Beyoncé’s Rare ‘Lemonade: Director’s Cut’ to Screen at Australian Museum

Beyoncé‘s rarely seen director’s cut of Lemonade is heading to Australia.

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The alternate version of the 2016 visual album, directed by Kahlil Joseph, will screen at ACMI in Melbourne’s Federation Square. The film has a 43-minute runtime, noticeably shorter than the 65-minute version officially released by Beyoncé.

According to the curator’s notes, Joseph said the film arrived during “a moment of profound rupture and arrival” in his life after the death of his brother and the birth of his first child. “Grief and joy existed simultaneously,” he wrote.

“When Beyoncé reached out, she, too, was moving through a period of loss,” Joseph recalled. “There was an immediate alignment.”

A 2017 New Yorker profile described Joseph’s version as addressing “grief and sisterhood.” The magazine noted “no big production numbers” and “no violence against the male oppressor.” In one scene, Beyoncé crouches “in a ruined fort, bent low by sadness” rather than smashing car windows with a baseball bat.

Beyoncé later “chose to go in another direction” and brought in additional directors to reshape the film. Joseph’s cut has since been reserved for museum exhibitions.

The film screens at ACMI on June 4 and June 22.