Spirit Entertainment has announced The Criterion Collection UK releases for February 2024, namely Dee Rees's uniquely American tragedy, imbuing bitter historical realities with a timeless weight, Mudbound, and John Sayles' sprawling neowestern mystery, Lone Star.

MUDBOUND (USA 2017) | Blu-ray | 12 February 2024

In the Mississippi Delta of the 1940s, two farming families – one of white landholders, one of Black tenant farmers – are bound by the unforgiving soil they share as they struggle to survive amid the upheavals of World War II and the poisonous hatred of the Jim Crow South. Each family sends a young man off to battle; when they return home, scarred, and find a common bond, the community is ripped apart.

Writer-director Dee Rees, with cowriter Virgil Williams, crafts a uniquely American tragedy, imbuing bitter historical realities with a timeless weight. Featuring bone-deep performances from her ensemble cast – including Carey Mulligan, Mary J. Blige, Jason Mitchell, Rob Morgan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, and Jonathan Banks – and backed by Rachel Morrison's darkly burnished cinematography, Mudbound is a searing humanist study of inheritance based upon Hillary Jordan's novel.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION BLU-RAY FEATURES:

• New 2K digital master, supervised by director Dee Rees and director of photography Rachel Morrison, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
• New audio commentary featuring Rees
• New documentary featuring Rees, composer Tamar-kali, editor Mako Kamitsuna, and makeup artist Angie Wells
• New documentary made on set, featuring members of the cast and crew
• Interview with Morrison
• New interview with production designer David J. Bomba
• Trailer and teaser
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audio
• PLUS: An essay by critic Danielle Amir Jackson
• New cover by Prinston Nnanna

LONE STAR (USA 1996) | 4K UHD | Blu-ray | 26 February 2024

A keen observer of America's social fabric, writer-director John Sayles uncovers the haunted past buried beneath a small Texas border town in this sprawling neowestern mystery. When a skeleton is discovered in the desert, lawman Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper), son of a legendary local sheriff, begins an investigation that will have profound implications both for him personally and for all of Rio County, a place still reckoning with its history of racial violence.

Sayles's masterful film – novelistic in its intricacy and featuring a brilliant ensemble cast, including Joe Morton, Elizabeth Peña, Kris Kristofferson, and Matthew McConaughey – quietly subverts national mythmaking and lays bare the fault lines of life at the border.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD & BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director John Sayles and director of photography Stuart Dryburgh, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• [4K UHD ONLY] One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• New conversation between Sayles and filmmaker Gregory Nava
• New interview with Dryburgh
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by scholar Domino Renee Perez
• New cover by Jacob Phillips