Nowness

A woman descends into a surreal odyssey of fragmented memories after waking with excruciating neck pain.

Two girls find themselves locked in an Oslo public swimming hall and bond over school gossip, boys and dancing to the psychedelic sounds of Lindstrøm.

Cinema's reigning romantic Luca Guadagnino premiers a modern-day paean to the good times, inspired by a Wolfgang Tillmans picture.

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

Arab-American filmmaker Yumna Al-Arashi embraces the rhythmic rituals that have run alongside Islamic tradition throughout the centuries in this surreal and poetic short film. Piecing together old and new, Al-Rashi's dream-like imagery breathes fresh air to a subject hardly seen in positive light.

A frazzled adulteress played by Parisian beauty Zoë Le Ber wakes up in the familiar surroundings of Bar Chateau Marmont, only to find herself trapped in a prank at the hands of her restaurant-owner lover, Fred.

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".

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.

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.

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

A master of sound at work on a fashion film. If you’ve ever wanted to see the chasm between the finished product and the extraordinary lengths taken to produce it, this short is for you.

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.

For the fourth episode of the original series “Young Masters”, NOWNESS CHINA travelled north to the barren and cold expanse of the Hulunbuir Grasslands in October 2022. There, the team met Angchinhuu, a budding horse trainer in her sophomore year of junior high. Described as a “girl like the wind”, Angchinhuu possesses qualities that are typical of teenage girls everywhere: she is restless, daydreams, and is hopeful. She is also exceptionally determined to carry on her family’s profession of training horses amidst the unforgiving grasslands, a remote terrain marked by severe weather conditions.

Young Masters is an original series commissioned by NOWNESS China focusing on traditional Chinese cultures, and how they continue to be defined by a new generation of the country's youth. Its first episode, Young Masters: Bajiquan, spotlights Wu Hao (吴昊), a young man in his twenties from Hebei province who is a stalwart practitioner of Bajiquan—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 Bajiquan International Training Center to profile Wu Hao whose paternal ancestor Wu Zhong (1712–1802) was the first recorded Bajiquan 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.

Nestled between the sea and the mountains in the South of France, the town of Grasse is known as the birthplace of perfume. Various flowers and plants have been cultivated from the surrounding hills since the 16th century, but there is one flower in particular that is the most sought after of them all.

Xiaomei, a factory girl played by Xiao Wen Ju, spent a long night looking for her lover but he never shows up.

Varanasi is the Indian city where Hindus go to die. Stretching along the Ganges, Varanasi holds great spiritual significance because Hindu scriptutres say that anyone who dies there will attain moksha—liberation from the cycle of rebirth. Berlin-based director Dan Braga Ulvestad captures life and death in India’s heartland in this moving documentary filled with exquisite cinematic moments. By the River starts its narrative journey with the city’s “death hotels,” dedicated apartments where people wait to die, sometimes for decades, so they can be cremated on the banks of the Ganges.

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

Chef Mark Hix describes the history and importance of salt.