her new film for Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales

Hogg’s creatively energetic offering, set in Italy, cleverly places Miu Miu’s ‘Wander’ handbag in the starring role, from its beginnings at the factory to its series of subsequent owners that include a bourgeois teenager and a female assassin. ‘I wanted it to be funny and I wanted it to be sad. And in 23 minutes that’s quite hard,’ Hogg says.

The film subtly weaves Prada-isms throughout. ‘I was really interested in that,’ says Hogg, who is wearing a neat velvet blazer and cardigan with wonderfully imposing spectacles as she unpicks her filmmaking processes over a pot of tea in Mayfair. There was no formal brief from Miu Miu, nor direct dialogue with Mrs Prada during the making of the film, though Hogg says she did approve of her eventual ideas.

‘I don’t know her [Mrs Prada] personally. I’ve met her a couple of times at events. But I was interested in representing what I knew, in a kind of almost spiritual sense in the film.’ I suggest to Hogg that there are lines of dialogue, such as the one that opens this article, which sound like Prada talking backstage after a fashion show. ‘I don’t know if you can quite unpick it as cleanly as that, but the way she is, or what I understand of how she is, is definitely in there,’ Hogg smiles.

It was also important to put herself – and some of her own ‘baggage’, she quips – within this film. ‘That’s partly why I make films, in order to feel like I’m exploring something. There’s a lens looking out and something very much looking inside of myself.’

Hogg’s critically acclaimed, meticulous body of work is often an exploration of upper-middle-class families and complex, layered relationships. It is autobiographical and novelistic. There is never a conventional script – Hogg produces a document that the actors interpret. She grew up in Kent, studied film at the National Film and Television School during the 1980s and then worked in television. Since 2008, she has made six feature films; her most recent was 2022’s ghostly masterpiece, The Eternal Daughter, executively produced by Martin Scorsese, and starring childhood friend Tilda Swinton, who also appeared in Hogg’s graduate film Caprice in 1986 and The Souvenir (2019) and The Souvenir Part II (2021).

While Hogg never rewatches her films (‘I just see too many things I want to change’), and baulks at the notion that they might be recognisably ‘Joanna Hogg’ for fear of being pigeonholed, there are arguably recognisable visual tropes in her work. One signature is a long pulled-back shot that allows the action to unfold at seemingly its own pace (‘I am very interested in the way people move,’ she says), while her background in photography often announces itself in the way she frames certain shots so that they almost resemble a painting.

There are various touches in Autobiografia di una Borsetta that are classic Hogg, such as the posh bohemian clutter of the family villa at the film’s start and a beautiful shot of the handbag sat on an ironing board, looking out of an apartment window captured in a soft wash of natural daylight. But in the spirit of always wanting to push herself, she has played with a faster pace and rhythm in this film, while for the first time, she took on the role of cinematographer as well as director. And despite a layer of melancholia – fashion can be fleeting after all – the film’s biggest departure is perhaps a sense of witty, tongue-in-cheek humour.

During Hogg’s research for Autobiografia di una Borsetta she attended the Miu Miu show in Paris in October with her film’s main star literally in her hand, an experience she said she absolutely loved. ‘It was a sort of ideas feast for me, looking at the shape of a shoe or a skirt,’ she enthuses. ‘I was actually filming the show through the handbag and establishing some of those visual ideas that I was then going to incorporate in the film.’ One of the reasons she chose the ‘Wander’ in the first place, she explains, was because ‘I saw the handle like an eye’. During the filming, she also placed an iPhone inside the bag to capture her heroine’s experience from a different visual viewpoint.

When she was very young, five or six, Hogg recalls, she was ‘quite a flamboyant dresser’; her two favourite colours were purple and orange. The character Lucky, whom Swinton plays in Caprice, a sort of surrealist romp through a woman’s magazine, was based on Hogg. ‘I was obsessed with fashion magazines; I did have tower blocks of magazines in my flat and I took them very seriously, but at the same time, I realised that perhaps they weren’t really helping my confidence. Although Caprice maybe seems like a piece of fluff, it was actually…’ She pauses. ‘I haven’t seen it for a long time… I can’t bear to watch it, it came out of quite a lot of soul searching.’ Her relationship with fashion now, she says, is still often fraught. ‘I do worry, am I wearing the right thing for the situation? I do think about it, I am quite vain in that way.’

Costume design is an integral part of her work. There are countless fashion moments in Hogg’s films, from Viv Albertine’s character D in Exhibition in an ensemble created from fluorescent tape, to Tom Burke’s Anthony in The Souvenir sporting colourful floppy bow ties and pinstripes, and Honor Swinton Byrne playing Julie (based on Hogg) in the same film, wearing vintage Vivienne Westwood, originally worn by Hogg in the 1980s.

In Autobiografia di una Borsetta she worked with Grace Snell, the costume designer she has collaborated with on her last few films. ‘My conversations with Grace are very much about what would these characters wear?’ The pair decided that a group of travellers wouldn’t wear Miu Miu because they’re anti-materialists, while they decided that it would be fun to make the assassins a bit bling. ‘It was great to have these different stories to play with, but hopefully always at the service of the character. To show something about the person,’ she muses. ‘What we wear is very revealing.’

Autobiografia di una Borsetta, by Joanna Hogg, is available on Miu Miu channels on the evening of 13 February and available to stream on MUBI from 23 February, 2025.

Tom Rowlands, one half of The Chemical Brothers, is reflecting on possibly the unlikeliest commission of his career: the largely electronic score to a historical drama about the rise, a century ago, of Mussolini.

Specifically, we’re talking about the musician’s composition ‘The Way Violence Should Be’. It’s an instrumental passage that accompanies a key scene in Sky’s eight-part, Italian-language Mussolini: Son of the Century. In a soundtrack that amplifies the drama in a TV series busy with the brutality and bloodshed that attended the birth of fascism in Italy, the paradoxically titled piece is a moment of symphonic calm.

That, the dance music don says, is deliberate. It shows the contrast between would-be-dictator Benito Mussolini’s take-no-prisoners lust for power and “the emotional toll being paid by people around that. It’s an important [moment] in the show: it demonstrates that it isn’t just wall-to-wall violence and anger. That’s one of the crazy things about the series. People go to me: ‘Oh does it end with Mussolini swinging from the lamppost?’” he continues, referring to Il Duce’s death at the hands of Italian partisans towards the end of the Second World War. “I tell them: ‘No – it’s seven hours long and it ends with him coming to power [in 1925].’”

There is, brilliantly and bracingly, “crazy” in every aesthetic aspect of Mussolini: Son of the Century. That’s a top-down edict from the series’ director, Joe Wright (Atonement, Darkest Hour). The Brit was determined to create a period drama that – like the contemporary rise of far-right politics across western democracies – resonated in 2025, particularly for younger audiences. That meant a show that is visually and stylistically “anachronistic”. Rowlands’ modern-sounding, ahistorical soundtrack is perfectly of a piece with that goal.

First and foremost, though, Wright’s mission is evidenced in the kaleidoscopic visual styles he deployed in the making of his biopic. In a bravura feat of high concept filmmaking, the London-born BAFTA-winner shot the series using a mixture of techniques and approaches: on 1920s urban neighbourhoods built from scratch across the backlot and five cavernous hangars at Rome’s famed Cinecittà Studios; on Brechtian-like theatre sets, lead actor Luca Marinelli talking directly to camera; and in front of Europe’s second-largest Volume screen, a giant curved LED wall more usually used for sci-fi dramas such as Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian.

“It's basically like a giant television,” Wright explains, “a pixel screen that allowed me to use effects like they would have used in the 1930s and ’40s, such as back projection… And we projected onto it giant blow-ups of Caravaggio paintings and could play scenes in front of those. So it allowed me to create a very modern aesthetic that also was a nod to the [pre-War period].”

That vision – for a historical thriller that, in every aspect, felt alive and resonant and now – led to Wright commissioning Rowlands. They’re longtime friends and collaborators, dating back to the ’90s, to the filmmaker’s early days working with Vegetable Vision, suppliers of visuals to The Chemical Brothers and other ground-zero big beasts of the electronic music scene. That early part of his CV, in turn, part-explains Wright’s desire to mix up the visual styles of his historical drama.

“I wanted to convey the feeling of the time for a modern audience. And of the dynamism that must have existed. It's difficult for us to get our heads around what it must have been like coming out of the First World War, the horror of that war, and the recent mechanisation of war – and mechanisation spreading into every aspect of their lives. I guess now it's a bit like AI for us, how that's going to creep into everything.

“And coming out of that period [we also have] Futurism, so I wanted to convey the energy of that. But not in a period way. So, the most important choice I made was asking Tom to come and do the music. Once I'd made that decision, it all fitted into place.”

In terms of the mixed visual styles, the series “acknowledges the artifice,” says a 52-year-old who’s made more than his fair share of faithful, “straight” historical pieces, from his 2005 debut Pride and Prejudice to his last feature, Cyrano (2021). Traditionally filmed sequences – set-piece scenes of plotting in backrooms, say, or Mussolini delivering rabble-rousing speeches – are mixed with obviously digitally-enhanced images.

“It sucks you in, and you feel viscerally draw into the piece,” says Wright of those intense scenes foregrounding dramatic performances from a stellar cast of Italian actors. In contrast, blackly comedic interludes, when Mussolini rants to camera about the frustration of no one taking him seriously, “are moments when it snaps you out of it and says: ‘Why are you laughing at this? Why are you excited by this?’ It somehow challenges the audience’s own reactions and empathy.

Across the narrative's six-year span, and the series' seven-hour run-time, "that Volume stage became really useful in terms [enabling us to] move quite quickly through different atmospheres or environments,” continues Wright. In scenes in Mussolini’s quarters, for example, “we could blow up the [scale of the] wallpaper and create this feeling of him being a tiny little figure against this giant flock wallpaper. It's an exciting tool and something I want to explore more.”

When I visited the Rome set of Mussolini: Son of the Century in April 2023, Wright was deep into production, on day 94 of a shoot that would ultimately last 123 days. Even at that point it was “the record for the longest shoot I’ve done. Most movies, if you’re lucky, are 58. So, this feels like a marathon. And we’re moving at an extraordinary pace.”

The experimental use of Volume, still a relatively new technology for filmmaking, was one reason for that marathon-long sprint. “The LED screen is great for using with the car [journeys],” he said after I’d toured the sets, meaning that Volume could suggest a fast-moving vehicle by showing, through the car windows, rolling images of countryside or Milanese or Roman streets – in theory. “But what we’re playing outside [the windows] isn’t necessarily an attempt at naturalism. We’ve pushed that further and further with using… ’90s rave aesthetics like oil wheels and deeply saturated colours. Then recently we’ve been looking at using AI stuff, which has been a fascinating journey to go on.”

During a follow-up interview last month, I ask Wright where that AI journey ultimately took him. He replies that, towards the end of the series there is – spoiler alert – not a lamppost scene but “a sequence which a sort of orgy… We played with feeding into AI ideas around [period-specific] images of orgies, bodies and maggots. In the end, we didn't use that much of it,” he notes, which is perhaps just as well.

But while that newest, bleeding-edge iteration of storytelling largely fell by the wayside, there was still room in Mussolini: Son of the Century for one of the oldest styles of narrative presentation. Early on in the drama, in one of those moments that “snap” viewers’ attention, there’s a puppet show. It’s a nod to Wright’s childhood as the son of the owners of the Little Angel Theatre in Islington, North London.

“More than a nod,” he admits. “My mum made the puppets, and my sister operated them. Also, the big figure of Mussolini that's carried down the streets in episode one is the work of my mum and my sister. I always try and involve them in some way. There's not a lot of money in puppetry, so I have to employ them.”

Mussolini: Son of the Century is now viewable on Sky and NOW

sky.com

‘Monumental’ they’re calling it. They being film critics, it being The Brutalist and the word being a, well, monumentally apposite adjective for Brady Corbet’s 215-minute epic about a Holocaust survivor Hungarian architect at the heart of the post-war American century. So much so that the descriptor appears, in giant lettering, on the official poster for this VistaVision spectacular, attributed to reviews of The Brutalist in no fewer than five UK and US publications. That doesn’t even include the headline from Architectural Record: ‘To Make The Brutalist Monumental, the Filmmakers Approached Cinema as Architecture’.

How, then, to create a score to match that scale, those heights, Corbet’s ambitions and the awards-bait performances of stars Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce? For musician and composer Daniel Blumberg – a young veteran of British indie rock bands (Cajun Dance Party, Yuck) and of the avant-garde music scene centred on Cafe Oto in Dalston, east London – it’s very much job done. As The Brutalist’s pre-titles opening scene looms into view, with Brody’s László Tóth, a disorientated, damaged refugee from the war in Europe, arriving in New York harbour, Blumberg’s alt-classical music swells up with a mighty, sonorous blast of brass. This is ‘Overture (Ship)’, and it’s as breathtaking and unbalancing as Corbet’s shot of an upside-down Statue of Liberty.

Thereafter, Blumberg, in simpatico concert with Corbet, takes us on a creative journey as far-reaching and bracing as László’s. It’s an aural odyssey that spans the decades, from the 1940s to the 1980s; the Atlantic, from industrial Pennsylvania to the marble quarries of Carrera in Italy; and the genres, from bepop to jazz to synthpop via Blumberg’s personal, DIY, self-taught, very east London take on musique concrète.

A giant undertaking, for sure – one for which Blumberg has been BAFTA-nominated, alongside multiple eight other nominations for the film, news that broke midway through our interview (‘Why are my family texting me?’ he wondered, nonplussed, as his phone started buzzing; since then, his Oscar nomination has also rolled in). But for the Londoner, it was simply a case of following his filmmaker peer’s lead.

‘From when I first read the script, it was the most important project I've ever done – for many reasons. The script was so special, and Brady's a very close friend of mine,’ says the 34-year-old of the 36-year-old from Arizona. He first met the American during the making of his first feature, 2015’s The Childhood of a Leader, and then scored The World to Come, the 2020 film by Corbet’s filmmaker wife, Mona Fastvold. So Blumberg knew better than most the seven-year saga of The Brutalist’s stop-start journey from brain to page to screen. ‘The idea of helping him make his work was important. And making something and not f*cking it up was the main ambition.’

Blumberg wrote his first piece of The Brutalist score, a four-minute section, in 2020. Corbet wanted to film a budget-raising ‘teaser’ segment in the Covid-emptied streets of Venice that would ultimately form the epilogue of his film.

‘That piece ended up being the cue called ‘Construction’ on the film,’ says Blumberg over coffee near his north London flat. ‘It was my first instinct what the sonic world of the film could be. I started thinking about architecture, how it could translate to music, and reading about Bauhaus.

‘The piano was an obvious choice, in terms of it being this vast acoustic [instrument],’ he continues. ‘But I wedged things into the strings. Then, when the hammers hit it, you make it into a percussive instrument.’ It’s a technique favoured by John Cage, ‘who would put screws and stuff in… then you can make these “ding dong” sounds’.

And he was off… kind of. Covid and financial challenges meant it would be another three years before production finally began in budget-friendly Hungary. Locations around Budapest stood in for the Pennsylvanian countryside in which Pearce’s rapacious industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren commissions Tóth to build a hilltop community centre, a – yes – monument to his late mother. Blumberg embedded himself onset, and bedded down in Corbet’s apartment in Budapest, ‘in a tiny room where I had a keyboard and my bed’.

The first day of production was a pivotal scene in a jazz club. Corbet, as exacting in his vision as the uncompromising Tóth, wanted to shoot the scene to a live jazz band – playing a jazz piece freshly composed by Blumberg.

‘They do the filming schedule quite suddenly, so there was a challenge to get the right musicians, and I had a list of who I thought would work for that,’ he says of jazz players he flew in from Paris, Marseille and Berlin. ‘But the scariest thing was that we wanted László to have this defining moment in his life. Where he hears this music and never forgets it. Then you hear it in its totality towards the end of the film, when the construction [of Tóth’s building] starts. It's like he retains it in his brain. ‘So [writing] that theme was scary, because you're imprinting an idea for a three-and-a-half hour film – and I was hoping that it would be good enough to maintain that from such an early stage of the film.’

To score the scenes shot at the Carrera marble quarries, Blumberg had to think more tangentially. He knew he wanted a site-specific recording of saxophonist Evan Parker, the 80-year-old, Kent-based maestro of free improvisation. But Parker, who was on tour, couldn’t make it to Italy. So Blumberg and his girlfriend, a conceptual artist based in Barcelona, visited the location armed with mics and a gun.

A gun? ‘Yeah! You fire a gun and put the recording at the highest sample rate, so you're getting as much information as possible. You record the gunshot, and then the response of the valley on that gunshot. I took it back to London and made an algorithm of it. Then you tell the program that that's the source, it removes the gunshot and makes this kind of reverb based on the echo of the gunshot. Then I applied that to Evan’s saxophone.’

Blumberg spent 18 solid months composing a score that would end up comprising 32 pieces of music running to 81 minutes. I ask him: given his friend’s messianic mission to make his movie – and bring it in on a frankly astonishing sub-$10 million budget, without curtailing his vision – was it incumbent on the composer to match the director’s rigour and vigour?

‘Definitely,’ says Blumberg, a man with a gentle nature and a spirit of steel. ‘I wanted to get to the end of the process and know I did everything possible to make this score the best it could be. Even if that algorithm, that reverb – the impulse response, it's called – hadn't worked, at least I’d tried it.’

Equally, he and Corbet have something akin to a pact. ‘I started young with music and he started very young with acting,’ Blumberg, who formed Cajun Dance Party as a schoolboy, says of the adolescent star of teen drama Thirteen (2003). ‘And we're people who said no to compromise. That’s something we have an affinity on. So it felt like an amalgamation of this relationship and all this [creative] stuff. And weirdly as well, kind of embarrassingly, this is what the film's about. It was,’ he concludes with a smile, ‘like method scoring.’

Next up: Daniel Blumberg is working on Mona Fastvold's new film. It's about the Shakers, the millenarian Christian sect, and their 18th-century immigration to America from Manchester – and it's a musical. And we thought The Brutalist was a bold undertaking for the composer...

The Brutalist is in UK cinemas from 24 January

Read: Architecture and the new world: The Brutalist reframes the American dream

In David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) Bobby Vinton’s voice croons: ‘She wore blue velvet, bluer than velvet were her eyes’, while a dog skips around a man lying on the ground, still holding onto his garden hose, and suffering an apparent cardiac event. It signals that all is not well behind the white picket fence and forewarns of the dangerous lure of the colour blue. It’s a shade that crops up again and again throughout the unsettling 120-minute-long film, including on the eyelids of its leading lady Isabella Rossellini, playing the beautiful lounge singer Dorothy Vallens.

‘When I read the script, there was a description of Dorothy with red lips, and I thought the blue tied in nicely with Blue Velvet – which also transcended into her clothes and blue velvet robe,’ said make-up designer for the film Jeff Goodwin in a 2015 interview with Lisa Eldridge. Goodwin explains that he had to mix various shades of lipstick and eyeshadow to achieve ‘the exact tones’ he was after, including two eyeshadows from Lancômeand one from La Femme Cosmetics, a brand that has supplied products to Hollywood since 1950). Goodwin had done just one make-up test when David Lynch told him that he’d nailed the look. (He’d based Dorothy Vallens’ make-up on another Lynch character from his 1977 feature-length debut Eraserhead, known as the ‘Beautiful Girl Across the Hall’).

How the use of make-up enhanced David Lynch's storytelling

Vallens’ make-up channels a mature glamour and sophistication that sits at odds with Laura Dern’s blonde-haired and rosy-cheeked girl-next-door Sandy. The ‘brunette-blonde’ dynamic is a recurring theme throughout Lynch’s work, as are doppelgangers and duplicates, with make-up and wigs the conduit for the slipstream into new identities. Patricia Arquette demonstrates both of these Lynchian tropes in Lost Highway (1997), playing both Renee Madison and Alice Wakefield. Debbie Zoller, the make-up artist working with Arquette, responded to a fan’s enquiry via an Instagram comment, asking how she achieved ‘blonde Patricia’s’ frosty metallic look. Zoller’s reply says that she recalls products from Mac and Stila being in her possession.

Zoller would later go on to shapeshift Kyle MacLachlan, reprising the role of Agent Cooper, into the detective’s ‘dark’ doppelganger Mr C in Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), experimenting with fake tan, teeth staining and black contact lenses. MacLachlan said that Mr C’s hair, devised by Clare M. Corsick, reminded him of the wig worn by Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men (2007).

‘You look like someone else,’ Naomi Watts’ Betty tells Laura Harring’s Rita in Mulholland Drive (2001), as Rita dons a blonde wig with a striking resemblance to Betty’s hairdo; an attempt at disguise as she hides herself from those she believes are looking to hunt her down. A short while later, it is revealed that both of them are someone else: Betty is no longer the sweet and naive aspiring ingenue, nor is Rita deeply wounded; but down-on-her-luck Diane and it-girl actress Camille, respectively.

Even when wigs are merely referenced, they reveal as much as they might conceal. ‘My friend Niko who lives in Pomona has a blonde wig. She wears it at parties but she is on hard drugs and turning tricks now,’ says one of the characters living on the streets in Inland Empire (2006), as Laura Dern’s Nikki Grace lays bleeding beside them. This scene turns out to be taking place on a movie set, the cameras panning back to show a film crew.

A ‘movie within a movie’ is another cinematic motif that David Lynch used repeatedly throughout the universe he created, where things are never what they seem. The aesthetics of ‘glamour’ very often act as a smokescreen, concealing something sinister. ‘I learned that just beneath the surface there’s another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper,’ he once said. ‘I knew it as a kid, but I couldn’t find the proof. It was just a kind of feeling. There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force – a wild pain and decay – also accompanies everything.’

And while darkness often lurks beneath a lacquered veneer in Lynch’s work – just as the pristine roses and white picket fences of Blue Velvet obscure the often disturbing nature of American suburbia – make-up becomes a demonstrative device for a character’s innermost turmoil bubbling to the surface, becoming writ large across the faces of Lynch’s cast members. When Marietta, played by Diane Ladd in Wild at Heart (1990), compulsively covers her body in red lipstick – starting at the wrist in a gesture of self-injury before turning glistening red all over her face, neck and hand – her guilt becomes emotively visible. Musician Sky Sky Ferreira’s appearance as the troubled Ella in Twin Peaks: The Return sees her with smudged panda eyes and covered in sores and scratches – a visual manifestation of what we discover is a chaotic home life.

It’s the moments of sheer terror in the work of David Lynch where make-up, and particularly the use of practical effects and prosthetics, come into their own. The confronting, nightmarish moment when ‘The Bum’ in Mulholland Drive appears during the infamous diner scene, is made all the scarier via the use of real dirt, moss, oatmeal and steel wool. ‘They said I was going to be a character called The Bum, and it was going to be a bunch of special effects,’ actor Bonnie Aarons who played the role told Vulture in 2014. ‘They were gonna make a mask, but [Lynch] says, “No! I don’t want any of that. I want to see every bone structure, I want to see the green eyes.” So he had them put it [dirt, moss, oatmeal and steel wool] on with a tweezer. It took over 12 hours.’

Here, Aarons was also asked whether Lynch directed her to pull different expressions for different takes. But, she explained to Vulture, what you see in the final cut is her swooning over Lynch. ‘I did a couple [takes], and he’s sitting there with me, and he says, “No. Nothing like that at all.” And, ya know, David Lynch is hot, and I’m looking at him all dreamy-eyed, and he says to me, ‘That’s it: the look, Bonnie!”’.

The way Lynch infused such a character with humanity – and love, even – echoes the message of The Elephant Man (1980), the story of real-life artist Joseph Merrick, played by John Hurt. Where people are both fascinated and frightened by Merrick’s appearance, audiences are confronted with the actions of those who treat him poorly, who won’t see him as he cries out to be seen: ‘I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!’ While The Elephant Man received eight Oscar nominations, there was outrage at the fact the prosthetic design by make-up lead Christopher Tucker (based on casts of Merrick’s body) had not been recognised. As a result, a new Academy Award category for Best Make-Up was instated at the following award ceremony in 1981.

Jeff Goodwin also recalled creating the prosthetic severed ear for Blue Velvet in his conversation with Lisa Eldridge, using silicone to make the ear look like it was ‘wiggling’ and even glueing some of David Lynch’s actual hair to the prop. ‘Barbara Page, the hair stylist on the film, gave David a haircut in his trailer and I swept it up and used a little bit for the ear (without telling him),’ he said.

The make-up artist attests to the camaraderie that Lynch was notorious for fostering on set. ‘David and I called it Mr Ear and we really treated the ear like a character in the film, because it’s so key to the storyline,’ he continued. After the director’s passing last week (15 January 2025) Goodwin shared a tribute to his Instagram account: ‘Cinema lost one of the greatest artists today. Rest well David. You were my favorite [sic] director that I had the privilege to work with.’ A sentiment that seems universally shared by those who met him and even those who didn’t.

One of the most anticipated appointments of the festival season, Sundance Film Festival is gearing up to screen some of your future indie favourites.

Co-founded by Robert Redford, the festival has been championing filmmakers working outside the studio system since the late 1970s, drawing attention to movies like American Psycho, The Blair Witch Project, Whiplash, and more.

For ten days every January, Sundance transforms snowy Utah into an independent filmmaking hub, with viewers across the US able to tune in online. To ensure you’re Sundance-ready, here’s a round-up of some films we’re looking forward to watching this year.

Off the back of her 2022 dazzling, campy opera Please Baby Please, Amanda Kramer presents body-swap furniture fable By Design. Slamming conventions, Kramer’s upcoming feature takes social uncomfortableness to the next level when Camille (Juliette Lewis) turns into a chair. Yes, you read that right.

Part of Sundance’s ever-intriguing horror slate, Meera Menon’s gory zombie flick Didn’t Die conjures post-apocalyptic images of George Romero’s beloved saga. The black-and-white movie zeroes in on podcaster Vinita (Kiran Deol) as she grapples with a shrinking audience, her ex’s return and the collapse of civilisation.

Another from the Midnight section is star-studded musical horror Opus, snapped up by A24 for a March release. The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri plays writer Ariel Ecton, involved in a psychosocial game of cat and mouse when she’s invited to the compound of a deified popstar (John Malkovich) who disappeared 30 years prior.

The latest in a growing canon of sex workers' stories, Bunnylovr stars first-time writer-director Katarina Zhu as cam girl Rebecca. Longing for connection, she develops an unsettling relationship with a client while rekindling her bond with her dying father. Shiva Baby’s Rachel Sennott serves as producer and features as Rebecca’s best friend.

Comedian Eva Victor — who went viral with their 'straight pride' video in 2019 — makes their directorial debut with Sorry, Baby. Infusing the movie with their honest voice as a sexual assault survivor, Victor portrays Agnes, a college professor attempting to process the magnitude of what happened to her.

James Sweeney returns with a follow-up to Straight Up, his 2019 thought-provoking asexuality movie disguised as a rom-com. Expect the same tonal shifts in his sophomore feature Twinless, a humorous grief study about two men striking up a friendship at a bereavement group for twinless twins.

After Sundance’s intimate sex comedy Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, Sophie Hyde premieres queer movie Jimpa. Accompanied by her non-binary kid Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde), Hannah (Olivia Colman) reunites with her gay dad Jim ‘Jimpa’ (John Lithgow) as their gathering brings about a reexamination of their family dynamics.

Dysfunctional family patterns are also central to Mary Bronstein’s dark comedy, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Rose Byrne plays Linda, a Long Island psychologist juggling her clients and crumbling under the weight of maternal responsibilities. It promises to be a tour de force for Byrne as Linda and a brilliantly anxiety-inducing ride for the audience — no wonder as it’s produced by Uncut Gems’ Josh Safdie.

Acquired by Mubi, absurdist sci-fi comedy Magic Farm from writer-director Amalia Ulman stars Chloë Sevigny as part of an Argentina-bound, inept film crew ending up in the wrong country whilst trying to profile a musician.

Finally, Andrew Ahn helms a queerer take on Ang Lee’s 1993 The Wedding Banquet, heading to cinemas in April.

Expanding the original triangle into a ‘quad goals’ gang, the remake celebrates chosen family as Min (Han Gi-chan), in a relationship with avoidant boyfriend Chris (Bowen Yang), proposes a green card marriage to his friend Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) in exchange for funding her partner Lee's (Lily Gladstone) IVF. Confused? Wait till their families surprise them with a grand Korean wedding celebration.

More must-see films from Sundance Film Festival 2025

Atropia is, for all intents and purposes, a rom-com, but not like one you’ve ever seen before. Directed by Hailey Gates of Uncut Gems and Challengers, now making her directorial debut, this spin on the genre takes place in a military role-playing facility. One of the participants, an aspiring actress (Alia Shawkat), falls for a soldier assigned to play an insurgent (Callum Turner). What ensues is as quirky as it sounds: as the pair get closer, their emotions veer off-script and threaten the carefully-staged operation.

Writer: Anna Solomon

Rebuilding

This gentle drama follows a rancher named Dusty who loses his farm to a wildfire – a plotline that is likely to resonate in the context of Hollywood’s current crisis. Director and producer Max Walker-Silverman transports audiences to the American West as Dusty, played by Josh O’Connor, attempts to rebuild and recover, finding a community of others whose lives have been devastated, including his ex-wife and daughter.

Writer: Anna Solomon

The Thing with Feathers

A psychological thriller with a tragic overtone, The Thing With Feathers is a hallucinatory take on Max Porter’s novella Grief Is the Thing with Feathers. Director Dylan Southern traces a young father’s mental struggle after the unexpected death of his wife. Haunted by the loss, he becomes convinced that a malevolent presence is stalking him, lingering in the corners of his apartment. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the central character in a story about the crushing weight of bereavement.

Writer: Anna Solomon

Ricky

This is the feature-length version of writer and director Rashad Frett’s short film of the same name: an eye-opening, life-affirming story of the titular character’s struggle to reenter society after more than a decade in prison, with the help of his tough-but-fair parole officer. Ricky, portrayed by Stephen James of If Beale Street Could Talk and Homecoming, is ever-sympathetic as he tries to stay on the straight and narrow while being his own worst enemy.

Writer: Anna Solomon

Kiss of the Spider Woman

If you didn’t expect to see Jennifer Lopez on the Sundance itinerary, prepare to be surprised. The singer appears in Bill Condon’s (who adapted the screenplay of Chicago and directed Dreamgirls) Kiss of the Spider Woman, a big-screen reimagining of the musical of the same name. The story traces the unlikely bond between Valentín, a political prisoner in 1980s Argentina, and his cellmate, Molina, convicted of public indecency, as they reminisce about a legendary silver screen diva (played by J. Lo).

Writer: Anna Solomon

LUZ

In LUZ, virtual reality connects the lives of Wei, a Chongqing resident searching for his estranged daughter, and Ren, a Hong Kong gallerist living in Paris with her ailing stepmother. In the VR world, a mystical deer reveals hidden truths and forges unexpected connections. Featuring indie stalwart Isabelle Huppert, considered by those in the know to be one of the greatest actors of her generation, this film sounds slightly unhinged – but that’s the beauty of Sundance.

Writer: Anna Solomon

Rabbit Trap

Since thrillers and horrors seem to be the name of the game at this year’s festival, we’ve ended on a spooky one. Playing in the Midnight section, whose forerunners have included The Blair Witch Project, Hereditary and The Babadook, ’70s-era folk horror Rabbit Trap features Rosey McEwan and Dev Patel as a musician and her husband who relocate to a secluded cottage in Wales, disturbing something primordial in the forest and summoning a mysterious child.

Writer: Anna Solomon

The 2025 edition of Sundance Film Festival will run from 23 January-2 February

sundance.org

David Lynch was talking to me – at some length – about teeth. ‘I don’t know where it was I got so interested in teeth and dental instruments and drilling and the idea of drilling,’ the director – who has died aged 78, after being diagnosed with emphysema last summer – told me, ‘and then nerves, and different dimensions of a tooth, the roots…’

It was 2011. The previous year, the filmmaker had guest-edited the October 2010 issue of Wallpaper*. Lynch used the magazine as a platform to promote Transcendental Meditation, one of his myriad interests away from directing films – the latter something he hadn’t done since 2006’s Inland Empire. As it turned out, it was something he would never do again, although he would get behind the drama camera one more time, for 2017’s Twin Peaks, a long-awaited and suitably deliciously divisive, 18-episode third-season follow-up to his hallowed, hallucinatory early 1990s TV show and film. And he would appear in front of another director’s camera, in a secret cameo, as John Ford in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans (2022).

‘Transcendental Meditation underpins what I do, but it serves the work rather than dictates it,’ Lynch told interviewer Will Hodgkinson in a profile accompanying his gig at the mag. ‘The point is that everyone has consciousness but not the same amount. It strikes me as rather absurd to go through life with the same level of consciousness you came in with when there is a technique to expand it, and that technique is easy, effortless and supremely profound.‘

True to consciousness-stretching, truth-seeking form, Lynch also used his guest editorship to showcase a series of symbols that he’d illustrated – across a 16-page gatefold in the magazine – to, as we noted at the time, ‘represent unity in various religions and cultures’. There was, though, a full disclosure note from the editors, one acknowledging the sense-scrambling opaqueness that could attend Lynch’s work, in whatever medium: ‘Lynch uses a great deal of symbolism in his movies, but much of it is often lost on the average viewer, so, after an afternoon with our ancient texts, we attempt to explain what it all means…’

With creative and philosophical interests as horizon-wide as his, it was natural that Lynch repeatedly found a welcoming home in the pages of Wallpaper*. Also in 2010, we covered his exhibition ‘Darkened Room’, at Comme des Garçons' Six gallery in Osaka, at which the director paired 12 of his short films with a series of his paintings. Last year, Wallpaper* featured the installation ‘Interiors by David Lynch. A Thinking Room’ at Milan’s Salone del Mobile 2024, the director's debut at the furniture fair.

‘A few years earlier I presented Lynch the lifetime achievement award at the Rome Film Festival,’ explained Antonio Monda, the curator of the latter, ‘and when I visited him in Los Angeles I found him polishing a desk. I asked him, what are you doing? And he told me he designs furniture now,’ added Monda. ‘So when the Salone del Mobile invited me to commission a filmmaker for this special event, I knew he was the real deal.’

The surreal deal: that, too, was David Lynch. Born in Montana in 1946 and raised all over the US on account of his father’s work as a research scientist for the Department of Agriculture, he studied painting at Washington’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. But in 1967, while studying in Philadelphia, he made his first short film, an experimental animation Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times). It would be untrue to say he never looked back – Lynch would repeatedly return to painting, and turn sideways to other visual forms – but filmmaking became a focus.

Three years later he moved to Los Angeles to study at the American Film Institute Conservatory. While there he began work on the film that would, eventually, become his debut feature, Eraserhead (1977). A bold body horror that he wrote, directed, produced, edited and scored, the low-budget flick became a beloved staple on the underground and late-night-movie circuits for years thereafter.

Eraserhead launched Lynch’s filmmaking career – but, true to what would become lifelong form, in a wildly unpredictable manner. His second film was The Elephant Man. A true story about Joseph Merrick, a severely disfigured man in Victorian London, starring an obviously unrecognisable John Hurt, on paper the surrealist black and white film was no one’s idea of a hit movie. Yet the 1980 feature was a critical and commercial smash, and earned eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor.

Then, another zig-zag: four decades ahead of Denis Villeneuve’s staggeringly more successful adaptation, the now-fabled misfire that was Lynch’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune (1984). But he more than atoned for Sting’s codpiece two years later with Blue Velvet. It was a neo-noir psychological thriller that set the ‘Lynchian’ non-template template and remains truly iconic on every level: the plot (the student, the femme fatale lounge singer and the psychopathic gangster…) the imagery (the ear! The gas-mask!), the casting (Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern), the production design, the score, the titular theme song…

Talking to me 14 years ago, Lynch told me that, initially, he was no fan of ‘Blue Velvet’ in its original, 1951 incarnation, as sung by Tony Bennet. ‘I didn’t like that song! It was OK – but it wasn’t like rock’n’roll, it wasn’t something that drove me crazy. Then some years pass and I’m somewhere, and I hear Bobby Vinton’s version of “Blue Velvet”,’ he says of the now-definitive 1963 take. ‘And woah. I see night and green lawns. Red lips and a car. And I just start dreaming. That started the whole thing.‘

Music, then, was the inciting force for the movie that remains, arguably, the cornerstone of a filmography that would ultimately see Lynch awarded the Venice Film Festival’s 2006 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement and an Honorary Academy Award (2019). It was also the reason I was invited into his LA home in 2011.

That morning, we sat in the concrete cube that was this multidisciplinary artist’s painting studio, one of a series of similar structures slotted into the Hollywood Hills that comprised his home with his fourth wife, the actress Emily Stofle. We were, of course, drinking coffee. And yes, it was damn fine, not least because it was a cup of David Lynch Signature Cup Organic House Roast (signature notes, according to my genial and welcoming barista from beneath a shock of silver quiff, ‘sweetness, smoothness, no bitterness even if it’s just pure, straight black espresso, packed with flavour’).

But we were talking, at length, about teeth.

‘I love the shape of a tooth, when you pull ’em out,’ Lynch continued in something like a Proustian reverie. ‘They’re little hard rocks that grow uniquely next to something soft, the tongue. I mean!’ he exclaimed excitably, ‘it’s incredible!’ The reasons for his interest in matters dental stretched backwards and forwards. Firstly, he was recalling an image of a facially disfigured man, taken from a book called Dental Hygiene, Dental Applications and Oral Pathology, and repurposed for the cover of the script for his 1997 film Lost Highway. Secondly, he was musing on the lyrical inspiration for a track on what was another whiplash left-turn for a filmmaker revered for a career-long dedication to travelling down his own lost highway.

At the age of 65, Lynch had made a dance(ish) album. Certainly, it had a title – Crazy Clown Time – that readily suggested another twisted celluloid fever dream, one that fitted David Foster Wallace’s definition of ‘Lynchian’: ‘A particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former’s perpetual containment within the latter.’ This, after all, was an auteur revered for movies – his perfectly imperfect ten-strong filmography also includes Wild at Heart, The Straight Story and Mulholland Drive – reliably underpinned by an implicit Director’s Message: ‘Are you sitting uncomfortably?’

But Crazy Clown Time was no gothic horrorshow. It was being released on Sunday Best, the UK dance label co-founded by DJ Rob Da Bank. The first single, ‘Good Day Today’, was already receiving love in the clubs of Ibiza. Lynch was taking part in a conversation for that year’s International Music Summit, an annual electronic music culture conference held on the White Isle. That said: the song on the album that seemed to interest him most was no dancefloor-igniting banger. ‘Strange and Unproductive Thinking’ was a seven-a-half-minute ambient track with a throbbing rhythm and vocals from Lynch, a spoken-word lecture delivered via vocoder: ‘Teeth, while not necessarily considered one of the primary building blocks of happiness, can in fact become a small sore, festering and transferring negative energies to the once quiet and peaceful mind.’ Altogether now: ‘The hideous odours emitted from the oral cavity…’ Put your hands in the air like you don’t care!

This, in 2011, was where David Lynch found himself, and happily so: making genre-blurring music, promoting Transcendental Meditation, painting canvases and musing wildly. Still, though, I wondered: why hadn’t he made a movie since Inland Empire five years previously? His reply came swiftly. ‘I haven’t got an idea that thrills my soul to go and do it. And that still remains the case. Also… say the film industry is a hot-rod car. And it was going about 120 miles an hour, straight down a road. But about five or seven years ago, it hit a little bump. And for some reason skipped over into the gravel. And it’s been in bushes-flying spin [ever since], and it hasn’t stopped yet.’ Lynch sipped his coffee, smiled and shrugged. ‘So that’s the way I feel.’ It would, ultimately – and, for cineastes, tragically – remain the way he felt.

When architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) is forced out of Hungary and escapes to Pennsylvania, he has no intention of seeking out the American dream. Dejected and alone his minimalist designs go unappreciated in the country of excess. But when an opportunistic millionaire, Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr (Guy Pearce), recognises László’s talent, the architect is quickly assigned to bring to life the rich man’s vanity project. And so begins The Brutalist, following László and his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) as the couple’s life in America is built and destroyed countless times at the behest of the Van Buren family. Brady Corbet’s third feature film, redefines the American epic to demonstrate how violence is a building block for ideology.

By telling an immigrant’s story through the world of architecture, the visual differences are all the more apparent. Lol Crawley’s cinematography stretches up into the stratosphere to show corporate skyscrapers of Philadelphia and the neo-colonial embellishments that accent the New York skyline. These moments are often dizzying, especially when the Statue of Liberty pierces the screen upside down, but the wonderment is scattered. America may be the beginning of the new world, but you can’t avoid the old world it came from.

László Tóth’s brutalist architecture visions stand in stark contrast to American architecture; height is more than just an egotistical flourish and decorative detailing is a superfluous affectation. In a country so eager to prove itself as an empire, the American contractor and architect that László works with cannot envision the beauty to be found in concrete or how function channelled into form has mesmerising potential.

These are the moments when The Brutalist shines brightest, as light, shadow and shape conquer the screen and leave the audience in wonder at the power of simplicity. But just as Brady Corbet demonstrated in his terrorist-infused pop drama Vox Lux, no artistic expression is beyond appropriation and even László Toth’s unshakeable structures can be co-opted for ideological purposes.

While the first half of The Brutalist lays the groundwork for László’s aesthetic and political ideology, the second half serves as a wrecking ball to everything he believes he knows about himself. As Brady Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold detail post-war America, we are privy to the conservatism of the United States that is presented as modernity, whether that be faux-secularism as the church funds the community building or the regular maltreatment of immigrants even as the nation prides itself on welcoming everyone.

For the Bauhaus-educated László and foreign policy journalist Erzsébet, what America has to offer seems meagre in comparison to the enlightened world they once knew, the United States offers modernity in image only.

Through the world of architecture, The Brutalist presents the audience with many of the flawed ideologies of the modern world, including the creation of the state of Israel and American neoliberalism. It’s an epic that explores the reality of the immigrant experience, and through the timeless potency of brutalism, demonstrates how political ideology and nation states are often built with corruption at the foundation.

The Brutalist is at cinemas from January 2025

universalpictures.co.uk

This year's best films aren't lacking in ambition – either narratively or visually. From an exploration of polyamory set in the sweaty world of professional tennis to a feminist horror film featuring truly stomach-churning prosthetics, there's something fresh here for even the most seasoned cinephile.

The Room Next Door

Spanish maestro Pedro Almodóvar's first full-length film in English is dizzyingly poignant. Tilda Swinton plays a terminally ill war reporter who asks a friend from her youth (former Wallpaper* Guest Editor Julianne Moore) to be present – and in the room next door – when she ends her life. It's a tender meditation on life, death and maternal guilt that unfolds in a beautiful brutalist house that Swinton's character rents to make her final days serene and free from memories. The final act's audacious casting choice shows Almodóvar has lost none of his youthful playfulness.

Challengers

This stylish sporting romp follows an awkward quasi-throuple who seem to be edging each other (emotionally). Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist work up a sweat as tennis rivals whose friendship carries a strong sexual undercurrent, but an ice-cool Zendaya really calls the shots as the pro-turned-coach who comes between them. Luca Guadagnino's film yielded a seemingly endless stream of homoerotic memes, but it's best enjoyed as a complete piece. Every creative choice – from Jonathan Anderson's preppy athleisure looks to the relentless score by Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor – is a well executed smash. Tennis has never been sexier.

La Chimera

Josh O'Connor also shines in this beguiling film from writer-director Alice Rohrwacher, who previously made 2018's excellent fantasy drama Happy as Lazzaro. Here he plays Arthur, a crumpled British archaeologist who keeps himself afloat by helping Italy's tombaroli – or tomb raiders – to uncover buried treasure. Arthur's talent with a dowsing rod seems almost preternatural, which gives La Chimera a veneer of magical realism, but Rohrwacher's film is too rooted in human fallibility to feel woo-woo. In his seasonally inappropriate linen suit, Arthur is a perpetual outsider on a quest to find his missing girlfriend and, perhaps, a little meaning along the way.

The Brutalist

For a film about an architect that's called The Brutalist, Brody Corbet's period epic doesn't feature that much Brutalist architecture. But there's no doubt it's a story about building on several levels – a new life, community, the American dream. Adrien Brody gives a richly empathic performance as László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who emigrates to America following World War II. When he receives a dream commission from a wealthy industrialist (Guy Pearce), Tóth's future seems guaranteed, but he learns the hard way that capitalism and art don’t always mix. With stunning production design by Judy Becker, The Brutalist is a monumental technical achievement underpinned by rock-solid emotional foundations.

The Substance

Most of this year's coolest Halloween costumes were inspired by Demi Moore's character in The Substance: either the sleek aerobics queens she begins the film as, or the monstrous mutation of human flesh she morphs into after abusing a rejuvenating elixir. Coralie Fargeat's bombastic body horror is grotesque as you consume it – the blend of prosthetics and CGI is a technical marvel – and devastating when you digest it fully. It’s a grim thrill ride that holds up a mirror to society's obsession with female youth and beauty.

The Bird

The fifth film from visionary director Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, American Honey) is a bewitching blend of social realism and magical realism. Newcomer Nykiya Adams plays 12-year-old Bailey, who lives in a Kent squat with her chancer father Bug (Barry Keoghan) and little in the way of structure. When Bailey meets a mysterious drifter called Bird (Franz Rogowski), who claims to have lived in the local area years earlier, she has her eyes opened in deeply surreal ways. Part coming-of-age story and part fairytale, Bird is a strange, captivating film that soars thanks to the fearless imagination of Arnold and her riveting female lead.

Emilia Pérez

This daring musical crime comedy rooted in the trans experience – yes, really – is a future cult classic. Spanish telenovela veteran Karla Sofía Gascón plays the title character, a former cartel leader who hires a downtrodden lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) to facilitate her secret gender transition while whisking her wife (Selena Gomez) and children to safety. Flawed but fascinating, Emilia Pérez operates at a point on the Venn diagram where Almodóvar intersects with John Waters and Bob Fosse. Fortunately, every big swing from director Jacques Audiard is sold by his trio of Oscar-tipped female leads.

Anora

Powered by a breakout performance from Mikey Madison, Anora unfolds like Pretty Woman with more grit and lurid glitter. Madison is absolutely luminous as the title character, a Brooklyn stripper who moonlights as a sex worker and prefers to be called 'Ani' – the first hint that there's a gap between the life she has and the one she wants. When oligarch's son Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) offers her $15,000 to share a hedonistic weekend, Ani accepts and the business arrangement barrels towards a boozy Vegas wedding. The final act is heartbreaking and formally audacious as it roars towards an emotional crescendo that will leave you floored.

All Of Us Strangers

Adapted by director Andrew Haigh from Taichi Yamada's novel Strangers, this gorgeous ghost story doubles as an allegory for queer loneliness. Marooned in a half-empty London new-build, Andrew Scott's isolated screenwriter Adam enters into a tentative relationship with his neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal). Meanwhile, Adam takes regular train rides back to the suburbs to visit the ghosts of his parents who were killed many years earlier. Played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, they're frozen younger than Scott's character is now, which makes the family reunion poignant as well as incredibly tender. Haigh's flawless production choices include filming a euphoric club scene at iconic LGBTQ+ venue the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.

Kinds Of Kindness

Yorgos Lanthimos' follow-up to last year's Oscar-winning Poor Things was never going to be straightforward. Deliberately and ambiguously undersold as a 'triptych fable', Kinds of Kindness is prickly, provocative anthology tells three freaky and loosely connected stories. One hinges on everyday domestic cannibalism; another follows a sex cult whose members fetishise human moistness. A dazzling cast led by Lanthimos regular Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons and The Substance's Margaret Qualley play different characters in each instalment, which adds to the sense of finely calibrated chaos. But Lanthimos' firm narrative hand and consistently creepy vision means it never quite spins out of control.

Luca Guadagnino, the fearlessly inventive director of Call Me by Your Name and Challengers, calls his new film Queer 'a story of unsynchronised love'. Adapted from a novella by Beat Generation hero William S Burroughs, it follows an awkward but sometimes tender romance that develops between two very different men in 1950s Mexico City. Swapping the sharp tailoring of Bond for a louche, loose-fitting Brooks Brothers suit, Daniel Craig plays William Lee, a lonely functioning drug addict based on Burroughs himself. When Lee first glimpses dashing young serviceman Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) – a head-rush moment Guadagnino soundtracks with an incongruous blast of Nirvana’s Come As You Are – he is immediately mesmerised.

Though Lee shows his feelings more easily and eventually offers Allerton a financial incentive to travel with him to Ecuador, he is no sugar daddy – at times, the younger man is the more proactive party. 'I do think Allerton is as in love with Lee as Lee is in love with Allerton,' Craig says, sitting next to Guadagnino in a Soho hotel room. 'Allerton just can't show it, but Lee is looking for responses [from him]. And the less Allerton gives him, the more Lee fucks it up. That mistake is fascinating to me because, you know, I've been there, done that. We've all done it.'

The film's title may feel political – 'queer' is a reclaimed slur that still carries negative connotations for many LGBTQ+ people – but Craig believes this story 'deals with many universal themes about love, desire, loneliness and the need to connect'. Screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, who also wrote Guadagnino's last film, Challengers, a lusty tale of quasi-throupledom among pro tennis players, says he wrote Queer's realistic, gloss-free gay sex scenes to be emotionally revealing. 'This is a movie about people trying to find the language for connection, so those intimate scenes are essential because the story is still happening there,' he says. 'I think we've been conditioned to some extent by bad sex scenes from the 1990s to think of them as a break from the movie – like, the story stops and there's a little pop video in the middle of it. But that [approach] to me is cinematically dead.'

When Lee and Allerton arrive in Ecuador, they're sucked into the jungle in pursuit of yagé, a plant-based psychedelic more commonly known as ayahuasca. Lee believes it contains a magic ingredient that will help the men to communicate on a deeper, nonverbal level. At this point, the film deviates from Burroughs' source material and becomes incredibly trippy – there's even a dazzlingly surreal dance sequence. 'That was one of the first decisions that Luca and I made,' Kuritzkes says. 'When the book gets to the jungle, they open a door but very quickly close it because they don't get the yagé. But we felt like it would be interesting to step through that door and see whether it would solve anything for Lee and Allerton.'

Here, Guadagnino and Craig talk about Queer's key themes, working with Jonathan Anderson on the costumes – he previously teamed with Guadagnino on Challengers – and the visual inspirations behind the film's deliberately artificial depiction of Mexico City.

Wallpaper*: What made you want to work with Jonathan Anderson again on this film's costumes? What do you like about his designs?

Luca Guadagnino: I like his mind. I think he's a great artist, a great intellectual. I have these very in-depth conversations with Jonathan about everything [to do with] form. And we have companionship – I like to invite people that are not necessarily cinema people to join the art of film.

W*: Did you give him quite a specific brief, or did you leave it to his imagination?

LG: I don't work like that. I know what you mean, because I have learned that there is this idea that the director gives briefs and every department works [on them], and then the director conducts all the instruments. [But] I don't think that's the way we work. The way we work is that we are inspired by the same thing – the book, the script, the world we want to bring to life – and then we go deep.

Daniel Craig: It would be a bit like me coming to set and going, 'This is how I'm going to act it.' Actually, you want to be as free as you possibly can – you don't want to make any rules and block yourself from something magical happening, especially through the mind of somebody like Jonathan or Stefano [Baisi], who designed our production. You want to be moved by something as it's happening, and not stuck in some restricted feeling.

W*: Lee wears this loose-fitting suit that kind of gets grubbier as the film goes on. Did that deterioration help you get into his mindset?

DC: I've worked with some amazing costume designers over the years, and Jonathan I include among them. He has this way – there's no 'we're going to do this'. It’s more 'I'm thinking this, maybe this' and then you go down [the rack]. He had these two suits sitting in a rack as long as from here to the wall, and maybe he put those two suits in exactly the right place, but he wanted me to discover them. He allowed me to discover them for myself.

I was like, 'They're old Brooks Brothers?' And he was like, 'Yeah, they're originals.' And I literally put one on and [looked at] the other 100 suits that were there and went: 'I'm not gonna bother trying them.' It was that simple – there were other things we had to figure out, but the costume fitting literally lasted half an hour.

W*: Though Lee does look increasingly dishevelled, he retains a certain style. Do you think that's innate to him as a character?

DC: I do think that he is a functioning drug addict [and] alcoholic in the truest sense of the word – [in that] he functions. We don't show him writing in the movie [because] we weren't making a movie about a writer. But clearly there's a typewriter there, so he writes.

He has discipline in everything he does, but there's also a looseness about what he does, because he's a smack addict and a drunk. Those two things coming together are very interesting to me: that he gets up, cleans his teeth, showers, does all the things he's supposed to do, and then takes drugs. That's a beautiful contradiction.

W*: Your production designer Stefano Baisi recreated 1950s Mexico City at Cinecittà Studios in Rome in a way that intentionally looks like a movie set. Luca, did you and Stefano have a clear vision for how you wanted Mexico City to look?

LG: We were always thinking of making it an artificial projection [of Mexico City] from the book and the mind of Burroughs. But we didn't have a pre-concept; we worked on many elements, from the historical accuracy of the places [to] the nature of the places through the lens of the book and the descriptions in the book. We also looked at other filmmakers' work, particularly [1950s directors] Powell and Pressburger, and then patiently built from that.

W*: Things get super-trippy when Lee and Allerton head into the jungle and take yagé, or ayahuasca. What were your visual reference points for those eye-popping scenes?

LG: There was a great exhibition, I think, in London about Francis Bacon and animality [Francis Bacon: Man and Beast at the Royal Academy in 2022]. That and the work of the Flemish painter Michaël Borremans, who acts in the movie as the doctor in Quito, were really our points of reference. And then, of course, Sol León and Paul Lightfoot choreographed the dance sequence that you see in the film.

DC: We're not trained dancers, so that sequence was physically tough to do, but also incredibly liberating because it allowed Drew and I to get to know each other. And also, coming to set having figured it out… I mean, if you've watched Strictly, you'll know that getting a dance right is quite a good feeling.

W*: Did it become like muscle memory?

DC: I don't think that ever happened – I'd need about ten years for it to become muscle memory!

W*: Luca, what made you want to include three Nirvana songs on the soundtrack?

LG: Because I think Nirvana, in a way, is connected with Burroughs historically. And because this is a movie for now, I felt that Burroughs was bridging with Nirvana and Nirvana were bridging with the audiences now. There was this kind of emotional knot in the anguish of [Nirvana's] music that could be really played properly in the movie that we were doing.

W*: One of those Nirvana songs is Sinead O'Connor's gorgeously raw cover of All Apologies – what made you choose her version?

LG: Intuition and the purity of it. I would say that her cover, to me at least, is sort of like a distillation of the song and goes straight to the point of it.

W*: Do you think Queer is a movie for now because in theory, we live in an age where connection is easier, but actually, genuine connection feels harder than ever to find?

DC: I think that's incredibly insightful. I mean, I wish that's what it's meant [to people], because I believe what you're saying. I believe very strongly that we're not connecting in the way we once did through all sorts [of means] including sadly, through cinemas. We're not going to the cinema and collectively watching things and having [those sort of] relationships with complete strangers.

We've had an incredible response from what, for me, is a younger audience and that's been incredibly moving. Something about the loneliness and the isolation and the need to connect [in the film] is having real resonance. So yeah, I agree with what you said.

Queer is in cinemas now