Before “Emilia Perez” made history with 13 nominations at the 2025 Oscars — in conjunction with “Gone with the Wind,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Oppenheimer” for the second most nods of all time – films producers have backed a host of indie hits.
Now, the filmography of producers Pascal Caucheteux and Grégoire Sorlat and their banner Why not productions gets its place on the big screen. IndieWire can announce that with the support of Netflix, the best Why Not Productions features will return to theaters. That includes Gregg Arakis iconic 1995 crime film NC-17 “The Doom Generation” Claire Denis “White Material”, and Lynne Ramsay’s “You Were Never Really Here.”
Araki will appear for a Q&A with “The Doom Generation” at the Egyptian on Thursday, February 6 after the 7:30pm show.
Additional directors featured in the program include Ken Loach, Arnaud Desplechin and Cristian Mungiu. The program will also feature two beloved and rarely seen early films by Desplechin, with his breakthrough film “My Sex Life … or How I Got Into an Argument” and a 35mm print of “Kings and Queen.”
The retrospective will take place from February 1 to 12 at the Paris Theater in New York, and from February 6 to 10 at the Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles. Both theaters are owned and operated by Netflix, which released Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” also produced by Caucheteux and Sorlat.
“With their latest triumph ‘Emilia Pérez,’ producers Pascal Caucheteux and Grégoire Sorlat continue their legacy of over 30 years of supporting provocative, auteur-driven film through their company Why Not Productions,” reads a press release for the show. “With a roster of films directed by internationally acclaimed artists such as Clarie Denis, Ken Loach, Arnaud Desplechin, Lynne Ramsay, Cristian Mungiu and Gregg Araki that have collected over a dozen major awards at the Cannes Film Festival, Why Not Productions has had an undeniably global impact on the art of cinema.To celebrate Jacques Audiard’s bold fever dream “Emilia Pérez” joining this amazing list, we are proud to present this series of films that made possible by Why Not.”
“Emilia Pérez” Writer/Director Audiard told IndieWire that the musical crime drama about a drug dealer’s gender transition has been around for years.
“‘Emilia Pérez’ is not a film I could have made 10 years ago,” Audiard said, “because it’s a film that deals with contemporary issues. And Emilia Pérez transitions, and with her the film transitions. It changes shape . It goes from a narco movie to a soap opera. There’s that revolution, too.”
Audiard, who is 72, added: “I loved every minute of making this film, but it wore me out. It really did. I’m no longer a spring chicken. At my age, we stop joking, and we just do that really matters, that which is important.”
Check out the full lineup for Why Not Productions’ retrospective below and buy tickets to both theaters here in Paris and with the Egyptian.
“The Doom Generation” (Araki)
“White Material” (Denis)
“King and Queen” (Desplechin)
“You Were Never Really Here” (Ramsay)
“My Sex Life … or How I Got into an Argument” (Desplechin)
“I, Daniel Blake” (Loach)
“Beyond the Hills” (Mungiu)
“In the Soup” (Rockwell)
“Loveless” (Zvyagintsev)
