The 2022 documentary focused on David Lynch's cinematic inspiration from The Wizard of Oz will be getting a Janus Contemporaries Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection on March 19.

The themes, images, and cultural vernacular of Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz continue to haunt David Lynch’s filmography—from his early short The Alphabet to his recent television series Twin Peaks: The Return. Arguably, no filmmaker has so consistently drawn inspiration—consciously or unconsciously—from a single work. Is Lynch trapped in the Land of Oz? If so, what can we learn about his body of work by taking a closer look at how it intersects and communicates with that legendary fantasy? In turn, what do Lynch’s films have to say about the enduring resonance of one of America’s most beloved classics? Through six distinct perspectives, Alexandre O. Philippe’s Lynch/Oz helps us reexperience and reinterpret The Wizard of Oz by way of David Lynch, delivering new appreciations of both.

Lynch/Oz - Blu-ray 

The Blu-ray release will include Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Alexandre O. Philippe and a trailer.

Pre-orders for Lynch/Oz are up - Happy Collecting!

The Criterion Collection has announced their next three Janus Contemporaries Blu-ray releases coming in November: Hlynur Pálmason's Godland, two-time Palme d’Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Tori and Lokita, and The Eight Mountains directed by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch. All three titles will be available on November 21.

Godland - Janus Contemporaries 

The struggle between the strictures of religion and humankind’s brute animal nature plays out amid the beautifully forbidding landscapes of remote Iceland in this stunning psychological epic from director Hlynur Pálmason. In the late nineteenth century, Danish priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) makes the perilous trek to Iceland’s southeastern coast with the intention of establishing a church. There, the arrogant man of God finds his resolve tested as he confronts the harsh terrain, temptations of the flesh, and the reality of being an intruder in an unforgiving land. What unfolds is a transfixing journey into the heart of colonial darkness—one that’s attuned to both the majesty and the terrifying power of the natural world.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Hlynur Pálmason
• A Painter, a 2013 short film by Pálmason
• Trailer

Tori and Lokita - Janus Contemporaries 

From two-time Palme d’Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne comes the story of seventeen-year-old Lokita and twelve-year-old Tori, two immigrants to Belgium—from Cameroon and Benin, respectively—whose siblinglike bond is the only resource they can depend on in their struggle for survival on the margins of European society. The pair work as performers in a cheap trattoria, dealing drugs on the side, while balancing the demands of an indifferent bureaucracy. When Lokita is held captive in a marijuana grow house, events spiral out of control. Winner of the Seventh-Fifth Anniversary Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the latest humanist drama from the Dardenne brothers is a heart-stopping thriller that casts an unflinching eye on the trials of the young and dispossessed.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
• Trailer

The Eight Mountains - Janus Contemporaries 

An epic journey of friendship and self-discovery set in the Italian Alps, The Eight Mountains is a cinematic experience as intimate as it is monumental. Adapting an award-winning novel by Paolo Cognetti, Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch portray, through observant detail and stunning landscape photography, the profound relationship between Pietro (Luca Marinelli) and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi), who first meet as children in an Alpine village. Years later, the estranged friends reunite, after the passing of Pietro’s father (Filippo Timi), in order to realize his dream of rebuilding a ruined cabin on a mountain slope. This emotional project, and their subsequent explorations of the mountains, create a strong bond between the two—yet individual dreams, and the demands of society, ultimately drive them to pursue irrevocably divergent paths.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with directors Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen
• The Making of “The Eight Mountains,” a new documentary featuring cast and crew
• Trailer

We will update these listings as soon as the preorder links become available and all three titles will be available on Blu-ray on November 21.

As previously reported, The Criterion Collection and Janus Films are teaming up to produce a new series of Blu-rays. The first three are coming this October are all from 2022: Jerzy Skolimowski's EO, Jafar Panahi's No Bears, and Louis Garrel' The Innocent.

EO - Janus Contemporaries 

Legendary director Jerzy Skolimowski created one of his freest and most visually inventive films yet with this story of a gray donkey named EO. After being removed from an itinerant circus, EO begins a trek across the countryside, experiencing cruelty and kindness from a cast of characters including an Italian countess (Isabelle Huppert) and a Polish soccer team. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature, and featuring stunning cinematography by Michał Dymek coupled with Paweł Mykietyn’s resonant score, EO presents the follies and triumphs of humankind from the perspective of its four-legged protagonist on a quest for freedom.

SPECIAL FEATURES

No Bears - Janus Contemporaries 

One of the world’s great cinema artists, Jafar Panahi has been carefully crafting self-reflexive works about artistic, personal, and political freedom for the past three decades, despite being banned from filmmaking by the Iranian government since 2010. In No Bears—completed shortly before his imprisonment in 2022—Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself, a dissident filmmaker who relocates to a rural border town to direct a film remotely in nearby Turkey and finds himself embroiled in a local scandal. As he struggles to complete his feature, Panahi must confront the opposing pulls of tradition and progress, city and country, belief and evidence, as well as the universal desire to reject oppression.

SPECIAL FEATURES

The Innocent - Janus Contemporaries 

Part crime thriller, part romantic comedy, Louis Garrel’s The Innocent shows the dangerous and outlandish lengths two men go to for the women they love. Garrel stars as Abel, an aquarium educator whose mother, Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), marries one of her drama pupils in the local penitentiary, Michel (Roschdy Zem). Once on parole, Michel attempts to start a legitimate life but soon reverts to his old ways, eventually roping Abel into one of his schemes. Complicating matters is Clémence (Noémie Merlant), Abel’s brazen coworker, who convinces him to take part in the heist. Directing from a screenplay he cowrote (with Tanguy Viel and Naïla Guiguet), Garrel explores the comedic results of playacting’s intrusion into reality, as well as reality’s comedic tendency to transform us into what we never thought we could be.

SPECIAL FEATURES

We will update with preorder links as soon as they become available and all three titles will be available on Blu-ray on October 17th.