Annual Museum Of Modern Art International Festival of Film

Our annual To Save and Project festival returns in 2025 with a rich selection of newly restored treasures from archives around the world. This year's program spans nearly a century of cinema, from pioneering German Expressionist works like Robert Wiene's Raskolnikow (1923) to groundbreaking independent films of the 1970s like James Bidgood's Pink Narcissus (1971). Films from Argentina, Thailand, India, Syria, the Czech Republic, and beyond highlight cinema's global diversity and the work of film preservation institutions worldwide.

Highlights include the rediscovery of Yevgeni Cherviakov's forgotten Soviet masterpiece My Son (1928), found in Argentina and restored by GEM; the racy pre-Code Hollywood comedy The Greeks Had a Word for Them (1932) from the Library of Congress; and Andre Bonzel's Flickering Ghosts of Loves Gone By, a powerful repurposing of home movies from Janus Films. The program features restorations by major archives and funders, including The Film Foundation, UCLA Film and Television Archive, the Cinemathèque française, and Filmmuseum München.

The series opens on January 9 with the world premiere of MoMA's newly upgraded restoration of Frank Borzage's transcendent romance 7th Heaven (1927), and concludes on January 30 with the world premiere of MoMA's new reconstruction of the long unseen, original 1918 version of Charles Chaplin's World War I comedy Shoulder Arms.

Schedule of Events:

1:30 pm: Nujum al-Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight). 1988. Written and - directed by Ossama Mohamed

Nujum al-Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight). 1988. Syria. Written and directed by Ossama Mohamed. With Zuhair Abdulkarim, Sabah As-Salem, Saad Eddin Baqdoones. North American premiere. In Arabic; English subtitles. 105 min.

Opening with the paradoxical declaration "I am a free man," Ossama Mohammed's masterwork uses the microcosm of a rural Syrian family to explore the psychology of life under dictatorship. In a coastal village, the preparations for two weddings become a devastating study of power and control, centered on Abbas, a despotic older brother whose resemblance to Hafez al-Assad is no accident. Mohammed transforms domestic spaces-seen through cracks, dusty windows, and broken mirrors-into a stark visual poetry that reveals how authoritarian violence seeps into society's most private corners. Banned in Syria after a single screening but celebrated at Cannes, the film draws on influences from Georgian comedy to Federico Fellini while establishing its own powerful visual language. This restoration, from The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project, recovers a vital work by a director who, despite living in exile since 2011, continues to probe the complex relationship between beauty, justice, and political repression.

Restored by The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in collaboration with Ossama Mohammed. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

4:00 pm: Mia Luang (My Dear Wife). 1978. Directed by Vichit Kounavudhi

Mia Luang (My Dear Wife). 1978. Thailand. Directed by Vichit Kounavudhi. Screenplay by Kounavudhi, based on the novel by Krisna Asosksin. With Jatupon Paupirom, Viyada Umarin, Wonguen Intrawuth. North American premiere. Courtesy Five Star Production Co., Ltd. In Thai; English subtitles. 145 min.

A sophisticated, Sirkian entry in Thailand's domestic melodrama tradition, My Dear Wife exemplifies the genre's preoccupation with class aspiration and marital discord in rapidly modernizing Bangkok. Director Vichit Kounavudhi, later named a National Artist, crafts an emotionally extravagant narrative centered on the rivalry between a legitimate wife and her husband's mistress, set against a backdrop of rising middle-class prosperity and social ambition. The film's widescreen cinematography, conjuring the look of midcentury American melodramas, lavishes attention on the material trappings of urban affluence-modern apartments, fashionable clothes, new automobiles-while its narrative explores the price of such advancement through the intense psychological warfare between its female protagonists.

Made during Thai cinema's commercial peak, when local studios were producing hundreds of features annually for an enthusiastic domestic audience, My Dear Wife demonstrates the industry's ability to adapt international melodramatic conventions while addressing distinctly Thai social dynamics. This new restoration by the Thai Film Archive preserves a vital example of how popular cinema could transform social tensions into compelling entertainment, offering contemporary viewers insight into a crucial period of Thai cultural history.