Double Features from Edward Yang, Kon Ichikawa Join ‘Cairo Station,’ ‘Shoeshine,’ ‘Saving Face,’ ‘Vermiglio,’ ‘Compensation’ in the Criterion Collection Releases for August 2025
There is a ton to offer Criterion Collection fans this August, starting with a double feature from two masters of the craft. Up first is director Kon Ichikawa, the Japanese filmmaker, and his films, The Burmese Harp, which is one of the most overwhelming yet breathtaking antiwar films from Japanese cinema, as well as Fires on the Plain, a stirring portrait of desperate Japanese soldiers stranded on a strange land during World War II. Both films are testaments to not only the spirit and complexity of the Japanese during WWII but also showcases Ichikawa’s brilliance as one of his country’s most versatile directors. From a more modern filmmaker, Edward Yang has two new feature films, A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong, enter the collection that already features three other films from the acclaimed Taiwanese artists. Made back to back, A Confucian Confusion finds Yang dabbling in the world of comedy with his unique looking into the urban discontent of his generation, centering on young Taipei professionals whose paths converge at an entertainment company where the boundaries between art and commerce, love and business, have become hopelessly blurred. In a similar tone, Mahjong is a satire set in a globalized Taipei, with a darker and more caustic edge to it. Inside the film is a dazzling vision of a multicultural Taipei where nearly every relationship has a price and newfound prosperity comes at the expense of the human soul. If you are a fan of Yang’s other work like Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day, then you are going to want to pick this up.
Take a trip across the world and back in time with 1946’s Shoeshine and 1958’s Cairo Station. The former is an indelible fable of innocence lost amid the hardscrabble reality of 1940s Italy from director Vittorio De Sica. Known for being an international breakthrough for neorealism, Shoeshine is an Oscar winning film that’s a devastating portrait of economic struggle made all the more haunting by its child’s-eye perspective, and is one of the most effective film achievements of postwar Italian filmmaking. For the latter, Cairo Station is a work of pure populist poetry from director Youssef Chahine, that explores the soul of a Egyptian’s place in the world in the country’s new post-revolutionary political order. Focused on a newspaper hawker whose obsession with a sultry drink seller leads to tragedy of operatic proportions, the film elegantly blends neorealism with noir to create a masterpiece.
Last up this month is a trio of modern films that are landmark, intimate portraits of unseen perspectives in cinema that should be celebrated. With Compensation, director Zeinabu irene Davis created a groundbreaking piece of cinema about inclusion and visibility centered on a poignant look of Deaf African Americans and their complexity of love within their community. Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks play an educated dressmaker and an illiterate migrant in 1910s Chicago, and a resilient graphic artist and an endearing librarian living in the same city eight decades later; each giving rich, layered work of tender humanity that spreads across time. It’s a vital piece of independent filmmaker that is a must own of this month’s latter entries to the collection. Alice Wu’s Saving Face is a vibrant, irresistible debut feature busting with life and love alongside snappy dialogue and elegant visual storytelling. Just as Wil (Michelle Krusiec), a harried young surgical resident, begins a promising romance with the flirtatious dancer Vivian (Lynn Chen), her life is turned upside down when her more traditional Chinese mother (Joan Chen)—unwed and unexpectedly pregnant—moves in with her, forcing both women to confront the generational and cultural barriers that have long troubled their relationship. Clever, confident filmmaking from Wu makes this queer romantic comedy a must own as well alongside Compensation. For the most recent release to make it into the collection, as well as the Criterion Premieres selection of the month, we have Maura Delpero’s exquisite wartime drama, Vermiglio. Winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize, Delpero blends historically grounded realism with artistic grace as she explores the relationships of a family turned upside down by the arrival of a relative’s return home to their small Alpine village. Stirring and tense, it’s a fascinating film that you should seek out; an underrated gem from 2024.
Below are the special features for each other films from the August 2025 Criterion Collection releases.
FIRES ON THE PLAIN Special Edition Features:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Interviews with director Kon Ichikawa and actor Rentaro Mikuni
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic and historian Tony Rayns
THE BURMESE HARP Special Edition Features:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Introduction by Japanese-film scholar Donald Richie
- Program featuring interviews with director Kon Ichikawa and actor Mickey Curtis
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Chuck Stephens
CAIRO STATION Special Edition Features:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New 2K digital restoration of Cairo as Seen by Chahine (1991), a short documentary by Youssef Chahine, with an introduction by film scholar Joseph Fahim
- New interview with Fahim
- Chahine . . . Why? (2009), a documentary on the director and Cairo Station
- Excerpt from Chahine’s appearance at the 1998 Midnight Sun Film Festival
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by Fahim
A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION / MAHJONG: TWO FILMS BY EDWARD YANG Special Edition Features:
- New 4K digital restorations, with 5.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
- Excerpts of director Edward Yang speaking after a 1994 screening of A Confucian Confusion
- New interview with editor Chen Po-wen
- New conversation between Chinese-cultural-studies scholar Michael Berry and film critic Justin Chang
- Performance of Yang’s 1992 play Likely Consequence
- PLUS: An essay by film programmer and critic Dennis Lim and a 1994 director’s note on A Confucian Confusion
SHOESHINE Special Edition Features:
- New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by The Film Foundation and the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Sciuscià 70 (2016), a documentary by Mimmo Verdesca, made to mark the film’s seventieth anniversary
- New program on Shoeshine and Italian neorealism featuring film scholars Paola Bonifazio and Catherine O’Rawe
- Radio broadcast from 1946 featuring director Vittorio De Sica
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar David Forgacs and “Shoeshine, Joe?,” a 1945 photo-documentary by De Sica
VERMIGLIO Special Edition Features:
- Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Maura Delpero
- Trailer
SAVING FACE Director Approved Special Edition Features:
- High-definition digital master, approved by director Alice Wu, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- Audio commentary featuring Wu
- New interviews with Wu and actor Joan Chen
- Deleted scenes with optional commentary by Wu
- Behind-the-scenes featurette
- Program featuring Wu and members of the cast at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Phoebe Chen
COMPENSTATION Director Approved Special Edition Features:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Zeinabu irene Davis, in collaboration with the UCLA Film & Television Archive and Wimmin with a Mission Productions, and in conjunction with the Sundance Institute, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
- Audio commentary featuring Davis, screenwriter Marc Arthur Chéry, and director of photography Pierre H. L. Désir Jr.
- Q&As with members of the cast and crew
- Two short films by Davis, Crocodile Conspiracy (1986) and Pandemic Bread (2023), the latter with audio commentary featuring Davis and cast and crew members and descriptive audio
- Interview with Davis from 2021
- New program about select archival photographs and adinkra and vèvè symbols in the film
- Trailer
- English subtitles and intertitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and English descriptive audio
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar Racquel Gates, a director’s note, and a conversation between Davis and artist Alison O’Daniel about the process of captioning the film
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