Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project: Volume 3 (BLU-RAY/DVD Combo)

Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007, The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project has maintained a fierce commitment to preserving and presenting masterpieces from around the globe, with a growing roster of more than three dozen restorations that have introduced movie lovers to often-overlooked areas of cinema history. Presenting passionate stories of revolution, identity, agency, forgiveness, and exclusion, this collector’s set gathers six of those important works, from Brazil (Pixote), Cuba (Lucía), Indonesia (After the Curfew), Iran (Downpour), Mauritania (Soleil Ô), and Mexico (Dos monjes). Each title is a pathbreaking contribution to the art form and a window onto a filmmaking tradition that international audiences previously had limited opportunities to experience.

Lucía

A formally dazzling landmark of Cuban cinema by Humberto Solás, the operatic epic Lucía recounts the history of a changing country through the eyes of three eponymous women. In 1895, Lucía is a tragic noblewoman who inadvertently betrays her country for love. In 1932, she is a member of the bourgeoisie drawn into the workers’ uprising against the dictator. And in the post-revolutionary 1960s, she is a rural newlywed struggling against patriarchal oppression. Shot in an array of distinct, evocative visual styles, Solás’s sprawling triptych is a vital document of radical progress.

After the Curfew

Giving voice to the anguish of a nation fighting for its soul, Usmar Ismail’s After the Curfew follows the descent into disillusionment of a former freedom fighter who is unable to readjust to civilian life following the revolution that gave Indonesia its independence from the Netherlands. Steeped in moody atmospherics and psychological tension, the film struck its national cinema like a bolt of lightning, illuminating on-screen, for the first time and with unflinching realism, the emotional toll of Indonesian society’s postcolonial struggles.

Pixote

With a blend of harsh realism and aching humanity, Héctor Babenco’s international breakout Pixote offers an electrifying look at youth fighting to survive on the bottom rung of Brazilian society, and a stinging indictment of the country’s military dictatorship and police. In a heartbreaking performance, Fernando Ramos da Silva plays a young boy who escapes a nightmarish reformatory only to resort to a life of violent crime, even as he forms a makeshift family with some fellow outcasts.

Dos monjes

This vividly stylized, broodingly intense early Mexican sound melodrama by Juan Bustillo Oro hinges on an audacious flashback structure. When an ailing monk recognizes a new brother at his cloister, he becomes deranged and attacks him. Dos monjes recounts the men’s tragic shared past once from the point of view of each, heightening the contrasts between the two accounts with visual flourishes drawn from the language of German expressionism, including camera work by avant-garde photographer Agustín Jiménez.

Soleil Ô

A furious cry of resistance against racist oppression and a revolutionary landmark of political cinema, this feature debut from Mauritanian director Med Hondo is a bitterly funny, dazzlingly experimental attack on capitalism and the legacy of colonialism. Soleil Ô follows a starry-eyed immigrant as he leaves West Africa and journeys to Paris in search of a job, a community, and intellectual engagement—but soon discovers a hostile society where his very presence engenders fear and resentment. With this freewheeling masterpiece, Hondo crafts a shattering vision of awakening Black consciousness.

Downpour

With brash stylistic exuberance, this first feature from Bahram Beyzaie helped usher in the Iranian New Wave. When he takes a job as a schoolteacher in a new neighborhood, the hapless intellectual Mr. Hekmati finds that he is a fish out of water. Shot in luminous monochrome and edited with quicksilver invention, Downpour, which has been painstakingly restored from the only known surviving print, captures with puckish humor and great tenderness the cultural conflicts coursing through Iran at a pivotal historical moment.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New, restored 4K digital transfers of all six films, overseen by the World Cinema Project in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays
• New introductions to the films by World Cinema Project founder Martin Scorsese
• New interviews featuring Downpour director Bahram Beyzaie, film scholar Charles Ramírez Berg (on Dos monjes), and journalist J. B. Kristanto (on After the Curfew)
• Excerpts from a 2016 interview with Pixote director Héctor Babenco and a 2018 interview with Soleil Ô director Med Hondo
• Humberto & “Lucía,” a 2020 documentary short by Carlos Barba Salva featuring Lucía director Humberto Solás and members of his cast and crew
• Prologue for the U.S. release of Pixote, created by Babenco
• New English subtitle translations
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an introduction by Cecilia Cenciarelli, head of research and international projects for the Cineteca di Bologna, and essays by critics and scholars Dennis Lim, Adrian Jonathan Pasaribu, Stephanie Dennison, Elisa Lozano, Aboubakar Sanogo, and Hamid Naficy