Queen of Diamonds

Director: Nina Menkes

1991 / 77min / DCP

Where many films in Las Vegas depict the thrill of high-stakes gambling, Menkes’s deliberately cold, controlled gem focuses on the exhaustion and alienation felt by those harnessed in place along the assembly line of thrills. The director’s sister, Tinka, stars as a casino blackjack dealer who seems nearly to have been turned into an automaton by her work, one of a host of lost souls found wandering the desert landscape. “This is not a ‘dreamy’ film. Its moments of disconnect from ‘ordinary’ reality… are meant to provoke—specifically, in a way that’s anticapitalist and feminist. Queen of Diamonds is not an easy film. But it’s an essential one.”—Glenn Kenny, The New York Times New restoration by The Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation