Mouchette
Robert Bresson
1967 | 78 min | B/W | Digital
French with English subtitles

"Mouchette is Bresson’s second adaptation from Bernanos and another tale of the trials of life in a small French town. The young Mouchette must face at an early age her father’s alcoholism and her mother’s invalidism. The film lays out, succinctly and crisply, the cruelty and barrenness of her life in Bresson’s rigorously objective style. While he had used voice-over narration to provide access to the thoughts of Bernanos’ country priest, here the spectator can only infer Mouchette’s thoughts through her physical reactions to her trials. This approach risks heartlessness, but in fact, few films capture so movingly the sheer fragility of being. In one justly famous sequence, Mouchette finds a few moments of happiness at a bumper-car ride. She is simultaneously beset and in control; the shocks are salutary." – Harvard Film Archive

Blood
Pedro Costa
1989 | 95 min | B/W | Digital
Portuguese with English subtitles

“Costa's auspicious debut demonstrates his love and knowledge of classical Hollywood and European art cinema. With echoes of Nicholas Ray, Robert Bresson and F.W. Murnau, Costa explores the plight of two brothers and a young kindergarten teacher being pursued by some unseemly characters, including the boys' nefarious uncle. Unlike his later neorealist works, Blood is a lushly stylized romantic fable.” – Harvard Film Archive