MUBI In May Will Be An All Singing Apocalypse

The end is nigh for everyone, yes April is ending soon. In May over at MUBI, the new month will be an all singing apocalypse! Joshua Oppenheimer‘s The End starring Tilda Swinton with songs warning of the impending climate catastrophe!

Also three new films premiere this month – Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me (accompanied by Holy Motors and Annette), Alonso Ruizpalacios’ heated La cocina and Wei Shujun’s atmospheric Only the River Flows. The latest Performers We Love collection features the charismatic Irish star Barry Keoghan, Brief Encounters highlights another vital contemporary short with Bad for a Moment and Sarah Polley turns the camera on her own family in Stories We Tell. Finally, with this year’s Cannes Film Festival on the horizon MUBI takes a look back at the tradition of “Le booing” with a collection of misunderstood gems which overcame the initial audience reaction from the Cannes glitterati.

MUBI RELEASES: THE END

From Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer comes The End (2024): a one-of-a-kind tale set at the end of the world. Decades after an ecological disaster renders the planet unliveable, a privileged family exists in artificial comfort inside a grand subterranean shelter. Former celebrated ballerina Mother (Tilda Swinton), oil magnate Father (Michael Shannon), and precocious Son (George MacKay) maintain an air of domestic harmony within this cultivated sanctuary. When Girl (Moses Ingram) arrives at the entrance to their sealed-off world, carrying both her own history and a clear-eyed take on their reality, the delicate illusion they’ve built starts to falter. Hidden tensions rise to the surface, and as the Girl and the Son form an unexpected bond, the need to confront hard truths becomes unavoidable. Framed as a sweeping musical, The End uses song and artifice to shed light on the conflict between the truth and the comforting stories we tell ourselves. Bold in both form and intent, it’s a film that explores what happens when the fictions we live by start to crumble under the spotlight.

The End (Oppenheimer, 2024) – 16th May

LATEST & GREATEST: IT’S NOT ME

Visionary director Leos Carax delivers It’s Not Me (2024), a playful, provocative self-portrait that defies categorisation and blurs the line between diary and cinema. Commissioned by the Centre Pompidou for an exhibition that never materialised, Carax combines private videos, movie fragments, and archival footage into a dazzling, restless collage – all in a mere 42 minutes.

Laying himself bare — as father, filmmaker, and mystery — while paying homage to the iconic montage work of Jean-Luc Godard, Carax invites Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche to explore his memory, legacy, and creative process with humour and visual flair, offering a rare window into the mind of one of French cinema’s most elusive figures.

It’s Not Me (Carax, 2024) – 9th May

LATEST & GREATEST: LA COCINA

Alonso Ruizpalacios’ heated La cocina (2024), explores the life of a bustling New York restaurant kitchen, where a diverse team of workers – from undocumented Mexicans to second-generation Americans – navigate the chaos of a lunchtime rush. At the centre is Pedro (Raúl Briones), a line cook, and Julia (Rooney Mara), a front-of-house worker, whose relationship unravels when $800 goes missing from the till – money that Julia needs for an abortion.

Although stunning, Ruizpalacios’ black-and-white imagery evokes a sensation of claustrophobia that allows an oppressive tension to rise in the kitchen, a tension that functions as a tool to explore the potential for labour to be exploitative and dehumanising. Gritty, tense, and encapsulating a global feeling of disillusionment, La cocina highlights the relentless grind of those caught in the gears of capitalism, but through its honest depiction of its individual workplace, it is asking its audience what needs to be done to insight change.

La cocina (Ruizpalacios, 2024) – 23rd May

LATEST & GREATEST: ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS

Wei Shujun’s atmospheric Only the River Flows (2023) follows police detective Ma Zhe who has been assigned to investigate a series of grisly murders in a quiet rural town in China. As the pressure builds and an arrest is quickly made, Ma Zhe begins to uncover unsettling clues that suggest the case may not be as straightforward as it seems, forcing him to pursue the truth on his own terms. As Ma Zhe digs further into the case, the lines between justice and the murky realities of people he seeks to understand become increasingly blurred. Using soft blue and brown hues paired with long, quiet takes, Shujun provides Zhe’s journey a distant, almost documentary feel, which still revels in a tradition of neo-noir thrills.

Only the River Flows (Shujun, 2023) – 9th May

PERFORMERS WE LOVE: BARRY KEOGHAN

A magnetic presence on our screens, Barry Keoghan stands out in the contemporary film landscape for the volatile energy and roguish charisma he lends his roles. In Christopher Andrews’ bloody revenge thriller Bring Them Down (2024), the Irish actor wields his piercing blue gaze to suggest there is more to his erratic character than apathy and slyness. Tapping into Keoghan‘s electrifying unpredictability as a performer, Nick Rowland‘s bruising debut feature Calm with Horses (2019) casts the actor as a knavish criminal. Coaxing his character’s best friend into ever more dangerous plans, Keoghan is an agent of chaos. Meanwhile in Andrea Arnold’s poetic coming-of-age Bird (2024), that same impulsive quality is channelled toward an almost childlike enthusiasm and optimism. An enigmatic force of nature, Barry Keoghan is the spark that sets the films in this collection alight.

Calm with Horses (Rowland, 2019) – 2nd May
Bird (Arnold, 2024) – Now Streaming
Bring Them Down (Andrews, 2024) – Now Streaming

LE BOOING: A CANNES INSTITUTION

A Cannes premiere is one of cinema’s highest honours—but it can also be a public reckoning. Imagine it: the screen fades to black in the hushed Palais des Festivals, and just as the credits roll, a roar breaks out. Is that… booing? “Le booing” is a Cannes tradition, where audiences don’t hold back their first impressions. But the volume of jeers isn’t always a measure of merit – some of the greatest films in recent memory were initially met with disdain. Our Le Booing: A Cannes Institution collection revisits those misunderstood gems that debuted to boos, only to earn their place in cinema history.

Crash (Cronenberg, 1996) – Now Streaming
Enter the Void (Noé, 2009) – Now Streaming
Holy Motors (Carax, 2012) – Now Streaming
Only God Forgives (Refn, 2013) – Now Streaming
Personal Shopper (Assayas, 2016) – Now Streaming
Zombi Child (Bonello, 2019) – Now Streaming
Benedetta (Verhoeven, 2021) – Now Streaming

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: BAD FOR A MOMENT

Awarded a Special Jury Mention at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, Daniel Soares’ incisive short Bad for a Moment (2024) boldly announces him as a sharp new voice in contemporary Portuguese cinema. Witty, dark, and visually precise, the film skewers modern work culture and gentrification with biting humour, blending farce with social commentary.

During a disastrous team-building retreat, the owner of a Lisbon architect firm is forced to confront the neighbourhood his company is displacing. As tensions rise and façades crack, Bad for a Moment explores class, race, and destruction—both literal and symbolic—in a city under transformation, inspired by modern rage rooms and Lisbon’s housing crisis.

Bad for a Moment (Soares, 2024) – 13th May

STORIES WE TELL

In Sarah Polley’s intimate Stories We Tell (2012), she turns the camera on her own family to explore how personal histories are shaped—and reshaped—over time. Blending interviews, home movies, and staged re-enactments, she pieces together a portrait of her late mother through the often contradictory accounts of those who knew her best, revealing how memory and storytelling entwine in unexpected ways. In examining the subjective nature of truth through these various forms, Polley shows how family stories can be both revealing and elusive, and by blending personal reflection with broader questions about memory and identity, Polley is able to offer us a poignant exploration of how we construct and understand our own histories.