2025 New Releases, Filmmaker Deep Dives, and Halloween!
Hello, ShotDeck community!
Thank you for your incredible submissions for the 2025 ShotDeck Recreations Contest! This year has broken the record for most ever submissions, and the standard has never been higher. This year’s judges include director Sean Baker, cinematographers Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Adam Newport-Berra, Natasha Braier, Jomo Fray, Kira Kelly and Amy Vincent, production designer Jean-Vincent Puzos, and colorist Waqas Qazi. Keep an eye on our website and Instagram page for announcements about this year’s winners!
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We’ve had a busy October, dropping over 65,000 new shots from hundreds of films, television series, music videos and commercials. Keep reading for a look at what we curated!
FILM COLLECTION
New Releases
As the northern hemisphere summer draws to a close, we have thousands of shots for you from some of 2025’s hottest new releases. Check out stills from Together, Caught Stealing, Splitsville, Oh, Hi!, Honey Don’t!, Elio, and Okay, and add them to your decks today!
FILM COLLECTION
2000s J-Horror
Happy Halloween! This October, we dropped a collection of 2000s J-Horror films on ShotDeck.
The storytelling influences of J-Horror can be traced all the way back to the folk tales of the Edo and Meiji periods, where spiritual ghost stories known as kaidan became popular in print and on stage. Contemporary J-Horror films have built from this, carving a unique place for themselves separate from western conventions of the horror genre by focusing both visually and stylistically on dramatic tension, psychological dread and supernatural themes. As the genre has matured, so has its following around the world. Many of the most prominent J-Horror films of the 2000s have become cult classics around the world, and several have been remade in English.
Check out our Halloween curation of 2000s J-Horror films – Ichi the Killer, Ju-On: The Curse, Ju-On: The Grudge 2 and Uzumaki. Add them to your decks today!
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
Claire Denis
This month, we released five films from French master filmmaker, Claire Denis. Born in 1946 in Paris and raised across several West African countries under French colonial occupation, Denis initially studied economics at university before quitting to study filmmaking at IDHEC – now La Femis. When she graduated in 1971, she went to work as an assistant director throughout the 70s and 80s, most notably for Wim Wenders on Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987).
Wenders encouraged Denis to direct herself, later saying “Claire was more than ready to make her own films. It would have been a waste to let her continue working as an assistant director”. In 1988, Denis released her feature debut, Chocolat, which was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and announced her to the world as one of the most exciting new voices in global independent cinema.
Check out the rest of this month’s collection, which includes cock fighting drama No Fear, No Die (1990), father-daughter dramedy 35 Shots of Rum (2009), crime thriller Bastards (2013) and romantic drama Both Sides of the Blade (2022).
FILM COLLECTION
Sci-Fi: Before the Moon Landing
It’s one of the most well-established genres of mainstream movies today, but science fiction has a long and winding history that has taken it to some very curious places – and this month at ShotDeck, we wanted to shine a special spotlight on sci-fi films made before the moon landing in 1969. This collection of 20 visionary films capture an age in filmmaking when the potential for science seemed boundless, and where space travel, alien life and the atomic unknown were just starting to take shape in the collective human consciousness.
Check out this wide-ranging selection of titles, from horror classics The Fly (1958) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956); monster movies The Blob (1958) and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958); psychedelic fantasies The Time Machine (1960) and Barbarella (1968); and early space travel films Countdown (1967) and Destination Moon (1950) – plus many more!
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
Med Hondo
In October, we dropped hundreds of shots from one of the founding fathers of African cinema, Med Hondo. Born in Morocco to a Mauritanian mother and Senegalese father, Hondo emigrated to France and took on work as a cook, farm labourer, waiter, dockworker and delivery man while he was acting in drama school. Hondo worked as an extra on films such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin Féminin (1966) and John Huston’s A Walk with Love and Death (1969), while also working as a dubbing artist for Black actors in French versions of American films.
After being frustrated with the lack of roles for Black actors, Hondo took the money he made from his dubbing work to produce, write and direct his debut feature film, Oh, Sun (1970), which debuted during Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival before going on to win the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. As his career progressed, he directed West Indies (1979), an epic satirical drama musical that covered nearly four hundred years of the French West Indies, and the most expensive African film production to that point in history. Our collection also features the 1986 film Sarraounia, which follows the true story of a West African queen who opposed French colonial troops at the end of the nineteenth century. Check these titles out and add them to your decks today!
FILM COLLECTION
Argentinian Crime Classics
Smoky tango clubs, shadowy street corners… This month, ShotDeck dropped six classics of the Argentinian crime genre. While noir has most commonly been associated with American cinema from the 40s-60s, its stylistic hallmarks can be found in cinema from around the world. In the post-war years in Argentina, known as the Peronist years (1949-56), the country was split between those who view the period as one of repression and class warfare, and those who saw it as a glorified age of social justice and national pride. The darker social consequences of this era in Argentina gave rise to some of the most expressive and significant films of any international movement of its time, which have left a huge mark on world cinema.
This month, we programmed six classics of the Argentinian crime genre – five from the heart of the Peronist years – Native Son (1951), The Beast Must Die (1952), Never Open That Door (1952), and The Black Vampire (1953); as well as the classic Argentinian neo-noir film, Nine Queens (2000). Add these shots to your decks today!
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
Abel Ferrara
This month, we dove deep into the filmography of the bad boy of American neo-noir cinema, Abel Ferrara. Born in the Bronx and brought up in and around the New York area, Ferrara started making short films at SUNY Purchase and the San Francisco Art Institute. As he started making feature films, Ferrara quickly developed a cult following, known for his gritty, transgressive, and at times incendiary stories and characters. With notable frequent collaborators such as Willem Dafoe and Harvey Keitel, Ferrara has become one of the most celebrated independent filmmakers of his generation.
Check out our October curation of Abel Ferrara’s work – the romantic noir China Girl (1987), the iconic Harvey Keitel-led Bad Lieutenant (1992), horror remake Body Snatchers (1993), relationship drama starring Harvey Keitel and Madonna, Dangerous Game (1993), vampire film The Addiction (1995), artist biopic Pasolini (2014), autofiction drama Tommaso (2019), and Ethan Hawke-starring spy thriller Zeros and Ones (2021). Enjoy!
TELEVISION SERIES
The Pitt – Season 1
This month, we dropped thousands of shots from the smash-hit medical drama of 2025, The Pitt. Created by R. Scott Gemmill and set in a hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Pitt follows emergency department staff as they work through a single 15-hour work shift at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, all while navigating staff and funding shortages. Each episode of season 1 covers approximately one hour of the work shift. The series stars Noah Wylie, Supriya Ganesh, Tracy Ifeachor, Patrick Ball, Katherine Lanasa and Shabana Azeez.
Series production designer Nina Ruscio and her team worked with Gemmill and cinematographer Johanna Coelho to design and build a set that could be filmed in 360 degrees and in continuity, while maintaining as much naturalistic detail as possible. A team of 125 artists built a 25-bed emergency room in a 20,000 square foot set on a sound stage in Burbank, testing out over fifty shades of white paint that would hold the LED lighting designs built into the ceilings while also working against the skin tones of the series’ cast. By building an integrated LED lighting system in the ceiling, Ruscio gave Coelho total control over the exact shade of overhead light for any given scene, while maintaining authenticity and the ability to shoot hand-held in any direction to follow the action as it unfolded.
