January At MUBI Will Be 'Smoking'

The end is nigh, that’s 2024. MUBI are prepping for the new year and January 2025 especially. A month that will be ‘smoking’, as well as a lot of ‘first timers’.

The Latest & Greatest strand features Pepe, the true story of Pablo Escobar’s infamous runaway hippopotamus and Quentin Dupieux‘s latest film The Second Act which opened the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Three further comedies from Dupieux are featured within the Madcap Adventure: Comedies by Quentin Dupieux collection. January also see the return of the ongoing First Films First strand returns next month with first films by Mel Brooks, Pedro Almodovar, Luca Guadagnino and Gareth Edwards. And the latest addition to the Brief Encounters strand is Ali Cherri‘s The Watchman.

LATEST & GREATEST: PEPE

From the visionary filmmaker Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias comes Pepe (2024), inspired by the true story of Pablo Escobar’s infamous runaway hippopotamus. Earning the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2024 Berlinale, the film unfolds as an experimental and surreal meditation on the legacies of empire and the complexities of displacement and identity.

Pepe (2024) follows the life and afterlife of the eponymous hippo told through a voice that claims to be his ghost. Born in Southern Africa and brought to South America, Pepe journeys from captivity under Escobar’s ownership until his final days roaming free.

Pepe (de los Santos Arias, 2024) – 10th January

LATEST & GREATEST: THE SECOND ACT

With his latest tongue-in-cheek comedy, The Second Act (2024), Quentin Dupieux continues to prove himself as a playful master of the absurdity behind human relationships. Florence (Léa Seydoux) is besotted with David (Louis Garrel), but the love is unrequited. To let her down kindly, David introduces Florence to one of his best friends, Willy (Raphaël Quenard), meanwhile Florence has already made plans to introduce David to her father (Vincent Lindon). The four meet together for the first time in a secluded restaurant. What could go wrong?

Aware of itself with frequent fourth-wall breaks, but also indebted to the magic of the movies, this cheeky takedown of the film industry sees Dupieux develop Yannick’s (2023) thematic intrigues as a filmmaker concerned with the role that performance has in our lives, both on and off screen.

The Second Act (Dupieux, 2024) – 10th January

FIRST FILMS FIRST

You never forget your first. As we step into 2025, the return of First Films First series. Revisit the pioneering works that inaugurated the careers of some of cinema’s most visionary auteurs, and whose early masterpieces continue to shape the landscape of contemporary filmmaking.

The Producers (Brooks, 1967) – 1st January
Pepi, Luci, Bom (Almodóvar, 1980) – 1st January
The Protagonists (Guadagnino, 1999) – 1st January
Monsters (Edwards, 2010) – 1st January
Golem (Szulkin, 1979) – Now Streaming
The Delta (Sachs, 1996) – Now Streaming
Revenge (Fargeat, 2017) – Now Streaming

MADCAP ADVENTURE: COMEDIES BY QUENTIN DUPIEUX

Celebrate the luminous career of mischievous French maverick Quentin Dupieux with Madcap Adventure: Comedies by Quentin Dupieux, a collection dedicated to the joker’s madcap vision of the world. In Smoking Causes Coughing (2022), the superhero film is satirised when a group of heroes known as Tobacco Force is forced to go on a week-long retreat together to fortify their wavering group morale. Dupieux uses this setup to anthologise several films-within-a-film as each of the heroes’ campfire tale becomes its own cinematic entity. Also arriving fresh to MUBI is The Second Act (2024), an absurdist comedy of human relations amplified by its all-star cast including Louis Garrel and Léa Seydoux.

Smoking Causes Coughing (Dupieux, 2022) – 10th January
The Second Act (Dupieux, 2024) – 10th January
Incredible But True (Dupieux, 2022) – Now Streaming
Yannick (Dupieux, 2023) – Now Streaming

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: THE WATCHMAN

From acclaimed Lebanese visual artist Ali Cherri comes The Watchman (2024), an eerie and visually arresting short examining the geographies of violence and the human cost of war. The film marks the final instalment of Cherri’s latest tetralogy that exposes the absurdity and pain of conflict, here with a polished observational style and moments of uncanny magical realism.

From a desolate watchtower, Sergeant Bulut spends his days trapped in limbo waiting for an enemy that never arrives. His monotonous existence is disturbed when a strange light emerges on the horizon, triggering ghostly apparitions that blur the lines between the real and the symbolic.

The Watchman (Cherri, 2024) – 17th January