With his breakout feature, the wickedly macabre supernatural chamber piece Hereditary (2018), and its equally acclaimed follow-up, Sweden-set folk horror pressure-cooker Midsommar (2019), director Ari Aster demonstrated a well-honed talent for isolating the corrosive tensions and sinister contradictions that lurk just beneath the alluring comforts of family and community, yielding sensitive, profoundly unsettling studies of interpersonal angst and long-repressed emotional realities. In the intervening years, his unflaggingly ambitious filmmaking has helped to spark a spirited industry-wide discourse around the contours and capacities of genre. Aster has simultaneously engaged in full-throated dialogue with the forms and traditions of horror and exploded the limits of that category in new and unpredictable ways, balancing twisted psychological drama against the blackest irony as a means of probing humanity’s darker corners with assurance and laser-sharp precision. This April, on the occasion of the release of Beau Is Afraid, Film at Lincoln Center is excited to present a curated selection of films handpicked by Aster himself to complement the director’s highly anticipated new feature. This eclectic and unexpected collection of masterworks drawn from seven decades of film history across a range of genres and production contexts sheds light on the inspirations and influences behind one of the most compelling directorial voices in Hollywood today.

To view the films and schedule for this series, please click here.

 

Acknowledgements:
A24; American Genre Film Archive; Guy Maddin, John Gurdebeke, the Winnipeg Film Group; Karel Zeman Museum; Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute; Czech National Film Archive.