The Criterion Collection has announced its release line-up for January 2023, which includes Terry Gilliam‘s adventure fantasy, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; Mia Hansen-Løve‘s radiant summertime sojourn, Bergman Island; John M. Stahl‘s devastating story of single mothers, racial identity, and the American dream, Imitation of Life; Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s startling meditation on roots and rebellion, This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection, and Lars von Trier‘s acclaimed Europe Trilogy.
THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN
Release Date: 3 January 2023
1988 • 126 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
Terry Gilliam directs this dazzling fantasy of epic proportions, inspired by the extravagant exploits of the fabled Baron Munchausen. Famous for its turbulent production, the film follows the whimsical eighteenth-century nobleman (John Neville) as he embarks on an outlandish quest that takes him from faraway lands to the moon to the belly of a sea monster and beyond, meanwhile waging battle against a vengeful sultan and the tyranny of logic. Bursting with colour and imagination, special effects, wit, and great performances, the Oscar-nominated The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a lavish celebration of the triumph of make-believe over reality.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, approved by writer-director Terry Gilliam, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- For the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
- Audio commentary featuring Gilliam and his coscreenwriter, Charles McKeown
- Documentary on the making of the film
- New video essay by critic and filmmaker David Cairns about the history of the Baron Munchausen character
- Behind-the-scenes footage of the film’s special effects, narrated by Gilliam
- Deleted scenes with commentary by Gilliam
- Storyboards for unfilmed scenes, narrated by Gilliam and McKeown
- Original marketing materials including a trailer and electronic-press-kit featurettes, as well as preview cards and advertising proposals read by Gilliam
- Miracle of Flight (1974), an animated short film by Gilliam
- Episode of The South Bank Show from 1991 on Gilliam
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic and author Michael Koresky
BERGMAN ISLAND
Release Date: 31 January 2023
2021 • 113 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 2.35:1 aspect ratio
Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve embarks on a luminous summertime odyssey to the home of Ingmar Bergman in this stirring tale of life and art. In search of inspiration for their current filmmaking projects, Chris (Vicky Krieps) and her partner (Tim Roth) travel to the remote island of Fårö, Sweden, where Bergman lived and worked for decades. There, the spirit of the cinema master looms as Chris confronts her complicated relationships to work, men, motherhood, and her artistic influences. Bergman Island is a rich deconstruction of the creative process and the journey that every film and filmmaker goes through.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- 2K digital master, approved by director Mia Hansen-Løve, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with Hansen-Løve
- New interview with actor Vicky Krieps
- Bergman’s Ghosts (2021), a short film made during the filming of Bergman Island by actor Gabe Klinger
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Devika Girish
IMITATION OF LIFE
Release Date: 10 January 2023
1934 • 110 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.33:1 aspect ratio
John M. Stahl brings his exquisite restraint and visual style to this devastating, quintessential melodrama, the first adaptation of Fannie Hurst’s best-selling novel and a heartbreaking and enduringly relevant story of mothers and daughters, racial identity, and the American Dream. Imitation of Life explores the friendship between two struggling single mothers: one (Claudette Colbert) a working-class white woman who ascends to the top of the business world, the other (Louise Beavers) her Black housekeeper, whose life is shattered by the rejection of her rebellious, white-passing daughter (Fredi Washington). It is this latter relationship—attuned to America’s bitter racial realities and heartbreakingly enacted by trailblazing Black performers Beavers and Washington—that lends the film its transcendent emotional power.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with Miriam J. Petty, author of Stealing the Show: African American Performers and Audiences in 1930s Hollywood, about the resonance of Louise Beavers’s and Fredi Washington’s performances
- New interview with Imogen Sara Smith, contributor to The Call of the Heart: John M. Stahl and Hollywood Melodrama, about director John M. Stahl and his work with actor Claudette Colbert and others
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by Petty
THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT’S A RESURRECTION
Release Date: 24 January 2023
2019 • 122 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In Sesotho with English subtitles • 1.40:1 aspect ratio
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese crafts a meditation on the concept of homeland and what is lost in the name of progress in this haunting, poetic narrative drama. Grieving and alone following the deaths of her husband and children, elderly Mantoa (Mary Twala Mhlongo, in a soul-shaking end-of-life performance) prepares for her own death and to be buried alongside her ancestors. When plans for a new dam near her village in the landlocked kingdom of Lesotho threaten to literally wash away all she holds dear, Mantoa takes a last stand, mobilizing her neighbors to fight for their land and their way of life. The experience of watching Mosese’s visionary, much-lauded This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection is as timeless and elemental as the land itself.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- 2K digital master, approved by director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New audio commentary featuring Mosese and producer Cait Pansegrouw
- Mosese’s short films Mosonngoa (2014) and Behemoth: Or the Game of God (2016), along with his 2019 essay film Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You., with a new introduction by Mosese
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by novelist and playwright Zakes Mda
LARS VON TRIER’S EUROPE TRILOGY
Release Date: 17 January 2023
THE ELEMENT OF CRIME
1984 • 103 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.89:1 aspect ratio
EPIDEMIC
1987 • 106 minutes • Color/Black & White • Monaural • In English and Danish with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio
EUROPA
1991 • 112 minutes • Color/Black & White • Stereo • In English and German with English subtitles • 2.39:1 aspect ratio
With his first three features, Danish provocateur Lars von Trier sought to map the soul of Europe — troubled past, anxious present, uncertain future — in this singular showcase of hallucinatory visuals, technical invention and dark imagination. Linked by a fascination with hypnotic states and the mesmeric possibilities of cinema, the films that make up the Europe Trilogy — The Element of Crime, Epidemic, and Europa — filter the continent’s turbulent history, guilt, and traumas through von Trier’s audacious deconstructions of genres including film noir, melodrama, horror, and science fiction.
THREE-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- 4K digital restoration of Europa, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack, and 3K digital restorations of The Element of Crime and Epidemic, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
- Audio commentaries featuring director Lars von Trier and others
- Tranceformer: A Portrait of Lars von Trier (1997), a documentary by Stig Björkman
- Interview from 2005 with von Trier about the Europe Trilogy
- Making-of documentaries for all three films
- Programs on the films featuring interviews with many of von Trier’s collaborators
- Two short student films by von Trier: Nocturne (1980) and Images of Liberation (1982)
- Danish television interview with von Trier from 1994
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Howard Hampton
