A Cooler Climate

In this deeply personal new documentary from James Ivory, the Oscar-winning filmmaker uncovers boxes of film he shot during a life-changing trip to Afghanistan in 1960. The film was never completed and the footage stayed in a box unseen for 60 years. In 2022, aged 94, he decided to revisit this unique material as a means to look back at his younger self and to unravel how this unlikely journey far from his hometown in Oregon helped form the celebrated filmmaker he was to become. This glorious, color footage unleashes a Proustian reverie during which Ivory recounts his life as traveler, outsider, and artist. Alternating between the incredible moving images he recorded as a curious visitor in Kabul and Bamiyan and his own personal story growing up in the Western States, coming to terms with his own sexual identity, and embarking on what would become a legendary career, Ivory has made a film (co-directed with Giles Gardner and featuring music by Alexandre Desplat) about the voyages we all take, around the globe and within our own interior landscapes.