In November, few titles arrive on Mubi, but they are quality titles. Two new releases of the year, and classics are on the program. Not to mention an intriguing short film.

Let’s take a look at it.

Releases of the year

The Substance (Coralie Fargeat) – 2024 | Streaming from October 31 

Demi Moore gives a career-best performance as Elisabeth Sparkle, a former A-lister past her prime and suddenly fired from her fitness TV show. She is then drawn to the opportunity presented by a mysterious new drug: the substance. All it takes is one injection and she is reborn – temporarily – as the gorgeous, twenty something Sue (Margaret Qualley). The only rule? Time needs to be split: exactly one week in one body, then one week in the other. No exceptions. 

Deliriously entertaining and ruthlessly satirical, Coralie Fargeat’s Cannes sensation turns toxic beauty culture inside out with a be-careful-what-you-wish-for fable for the ages. Explosive, provocative and twisted, The Substance won the Midnight Madness People’s Choice award at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2024.

Witches (Elizabeth Sankey) – 2024 | Streaming from November 22 

Director Elizabeth Sankey explores the connections between postpartum mental health and the portrayal of witches in Western society and popular culture. Sankey intertwines her personal experiences with historical and cinematic footage—while creating a new coven of women to reclaim their stories. 

Witches is directed by Elizabeth Sankey, whose critically acclaimed feature Romantic Comedy was released by MUBI in 2019. The film had its World Premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival.

Short films

Four Unloved Women, Adrift on a Purposeless Sea, Experience the Ecstasy of Dissection (David Cronenberg) – 2023 | Streaming from November 1

Long live the new flesh. Surgery is the new sex. These Cronenbergian epigrams come together in a tableau that reimagines the ecstasy and eroticism of Renaissance sculpture for the future. Or is it already the present? 

Four Unloved Women, Adrift on a Purposeless Sea, Experience the Ecstasy of Dissection is featured in the SHORT FILMS BIG NAMES collection, a curated collection offering a crucial window into both the formation and the evolution of a director’s signature style.

The classics that are arriving

Songs of resistance: An Alanis Obomsawin Collection

This November, MUBI is celebrating Indigenous filmmaker and activist Alanis Obomsawin with the new SONGS OF RESISTANCE: AN ALANIS OBOMSAWIN COLLECTION. Obomsawin has been using nonfiction cinema for over 50 years to amplify the voices of Indigenous people in Canada. Growing up in an Abenaki reserve, she later faced discrimination in the city’s educational system, which sought to erase her Indigenous identity. Despite this, she became a lifelong educator and activist, using film to raise awareness about First Nations issues.

Mother of Many Children (Alanis Obomsawin) – 1977 | Streaming from November 1

This feature documentary portrays the proud matriarchal society of Indigenous womanhood. For centuries, these women have resisted adopting the different standards and customs forced upon them, continuing in their traditions and beliefs, convinced that they are a source of strength.

Incident at Restigouche (Alanis Obomsawin) – 1984 | Streaming from November 1

Incident at Restigouche delves into the history behind the Quebec Provincial Police (QPP) raids on the Restigouche Reserve on June 11 and 20, 1981. Using a combination of documents, news clips, photographs and interviews, this powerful film provides an in-depth investigation into the history-making raids that put justice on trial. 

Kanehsatake, 270 Years of Resistance (Alanis Obomsawin) – 1993 | Streaming from November 1

In July 1990, a dispute over a proposed golf course to be built on Kanien’kéhaka lands in Oka, Quebec, set the stage for a historic confrontation that would grab international headlines and sear itself into the Canadian consciousness.

The Bret Pack

Bret Easton Ellis is an American author and screenwriter whose dark, provocative prose has captivated readers for decades. This November, MUBI is celebrating visceral cinematic adaptations of Ellis’ work with the brand new THE BRET PACK collection. Bold and controversial, these films capture the chaotic energy of Ellis’s vision of a fractured, hollow modernity.

American Psycho (Mary Harron) – 2001 | Streaming from November 1

Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is a wealthy and successful Wall Street investment banker obsessed with success, status, and style, with a stunning fiancé. He is also a psychotic killer who assaults, murders, and dismembers both strangers and acquaintances without provocation or purpose.

The Rules of Attraction (Roger Avary) – 2002 | Now Streaming

Bret Easton Ellis’s provocative brand of heedless hedonism and bone-deep cynicism is translated to the screen in style in this gloriously pulpy adaptation. 

Bolstered by a soundtrack as cool and edgy as its antiheroes, The Rules of Attraction captures both teenage angst and the urge to escape it.

The Canyons (Paul Schrader) – 2013 | Now Streaming

Paul Schrader’s collaboration with Bret Easton Ellis is a caustic take on a Hollywood that lives off the dashed hopes and broken dreams of an ever-renewing influx of chumps and suckers. 

Sex and violence reign in this stylish and uncanny vision of Los Angeles, all smooth surfaces and digital grain.