Oscar-Winning Short Film, Two People Exchanging Saliva
Wed, Sep 30, 2026
6:30 PM–8:00 PM
Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center. Free and open to the public.
Join us for a screening of the film Two People Exchanging Saliva, winner of an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short last year, followed by a discussion with the filmmakers.
As Natalie Musteata (Ph.D. ’19, Art History) worked on her dissertation, she and her partner spent their weekends writing movie scripts. The result was the satirical absurdist film Two People Exchanging Saliva, for which she and Alexandre Singh won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short last year. Set in a dystopian Paris where kissing is outlawed and transactions are completed through slaps to the face, th e film follows Angine, a discontented woman whose fascination with a playful salesgirl draws suspicion from a jealous colleague. The 36-minute French-language short examines themes of repression, desire, and surveillance. At the Oscars, in a moment of breathless surprise, co-writer and co-director Musteata thanked the Academy “for supporting a film that is weird and that is queer and that is made by a majority of women.”
After a screening, Musteata joins in conversation with Singh, co-filmmaker and visual artist; Claire Bishop, presidential professor of Art History, CUNY Graduate Center; and Elizabeth Alsop, coordinator and faculty, Film and Media Cultures, CUNY Graduate Center.
This event is hosted by Public Programs and co-presented with the Certificate Program in Film and Media Cultures, the Ph.D. Program in Art History, and the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Please contact Jimmy Cok at [email protected] in advance for CART services or any additional accessibility requests or concerns for in-person events. This event will be livestreamed, and closed captions will be provided.
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