Kino Lorber Announces its January 2023 Home Video Releases

Utama
(2022, 87m)
Blu-ray & DVD
Prebook Date: 12/20/2022
Street Date: 1/17/2023

Available digitally to buy and rent early on Kino Now 1/3/2023
Available digitally on all major VOD platforms 1/17/2023

Director: Alejandro Loayza Grisi
Actors: José Calcina, Luisa Quispe

In the arid Bolivian highlands, an elderly Quechua couple has been living a tranquil life for years. While he takes their small herd of llamas out to graze, she keeps house and walks for miles with the other local women to fetch precious water. When an uncommonly long drought threatens everything they know, Virginio and Sisa must decide whether to stay and maintain their traditional way of life or admit defeat and move in with family members in the city. Their dilemma is precipitated by the arrival of their grandson Clever, who comes to visit with news. The three of them must face, each in their own way, the effects of a changing environment, the importance of tradition, and the meaning of life itself. This visually jaw-dropping debut feature by photographer-turned-filmmaker Alejandro Loayza Grisi is lensed by award-winning cinematographer Barbara Alvarez (Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman) and won the Grand Jury Prize (World Cinema Dramatic) at the Sundance Film Festival.

Bonus Features:
Photo Gallery | Trailer

Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power
(2022, 107m)
Blu-ray & DVD
Prebook Date: 12/27/2022
Street Date: 1/24/2023

Available digitally to buy and rent early on Kino Now 12/6/2022
Available digitally on all major VOD platforms 12/20/2022

Director: Nina Menkes
Actors: Julie Dash, Penelope Spheeris, Charlyne Yi

“If the camera is predatory, then the culture is predatory.” In this eye-opening documentary, celebrated independent filmmaker Nina Menkes explores the sexual politics of cinematic shot design. Using clips from hundreds of movies we all know and love – from Metropolis to Vertigo to Phantom Thread – Menkes convincingly makes the argument that shot design is gendered. Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power illuminates the patriarchal narrative codes that hide within supposedly “classic” set-ups and camera angles, and demonstrates how women are frequently displayed as objects for the use, support, and pleasure of male subjects. Building on the essential work of Laura Mulvey and other feminist writers, Menkes shows how these not-so-subtle embedded messages affect and intersect with the twin epidemics of sexual abuse and assault, as well as employment discrimination against women, especially in the film industry. The film features interviews with an all-star cast of women and non-binary industry professionals including Julie Dash, Penelope Spheeris, Charlyne Yi, Joey Soloway, Catherine Hardwicke, Eliza Hittman, Maria Giese, and Rosanna Arquette. The result is an electrifying call-to-action that will fundamentally change the way you see, and watch, movies.

Bonus Features:
Audio commentary with director Nina Menkes and editor Cecily Rhett | Isolated Excerpts of the Score by Sharon Farber | Q&A with Nina Menkes courtesy of DCTV | Theatrical Trailer

Maigret: Season 2
(1961-62, 715m)
Blu-ray, 3 Disc Set
Prebook Date: 1/3/2023
Street Date: 1/31/2023

Available digitally on all major VOD platforms 1/31/2023

Directors: John Harrison, Gerard Glaister, Andrew Osborn, Terence Williams
Actors: Rupert Davies, Ewen Solon, Helen Shingler, Neville Jason

Long-awaited and unseen anywhere for decades, Georges Simenon’s Maigret (1960-1963) is the definitive adaptation of Georges Simenon’s world famous novels. This BBC television production stars Rupert Davies as Commissaire Jules Maigret, the dogged French detective. Though Simenon’s books have been adapted many times, Davies’s celebrated, BAFTA-winning portrayal won the approval of Simenon himself, who stated: "At last, I have found the perfect Maigret!" This three disc-set includes all 13 episodes of Season 2, in which Maigret reckons with the “Death of a Butcher”, “The Lost Sailor”, and various other vexing cases that only the moody Maigret can solve. Georges Simenon’s Maigret has been remastered in High Definition from original film elements and is featured here in its original fullscreen TV format.

Bonus Features:
Canadian Christmas Intros

Memories of My Father
(2022, 136m)
Blu-ray & DVD
Prebook Date: 12/6/2022
Street Date: 1/3/2023

Available digitally on Kino Now 1/3/2023

Director: Fernando Trueba
Actors: Javier Cámara, Nicolas Reyes Cano, Juan Pablo Urrego

Directed by Academy-Award® winner Fernando Trueba (BELLE EPOQUE), MEMORIES OF MY FATHER dramatizes the true life story of Héctor Abad Gómez, (Goya Award winner Javier Cámara, from Pedro Almodóvar’s TALK TO HER and BAD EDUCATION), a renowned Colombian doctor and human rights activist in corrupt and chaotic 1970s Medellín, Colombia. A devoted father, Abad Gómez adored his children and fought against oppression and social inequality at great sacrifice to himself and his family. Colombia’s official submission for the 93rdAcademy Awards, the film is a stylish and beautifully shot portrait of a man who dedicated his life to helping others. MEMORIES OF MY FATHER is based on the international best-seller, OBLIVION: A MEMOIR, written by Héctor Abad Faciolince, the son of Héctor Abad Gómez and one of Colombia’s most acclaimed contemporary authors.

Bonus Features:
Film historian Annette Insdorf interviews director Fernando Trueba and star Javier Cámara | Making-of Featurettes | Trailers

The Gang of Four
(1988, 162m)
Blu-ray
Prebook Date: 12/13/2022
Street Date: 1/10/2023

Available digitally on Kino Now 1/10/2023

Director: Jacques Rivette
Actors: Laurence Côte, Fejria Deliba, Ines d'Almeida,
Bernadette Gira, Nathalie Richard

Intimations of conspiracy hover over a group of actors in this underrated but decidedly major work from New Wave master and former Cahiers du Cinema editor-in-chief Jacques Rivette. Four young women share a house on the outskirts of Paris and study acting under a demanding teacher (Bulle Ogier). Outside class, each is questioned by a mysterious investigator on the trail of a former roommate who may be involved in a criminal enterprise. Rivette’s characteristic preoccupation with the intersections between daily life and performativity creep into every corner of this wholly engrossing mystery, which eventually expands beyond the confines of the film itself. Shot by DP Caroline Champetier (HOLY MOTORS) in a glorious late-‘80s palette of deep reds, golden yellows, and dark teals, this playful revisiting of his debut PARIS BELONGS TO US launched the second phase of Rivette’s career.

Bonus Features:
Audio commentary track by Director Emeritus, New York Film Festival & Professor of Film and Media Studies, Columbia University Richard Peña • Re-release Trailer

Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power
(2022, 90m)
DVD
Prebook Date: 12/6/2022
Street Date: 1/3/2023

Available digitally on Kino Now 12/2/2022

Directors: Sam Pollard, Geeta Gandbhir
Featuring Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker

The passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 represented not the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement, but the beginning of a new, crucial chapter. Nowhere was this next battle better epitomized than in Lowndes County, Alabama, a rural, impoverished county with a vicious history of racist terrorism. In a county that was 80 percent Black but had zero Black voters, laws were just paper without power. This isn’t a story of hope but of action. Through first person accounts and searing archival footage, LOWNDES COUNTY AND THE ROAD TO BLACK POWER tells the story of the local movement and young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizers who fought not just for voting rights, but for Black Power in Lowndes County.

Loudmouth
(2022, 123m)
DVD
Prebook Date: 12/20/2022
Street Date: 1/17/2023

Available digitally on Kino Now 1/13/2023

Director: Josh Alexander
Featuring Reverend Al Sharpton, President Barack Obama, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Senator Chuck Schumer

Rabble rouser or activist? Opportunist or trailblazer? During his six-decade journey from pastoral prodigy to racial justice firebrand to elder media statesman, the Reverend Al Sharpton has been a polarizing figure on the national stage. LOUDMOUTH is the definitive look at his life and legacy, featuring President Barack Obama, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Senator Chuck Schumer.

After She Died
(2022, 101m)
Blu-ray & DVD
Prebook Date: 12/20/2022
Street Date: 1/17/2023

Now available digitally on Kino Now

Director: Jack Dignan
Actors: Liliana Ritchie, Vanessav Madrid, Paul Talbot

A grieving teenager is horrified to discover that her father's new girlfriend looks identical to her dead mother.

Bonus Features:
Audio commentary by writer/director Jack Dignan | It Feels Like Spring (2019, short film by Jack Dignan) | Deleted Scenes | Extended Scene | Trailer

The Celluloid Bordello
(2021, 86m)
DVD
Prebook Date: 12/13/2022
Street Date: 1/10/2023

Available digitally on Kino Now 1/10/2023

Director: Juliana Piccillo
Feauturing Annie Sprinkle, Carol Leigh, David Henry Sterry, Gabe Vigil, Juba Kalamka, Nicholas de Villiers, Peter Keough

Since the dawn of cinema, sex workers have served as muses to movie-makers. From the early white slavery pictures like The Girl Who Went Astray from 1900, to countless dramas and rom-coms such as Midnight Cowboy, Risky Business and Pretty Woman, hookers, hustlers, call girls, street walkers and strippers have been staples of the silver screen. Cinematic sex workers are often fantasy figures, or cautionary tales, or just punchlines. They are brutalized, killed off, scorned, sometimes rescued and almost always represented as if no sex worker is in the audience. Even in well-meaning documentaries reality is distorted by filmmakers (almost always non-sex workers), who are determined to show trauma, violence and pathos rather than the resilient and thriving communities that are the norm for many sex workers.

The Celluloid Bordello brings sex workers to the cinema. With equal parts historical overview, critique, and homage, this eye-opening film lets real-life dommes, escorts, porn stars and hustlers tell you which films they love and which they hate, which get it right and which miss the mark, and, most importantly, how perpetuating stereotypes in media affects real peoples' lives.

Plan A
(2022, 109m)
Blu-ray
Prebook Date: 12/27/2022
Street Date: 1/24/2023

Now available digitally on Kino Now

Directors: Doron Paz, Yoav Paz
Actors: August Diehl, Sylvia Hoeks, Michael Aloni, Nikolai Kinski

PLAN A is based on the incredible true story of the ""Avengers“ - a group of Jewish vigilantes, men and woman, who after surviving the Holocaust vow to avenge the death of their people – ""an eye for any eye, a tooth for a tooth“. 

Max (August Diehl) is a Holocaust survivor who has lost his entire family in the camps. Full of rage and with nothing left to live for other than revenge, he decides to help the Jewish Brigade, soldiers under British command (led by Michael Aloni). Off the record they find and execute Nazis accused of holding leadership positions in the Nazi system. When the brigade is called off, Max follows Anna (Sylvia Hoeks) and a group of former partisans to Nuremberg, where they soon realize that they will not find redemption in the upcoming Nuremberg trials.

Led by charismatic leader Abba Kovner, they formulate the biggest revenge operation in history - "Plan A“. They infiltrate German water companies as undercover engineers with only one goal: to poison the drinking water in Nuremberg, Munich, Cologne, Weimar and Hamburg and "to kill six million Germans, one for every Jew slaughtered by the Germans". 

Based on the book Nakam by Prof. Dina Porat, chief historian at Yad Vashem, PLAN A asks the impossible question of how survivors plagued by traumatic memories struggled with conflicting feelings about a lust for justice and the desire for payback.

A Violent Life (Una Vita Violenta)
(1962, 107m)
Blu-ray
Prebook Date: 1/3/2023
Street Date: 1/31/2023

Available on digitally on all major VOD platforms 1/31/2023

Directors: Paolo Heusch, Brunello Rondi
Actors: Franco Citti, Serena Vergano, Enrico Maria Salerno, Angelo Maria Santiamantini

Based on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s second novel. A Violent Life (Una Vita Violenta) tells the story of a group of kids who live in one of the poorest and most disreputable neighborhoods in Rome. The story is set at the end of WWII. Thomas lives at the expense of others, like all his other companions, stealing and wasting time. But one day after a theft, Thomas gets arrested. When he comes out of prison he contracts tuberculosis, going through an inner struggle which changes his worldview. He begins to think about his future as a human being and vows to change his life. Hoping to become honest, Thomas gets engaged to the beautiful Irene and also decides to participate in political activity, joining the Communist Party. Then there is a sudden accident, and Thomas once again is faced with the most important challenge of his life.

Bonus Features:
Interviews with director Luciano Emmer, film historian Stefania Parigi, and film critic Umberto Rondi | Fully illustrated booklet containing critical analysis of the film