Nowness

After recently going blind, a young gay man struggles to navigate his new life in the shadows.

A portrait of Victoria Sin, and the transformative power of drag.

In the first of a new series of Define Beauty, Berlin-based directer Matt Lambert—known for his often-NSFW work exploring sex and intimacy—gets under the skin of our infatuation with sweat. Read more on NOWNESS

An original and danced adaptation of the Shakespeare classic.

Over a monsoon-soaked day in a crumbling Mumbai building, a young masseuse moves quietly from body to body. Her caring touch soothes the pain of an ailing, bedridden woman, and the anxiety of a new mother, exhausted by duty and desire. As care slips toward intimacy, her hands become a conduit through which life, death, and desire pass without resolution.

NOWNESS China has released a new series of films focusing on traditional Chinese culture as defined by a new generation of young people. Young Masters: Baji Quan is the first episode and focuses on a 23-year-old man from Hebei province who is a stalwart practitioner of Baji Quan—a traditional Chinese fighting style known for its graceful stillness and sudden moments of targeted and ferocious violence. Director Haonan Shen traveled to the Mengcun Baji Quan International Training Center to profile Wu Hao whose paternal ancestor Wu Zhong (1712–1802) was the first recorded Baji Quan teacher. In this evocative portrait of a young man’s passion for sharing his family’s rich heritage, we get up close and personal with the violent elbow strikes, staff jabs, fierce rising and firm falling stances that characterize the martial art.

Lou, a teenage tomboy in a small Californian town, idolizes her single father. When he has a date over one night and she is cast out of the house, Lou wanders to the outer reaches of town and into a new era of teenage identity.

Artist and filmmaker Quentin Jones joins forces with Miley Cyrus in a kinky collaboration, stripping away the pop phenomenon's cartoonish persona in "Miley Cyrus: Tongue Tied".

There are houses, and then there’s Ricardo Bofill’s house: a brutalist former cement factory of epic proportions on the outskirts of Barcelona, Spain. A grandiose monument to industrial architecture in the Catalonian town of Sant Just Desvern, La Fabrica is a poetic and personal space that redefines the notion of the conventional home. “Nowadays we want everyone who comes through our door to feel comfortable, but that's not Bofill’s idea here,” says filmmaker Albert Moya, who directed latest installment of In Residence. “It goes much further, you connect with the space in a more spiritual way.” Rising above lush gardens that mask the grounds’ unglamorous roots, the eight remaining silos that once hosted an endless stream of workmen and heavy machinery now house both Bofill’s private life, and his award-winning architecture and urban design practice.

Uprooted from the Ivory Coast and sent to live in Denmark as a child, professional boxing champion Landry “Hardkore” Kore tells the story of his eighteen-year journey from homelessness and family breakdown to international success in an elevated documentary. When Danish Director Meeto met the boxer a few years ago he knew that the conventional shaky cam athletic profile would do no justice to Kore’s philosophy, intelligence and—as the director describes—his “big heart”.

A young man eats alone at an LA cevicheria, processing his relationships, grief and questionable behaviours over a phone call.

Meet Giovanni Mancusou, a small-town Italian man who lives on Italy's Mediterranean coast. The wisened Calabrian invites the viewer into his sun-washed world of bright orange sun umbrellas, cool blue seas, freshly baked pastries and fresh vegetables. Directed by Jan Vrhovnik, written by Ana Kerin and music score by Oscar-winning Nico Casal, Paradiso is less story and more a poetic thought piece. Dipping into a snapshot of life for an aging man from Italy, whimsical moments like the swatting of a fly are interspersed with provocative thoughts on life that can only come with the wisdom of an older man who has seen it all.

Supermodel Bella Hadid stars as a pre-teen dream girl in this '80s-inspired short film.

After failing to find her place in the city, Jialing returns to her borderland hometown and takes up work again in a rundown nightclub. As she tries to rebuild her life, her estranged father reappears, hoping to reconnect before the holidays.

It's about a memory of a place and a time. It’s about an idea of isolation and the sea’s omnipresence. An exploration between temporary and permanent that takes us to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, on a trip around the Azores and a specific project located in São Miguel island: Two Manifolds by Nuno Pimenta.

“Take life lightly, for lightness is not superficial, but gliding above things, not having weights on your heart.” This is the quote from Postmodernist writer Italo Calvino that inspired director Luca Werner to explore the carefree days of youth in this film. Lupine opens with a young man adoring a Lupine plant, a vibrant wildflower that grows throughout the Mediterranean and marks the beginning of Spring and new life. “I think there are certain moments in our youth where we feel completely light and careless, like we are in a flow,” says Werner, who followed a group of three real-life friends on a coastal sojourn across Rhodes. “I don’t believe that these moments end when we grow up. I believe we get a glimpse of them from time to time.”

What does it mean to be goth—to be an outsider, to live both on the margins and in the midst of society? Filmmakers Jordan Hemingway and Alban Adam prize open the coffin on a world of darkness and light, exploring its multiplicities and intersections with subcultures and the ever-present experience of queerness.

Last summer model-turned-director duo Kristell Chenut and Vincent Lacrocq traveled to the Canary Island haven Lanzarote to shoot Thirty-Six Hours with a team consisting of only themselves and their male-model protagonists, Clément Chabernaud and Jon Kortajarena. Arguably the two biggest names in the male model world—you’ll recognise Kortajarena as the young hustler from Tom Ford’s stylish feature A Single Man, and both from countless campaigns for the likes of H&M, Gucci and Prada—the narrative short sees the pair share a surreal day and night amid a crystalline island landscape.