The Bloody Child

Q&As with Nina Menkes on Sept. 28 & Oct. 1

Nina Menkes’s third feature is a visionary deconstruction of the war film, a fragmentary and hallucinatory investigation into the psychic currents that converge around a single moment. Drawn from a Los Angeles Times article, The Bloody Child centers on a Gulf War veteran who is arrested in the Mojave Desert while digging a grave for his wife, whom he has apparently murdered. What follows is an achronological succession of fragments: of time, of the man’s interiority, and of the culture shared by his fellow soldiers. Featuring a cast that includes Menkes’s sister Tinka and real-life servicemen, The Bloody Child is a haunting meditation on violence and its consequences upon the interiorities of those who enact it on behalf of the state. An Arbelos Films release. New restoration by The Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.