Review: ‘THE WORST ONES (Les Pires)’- art imitates life in this beautifully moving film.

Set in the suburbs of Boulogne-Sur-Mer in northern France, The Worst Ones captures a film within a film as it follows the production of a feature whose director turns to the local Cité Picasso housing project for casting. Eager to capture performances of gritty authenticity, the director selects four working class teenagers to act in the film to the surprise and consternation of the local community, who question the director’s choice of “the worst ones.” As the director and crew audition, rehearse, film, and interact with their hand-picked cast, jealousies are stoked, lines are crossed, and ethical questions arise, with thought-provoking and at times darkly funny results. Winner of the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, The Worst Ones announces directors Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret as exciting new voices in French cinema.


THE WORST ONES is a meta-narrative that succeeds in conveying hope through hardship. Not only does the film shine in its storytelling, embracing heartbreak and socioeconomic trauma, but the performances also by our four young actors will hypnotize the viewer. Check out the clip below for a taste:

Timéo Mahaut and Mallory Wanecque play the theatrical brother and sister duo, Lily and Ryan. Each pulling from the script an element of abandonment and aggression. This recurring theme is “permission to feel,” The screenplay skillfully taps into the idea that these children struggle to experience a traditional childhood when food, parents, stability, and peace seem out of reach. Their casting becomes the ultimate healing outlet. THE WORST ONES boasts a compelling film-within-a-film structure with an ending that leaves an impression on your soul.

 


Cannes award-winning feature THE WORST ONES (Les Pires), will open theatrically today in New York on March 24 (The Quad) and in Los Angeles on April 7 (Laemmle Monica) with additional cities including Chicago, Denver, and more to follow.

NYJFF 2023 capsule review: ‘SHTTL’ is already one of the year’s best films.

SHTTL

Written and directed by Ady Walter, SHTTL takes place in a secluded imaginary Yiddish Ukrainian village on June 21st, 1941. The audience thinks they are watching a film about small-town politics. In actuality, SHTTL highlights a real moment in history. New York Jewish Film Festival 2023 is lucky to have such an extraordinary piece of cinema to share with audiences.

Cinematographer Vladimir Ivanov captures the film in one single take. A technical wonder, SHTTL pulls a visual bait and switch made famous in The Wizard of Oz. In this instance, the use of color distinguishes the past and present. This device is emotionally consuming and undeniably dazzling.

This enormous cast gives us some of the most gut-wrenching performances of the year. Keep in my the film is entirely in Yiddish. Do not let this scare you aware! Star Moshe Lobel starred in the critically-acclaimed Off-Broadway Yiddish version of “Fiddler On The Roof.” As Mendele, Lobel carries you in his pocket in this captivating tale of religious ideology, family, love, and loss. Boasting an ending that will have your heart in your throat, SHTTL is a gem. It is a film that deserves a viewing on the loftiest screen available. This film left me breathless.


SHTTL
Ady Walter
Ukraine/France, 2022, 114 min.
Yiddish and Ukrainian with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

Monday, January 16, 5:30pm
Tuesday, January 17, 1pm


NYJFF 2023

THE 32nd ANNUAL 
NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL,
 PRESENTED 
JANUARY 12-23, 2023


 

Review: ‘TURN EVERY PAGE’ takes you on a journey from cover to cover

Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb

When it comes to everyday popularity of historians, Robert Caro must have one of the highest batting averages out there. I haven’t read a piece of historical non-fiction biography that wasn’t assigned to me since 2010, and I know this guy’s name off the top of my head. It’s Caro and the guy who did the Hamilton biography. That’s the Mount Rushmore of historical biographies – the kings of books so fat they easily double as door stops or improvised weapons against home invaders. Among these books, Caro’s The Power Broker reigns supreme. It is the rare biography that has crossed over into nearly being a status symbol. I confess I’ve had a copy since the start of the pandemic, but have yet to start it. After watching Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, I’m inspired to pull it off the shelf and dive in.

Turn Every Page is not only interested in providing background on Caro’s process and work, but also in taking a deep dive into his partnership with his editor, Robert Gottlieb. Gottlieb is no slouch himself, having edited hundreds of books over his illustrious career. The documentary details the delicate manner in which these two fundamentally different (sometimes even warring) perspectives and sources of expertise must come together to produce a harmonious end product.

The insights into Caro’s work process are breathtaking. One moment, in particular, stands out: while working on one of the volumes focused on the life of Lyndon Johnson, Caro had the opportunity to interview Johnson’s younger brother, Sam Houston Johnson. A tremendous opportunity, but Caro found he wasn’t getting the level of rich detail he craved. So, he brings Sam back into his childhood kitchen and has him sit in the very chair he sat in as a young boy. Caro sits behind him so that everything appears just as it would be in Sam’s memories. It is only then that Caro asks his questions again. Talk about literal background research.

The documentary is also ingenious in the manner in which it takes you into the details of both men’s lives. There is a certain risk that a documentary focused on the crafting of non-fiction biographies might be less than engaging for certain audiences. By balancing showing the men at work while acknowledging the quirkier aspects of their personalities, they come across as fully realized. Caro types his manuscripts up on the typewriter and haphazardly shoves the resulting small mountain-sized stacks of copy into a space above his refrigerator. Gottlieb collects plastic purses and proudly displays them on his bedroom wall, much to the chagrin of his wife. These moments are humorous but are also crucial to presenting these men without the sheen of perfection I find too frequently applied in these types of showcases.

Turn Every Page offers a peek behind the curtain of a complex and critical industry. Ironically, what it offers very little of is the dynamic between its two titular protagonists. Aside from one scene, they never interact on camera. Despite director Lizzie Gottlieb’s best efforts, this cannot help but feel a bit like a missed opportunity. In this framing, both men are free to lay their own narratives. It would have been a pleasure to see them challenged to edit one another’s perspectives.


TURN EVERY PAGE – THE ADVENTURES OF ROBERT CARO AND ROBERT GOTTLIEB (2022, 112 min) 

In Theaters in NY & LA December 30, 2022

Directed by Lizzie Gottlieb. Producers: Joanne Nerenberg, Jen Small, Lizzie Gottlieb. Director of Photography: Mott Hupfel. Editing: Molly Bernstein, Kristen Nutile. Music: Clare Manchon, Olivier Manchon. With Robert A. Caro, Robert Gottlieb. Appearances by Ethan Hawke, Lisa Lucas, David Remnick, Lynn Nesbit, Majora Carter. USA.

A Sony Pictures Classics Release.


 

DOC NYC (2022) review: ‘ CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: WITHOUT A NET’ is an awe-inspiring film about the importance of theater and the ability to create.

CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: WITHOUT A NET

CENTERPIECE SELECTION

*WORLD PREMIERE*

Cirque du Soleil’s “O” is the top-grossing show in the world. Enter Covid19 and the subsequent and heartbreaking release of 3400 employees. The show was down for 400 days. In April 2021, restrictions finally loosening Cirque announced “O” would be back. Eight weeks to reopen among health and safety restrictions. The doc spotlights a handful of their performers. We learn how they got to Cirque and follow along as they retrain their minds and bodies after more than a year of uncertainty. We also see the tech and artistic crews rebuilding, sewing, and revamping as quickly as possible to meet the reopening deadline. It is an intricate dance of trust. One slight human or machine error could spell disaster for the artists.

The cinematography is breathtaking, from underwater shots of the artistic swimmers to areal views of acrobatic acts. Ultimately, the film reminds us of the power and importance of performance. It’s an undeniably visceral viewing experience.

As a performer, this documentary feels deeply personal. One particular quote early on struck me immediately. “It’s really difficult to live without purpose.” What is humanity without creation? What is an artist without the ability to access their craft? Speaking from personal experience and the confessions of fellow performers when the lockdown began, it physically pained us not to be onstage. Cirque du Soleil: Without A Net is a celebratory exploration of a performer’s purpose and the joyous return of the world of theatre.


CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: WITHOUT A NET had its World Premiere at DOC NYC on November 13 @ 2:15pm.

CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: WITHOUT A NET tells the story of when the world shut down, its greatest Circus went into freefall. Within 48 hours Cirque du Soleil closed all its 44 shows; within a week it let 95% of its workforce go. The show seemed over for the billion-dollar brand. Now, more than a year later, a group of world-class artists, athletes and crew at “O”, Cirque’s flagship production, face uncertainty as they prepare to bring their show back to life. With unprecedented access, this film documents their extraordinary journey as they attempt a return to stage after one of the world’s greatest crises.

Director: Dawn Porter
Executive Producer: Dawn Porter, Eli Holzman, Aaron Saidman, Richard Bedser, Ailsa Orr
Producer: Dawn Porter, Summer Damon, Sadie Bass, Mark Burnett, Barry Poznick
Cinematographer: Chris Hilleke, Bryant Fisher
Editor: Jessica Congdon, Dave Marcus
Language: English
Country: United States of America
Year: 2022

Online Dates

Monday, November 14 – Sunday, November 27, 2022

Venue

Online Screening

The 60th New York Film Festival teaser trailer. #NYFF60

Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, the New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema and takes place September 30 – October 16, 2022. Tickets go on sale September 19, with Passes on sale now:: https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff/

An annual bellwether of the state of cinema that has shaped film culture since 1963, the festival continues a long-standing tradition of introducing audiences to bold and remarkable works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent.

NYFF60 tickets will go on sale to the general public on September 19 at noon ET, with early access opportunities for FLC members prior to this date. For details about ticket prices and passes visit: https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff60-passe…

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Film at Lincoln Center announces Currents for the 60th New York Film Festival (September 30–October 16, 2022). #NYFF60

 

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER ANNOUNCES
CURRENTS FOR THE 60th NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

Opening Night João Pedro Rodrigues‘s Will-o’-the-Wisp 

New York, NY (August 18, 2022) – Film at Lincoln Center announces Currents for the 60th New York Film Festival (September 30–October 16, 2022).

“Each Currents lineup is an attempt to distill the spirit of innovation and playfulness in contemporary cinema, and this is, by design, the most expansive section of the festival,” said Dennis Lim, artistic director, New York Film Festival. “There are familiar names here—including multiple filmmakers who will be known to NYFF and FLC audiences—as well as some electrifying new talents, all testing and stretching the possibilities of the medium.”

The Currents slate includes 15 features and 44 short films, representing 23 countries, and complements the Main Slate, tracing a more complete picture of contemporary cinema with an emphasis on new and innovative forms and voices. The section presents a diverse offering of short and feature-length productions by filmmakers and artists working at the vanguard of the medium.

The Opening Night selection is the João Pedro Rodrigues (The Ornithologist, NYFF54) film Will-o’-the-Wisp, a “musical fantasia” about a young prince who shocks his riotously wealthy royal family by becoming a volunteer fireman—both to battle climate change and, it seems, to douse his own dormant desires amidst a bevy of beefcake firefighters. Others include the North American premiere of Human Flowers of Flesh, Helena Wittmann’s depiction of an enigmatic reconfiguration of space and time as Idi (Angeliki Papoulia) follows a crew of French Foreign Legionnaires, fascinated by their male rituals and camaraderie; and the world premiere of Heinz Emigholz’s Slaughterhouses of Modernity, a quiet observation and historical excavation, focusing on creation and destruction in cities and provinces in Argentina, Germany, and Bolivia.

Noteworthy filmmakers whose works will appear in this year’s Currents include Bertrand Bonello with Coma (Berlinale FIPRESCI Prize), a sui generis work of pandemic-era interiority, tracking the anxiety and estrangement of a teenage girl (Louise Labeque, from Bonello’s Zombi Child, NYFF57) who appears to live alone during COVID lockdown; Alain Gomis (Félicité, NYFF55) with Rewind & Play, a subtle yet searing exposé of casual racism using newly discovered footage from the recording of a 1969 French television interview of the legendary jazz pianist Thelonious Monk; artist Mika Rottenberg, whose first feature and collaboration with Mahyad Tousi, Remote, follows the daily routines of a quarantined woman (Okwui Okpokwasili) in her sealed-off, ultra-modern apartment; Ashley McKenzie (Werewolf) with Queens of the Qing Dynasty, which charts the budding friendship of a suicidal teen and a volunteer immigrant hospital worker; Alessandro Comodin (Happy Times Will Come Soon, ND/NF 2017) with The Adventures of Gigi the Law, a slippery, often funny, occasionally surreal slice-of-life portrait of a good-natured, contemplative policeman in a small village in northern Italy; Lebanese visual artist Ali Cherri with The Dam, a debut feature about a bricklayer in northern Sudan that straddles the line between nonfiction naturalism and supernatural mysticism, and merges ancient and contemporary worlds; Abbas Fahdel (Bitter Bread, NYFF57) with Tales of the Purple House, focusing on the experiences of Nour Balllouk, a Lebanese artist living in the house she shares with director Fahdel (her husband, who stays off-screen) in the dramatic mountainous countryside outside of Beirut; and Jonás Trueba (Every Song Talks About Me, 20th Spanish Cinema Now) with You Have to Come and See It, portraying a reunion between two couples for a concert and drinks after they have been kept apart from each other for months by the pandemic and major life changes, which paints an alternately rapturous and neurotic impression of contemporary Western living.

Notable award-winning features in this year’s Currents include The Unstable Object II (winner of the Main Prize at FIDMarseille), Daniel Eisenberg’s dynamic triptych that patiently observes people working at three factories around the world, continued from a project started in 2011; Ruth Beckermann’s Mutzenbacher (Berlinale Encounters Award for Best Film), a playful yet charged project featuring a vast group of men, who volunteered to appear on camera, perched on a floral pink couch in a cavernous abandoned factory, discussing a work of infamous erotica; Gustavo Vinagre’s loose-limbed comic marvel Three Tidy Tigers Tied a Tie Tighter (Berlinale Teddy Award), set during a vibrant São Paulo afternoon amidst a peculiar pandemic that affects people’s short-term memory; and Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós’s Dry Ground Burning (Cinéma du Réel Grand Prize), a lightning rod dispatch from contemporary—and maybe future—Brazil, an astonishing mix of documentary and speculative fiction that takes place in the nearly post-apocalyptic environs of the Sol Nascente favela in Brasilia.

World premieres of shorts are abundant in this year’s selection, with new works from Alex Ashe, Mary Helena Clark, Sarah Friedland, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Mark Jenkin, Josh Kline, Mackie Mallison, Angelo Madsen Minax, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, Dani and Sheilah ReStack, Kim Salac, Joshua Gen Solondz, Courtney Stephens, and Jordan Strafer.

Additional notable voices in the visual arts featured as part of the Currents program include Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau and Natalia Escobar with Aribadawith Aribada, a space between documentary and dreamlike imagery of Colombia’s coffee region; Ellie Ga with Quarries, a potent, digressive triptych of palimpsestic imagery that uncovers various histories of humans’ relationships to stone; Sophia Al-Maria’s oneiric jaunt through an alternative art history, Tiger Strike Red; Fox Maxy’s compelling montage F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now, which documents the artist’s homecoming to Mesa Grande, California, ancestral lands of the Mesa Grande band of Iipay/Kumeyaay/Diegueño Mission Indians in what is now called San Diego County; Eva Giolo with The Demands of Ordinary Devotion, a catalog of moments that captures the elegance and banality of creation; and Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel with Watch the Fire or Burn Inside it, a work of noise, pyromania, and rage against a world of concrete. New works are also presented by Meriem Bennani, Lloyd Lee Choi, Sara Cwynar, Charlotte ErcoliArne Hector with Luciana Mazeto, Minze Tummescheit and Vinícius Lopes, and Simón Veléz.

Artists returning to NYFF include Ute Aurand, Alexandra Cuesta, Riccardo Giacconi, Simon Liu, Pablo Mazzolo, Jamil McGinnis, Diane Severin Nguyen, Lois Patiño, Nicolás Pereda, James Richards, Ben Russell, Sylvia Schedelbauer, Tiffany Sia.

Three of this year’s Currents shorts are paired with features from the section: Bi Gan’s A Short Story, preceding Remote; Pedro Neves Marques’s Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, preceding You Have to Come and See It; and Elisabeth Subrinand’s Maria Schneider, preceding Rewind & Play.

Radu Jude (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, NYFF59) revisits the history of the battleship Potemkin—as a comic dialogue between a sculptor and a representative from Romania’s Ministry of Culture, in The Potemkinists, which will screen with a to-be-announced Revivals program.

Finally, this year’s Currents shorts program features a restoration of the Edward Owens film Remembrance: A Portrait Study, depicting the filmmaker’s mother and her friends, arrayed in feather boas and pearls, drinking beer, smoking, gossiping, and posing leisurely in Owens’s ethereal chiaroscuro frames and extravagant superimpositions. Owen’s film will also screen as part of a shorts program in the Revivals section, with information forthcoming in the Revivals announcement.

The Currents selection committee, chaired by Dennis Lim, includes Florence Almozini, Aily Nash, Rachael Rakes, and Tyler Wilson. Nash and Wilson are the head shorts programmers for NYFF. Shelby Shaw and Madeline Whittle are programming assistants for short films, and Micah Gottlieb, Marius Hrdy, Almudena Escobar López, Vikram Murthi, Maxwell Paparella, Mariana Sánchez Bueno and Matthew Thurber are submissions screeners. Violeta Bava, Michelle Carey, Leo Goldsmith, and Gina Telaroli serve as NYFF program advisors.

NYFF60 Currents feature films are sponsored by MUBI, a curated streaming service for award-winning cinema.

Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, the New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema and takes place September 30–October 16, 2022. An annual bellwether of the state of cinema that has shaped film culture since 1963, the festival continues an enduring tradition of introducing audiences to bold and remarkable works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent.

As part of its 60th anniversary celebration, the New York Film Festival will offer festival screenings in all five boroughs of New York City in partnership with Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (Staten Island), BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) (Brooklyn), the Bronx Museum of the Arts (Bronx), Maysles Documentary Center (Harlem), and the Museum of the Moving Image (Queens). Each venue will present a selection of films throughout the festival; a complete list of films and showtimes will be announced later this month. NYFF60 tickets, including those for partner venue screenings, will go on sale to the General Public on September 19 at noon.

FLC invites audiences to celebrate this milestone anniversary by reflecting on their NYFF experiences with our NYFF Memories survey and by taking part in our Letterboxd Watch Challenge.

Please note: Masks are required for all staff, audiences, and filmmakers at all times in public spaces at FLC indoor spaces. Proof of full vaccination is not required for NYFF60 audiences at FLC indoor spaces, but full vaccination is strongly recommended. Visit filmlinc.org/safety for more information. For health and safety protocols at partner venues, please visit their official websites.

 

Festival Passes are on sale now in limited quantities. NYFF60 single tickets, including those for partner venue screenings, will go on sale to the General Public on Monday, September 19 at noon ET, with pre-sale access for FLC Members and Pass holders prior to this date. This Friday, August 19, is the last day to secure pre-sale access by becoming a Member––save 30% with the code NYFF60. Support of NYFF benefits Film at Lincoln Center in its nonprofit mission to promote the art and craft of cinema. NYFF60 press and industry accreditation is now open and the application deadline is August 31. NYFF60 volunteer call is now open

 

 

Currents Features:

Opening Night

Will-o’-the-Wisp
João Pedro Rodrigues, 2022, Portugal, 67m
Portuguese with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Transgressive queer auteur João Pedro Rodrigues’s outré “musical fantasia” begins in the year 2069, when Portugal’s King Alfredo recalls from his deathbed his erotic exploits and social activism as a fresh-faced, curly-haired prince in the early years of the 21st century. The young man shocks his riotously wealthy royal family by becoming a volunteer fireman—both to do his part for a rural landscape prone to devastating wildfires and, it seems, to douse his own dormant desires amidst a bevy of beefcake firefighters. Rodrigues’s delirious and delicious anything-goes style has never felt more joyous than in this curiously hopeful, sexually frank confection that engages in questions of climate change, racial and economic inequity, and governmental inadequacy, while also indulging in bawdy humor and song-and-dance flights of fancy. A Strand Releasing release.

 

The Adventures of Gigi the Law
Alessandro Comodin, 2022, Italy/France/Belgium, 98m
Italian and Friulian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Gigi, a good-natured, contemplative policeman in a small village in northern Italy, spends his workdays making inquiries into minor infractions, checking on residents, listening to his car radio, and flirting with a pretty new colleague. Yet even in this uneventful town, there is a dark undercurrent of melancholy, indicated by a wave of recent suicides on the local train tracks. Alessandro Comodin follows his breakthrough shape-shifter Happy Times Will Come Soon with a slippery, often very funny slice-of-life portrait that drifts into occasional glimmers of surreality. Comodin’s brilliantly expressive use of off-screen space unsettles even as it amuses, creating a world whose contours are just barely discernible, whether cloaked in a nighttime thicket of trees or against the bright sun-dappled countryside.

Coma
Bertrand Bonello, 2022, France, 81m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Director Bertrand Bonello (Nocturama) is among his generation’s most accomplished makers of disquieting imagery; his latest, a sui generis work of pandemic-era interiority, functions as an alternately humorous and horrifying sketch of our current existential miasma. This unsettling film tracks the anxiety and estrangement of a teenage girl (Louise Labeque, from Bonello’s Zombi Child) who appears to live alone during COVID lockdown and gradually begins to experience the dissolution of boundaries between her real and imagined zones. Utilizing an array of media—computer animation, Zoom chats, internet video, stop-motion dolls, surveillance footage—the filmmaker constructs a dreamlike limbo that increasingly feels ruled by some invisible supernatural realm. Created as a personal communiqué to the director’s 18-year-old daughter, Coma expresses, poignantly yet without sentimentality, a father’s fears in passing a troubled world along to his child.

The Dam
Ali Cherri, 2022, France/Lebanon/Sudan/Germany/Serbia/Qatar, 80m
Arabic with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Maher (Maher El Kahir) works as a bricklayer in northern Sudan, not far from the massive hydroelectric Merowe Dam located on the Nile. He spends his off hours laboring over another, more mysterious building project: a towering creature he’s making out of mud. In his debut feature, Lebanese visual artist Ali Cherri has constructed his own indefinable work, a riveting film that straddles the line between nonfiction naturalism and supernatural mysticism. Co-written with Bertrand Bonello and Geoffroy Grison, The Dam metaphorically evokes the destruction caused by the dam’s creation, while also situating the lives of Maher and his fellow workers against the political backdrop of former Sudan leader Omar al-Bashir’s 2019 military deposition. Cherri merges ancient and contemporary worlds in this meditative film about displacement, illusion, and mythmaking.

Dry Ground Burning
Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós, 2022, Brazil, 154m
Portuguese with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
A lightning rod dispatch from contemporary—and maybe future—Brazil, this astonishing mix of documentary and speculative fiction takes place in the nearly postapocalyptic environs of the Sol Nascente favela in Brasilia. Here, fearsome outlaw Chitara (Joana Darc Furtado) leads an all-female gang that siphons and steals precious oil from the authoritarian, militarized government, while her sister, Léa (Léa Alves da Silva), recently released from prison, is brought into the criminal enterprise. Working together as directors for the first time, Queirós and Pimenta (who served as cinematographer on Queirós’s ethnographic sci-fi Once There Was Brasilia) effortlessly combine dramatized narrative with electrifying captured footage, which integrates the characters into rallies against Bolsonaro and fervent religious services. Presiding over it all are the regal Furtado and da Silva, playing alternate-reality versions of themselves, the fully liberated stars of an epic, hopeful vision. A Grasshopper Film release.

Human Flowers of Flesh
Helena Wittmann, 2022, Germany/France, 106m
English, French, Portuguese, Tamazight, and Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Director and cinematographer Helena Wittmann creates distinctive and unexpected cinematic experiences, dissolving narratives into environments that move to the inexpressible contours of human communication and physicality. In her second feature, following the revelatory, bifurcated Drift, she limns the interior world of Idi (Angeliki Papoulia) by focusing on the external, sensual landscape surrounding her. Fascinated by the male rituals and camaraderie of a crew of French Foreign Legionnaires, Idi follows them on a journey across the Mediterranean, which Wittmann depicts as an enigmatic reconfiguration of space and time, connecting the past and present, body and spirit, earth and water—including, in one remarkable moment, a complete submersion into the sea’s mysterious depths. Human Flowers of Flesh features a cameo from Denis Lavant, in tribute to Claire Denis’s thematically evoked Beau travail, yet Wittmann’s film moves to its own meditative, differently embodied rhythms.

Mutzenbacher
Ruth Beckermann, 2022, Austria, 101m
German with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
In this playful yet charged project from Austrian filmmaker Ruth Beckermann (The Waldheim Waltz, NYFF56), a vast group of men, from teenage to nonagenarian, have volunteered to appear on camera, perched on a floral pink couch in a cavernous abandoned factory, discussing, and in some cases reading aloud from, a work of infamous erotica. Published anonymously in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, Josephine Mutzenbacher or The Story of a Viennese Whore, as Told by Herself, graphically details the sexual awakening of a teenage girl. In the voices of these men, who are variously befuddled, defensive, and eager, the book’s explicit content becomes at once absurd, neutralized, and purposefully dislocated. Beckermann uses this controversial text as a catalyst for a surprising, humorous, and nonjudgmental treatise on contemporary male sexual attitudes toward women, fantasy, pornography, and the ever-moving targets of morality.

Queens of the Qing Dynasty
Ashley McKenzie, 2022, Canada, 122m
English, Mandarin Chinese, and Russian with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
After the latest in a series of suicide attempts, 18-year-old Star (Sarah Walker) wakes up in the hospital and remains dazed and disaffected as doctors and nurses try to rehabilitate, or at least break through to, them. The only person there who is able to penetrate Star’s consciousness is a volunteer named An (Ziyin Zheng), a kind-souled Chinese immigrant who becomes a lifeline for the similarly genderqueer but otherwise radically different Star. Ashley McKenzie’s follow-up to her breakthrough addiction drama Werewolf takes Star and An’s budding friendship as an anchor for something much stranger and more complex than a simple tale of recovery against odds. Instead, this is an aesthetically audacious two-hander constructed of insistent sonic landscapes and visual textures that convey the almost metastatic nature of love. McKenzie’s strategy of expressing her characters’ intense interiority forces normal definitions of space and time to expand and contract.

Remote
Mika Rottenberg and Mahyad Tousi, 2022, U.S., 89m
English, Korean, Persian, Spanish, Croatian, Hindi with English subtitles
Mika Rottenberg’s expansive, often giddily absurd video and installation art in part interrogates our increasing reliance on technology and connection to what we used to call reality. In her first feature, she collaborates with filmmaker Mahyad Tousi on a film she has described as “Jeanne Dielman during a pandemic in the future.” Remote follows the daily routines of a quarantined woman (Okwui Okpokwasili) in her sealed-off, ultra-modern apartment, a paradise of vibrant colors, thriving plant life, and virtual screens. While some unknown global crisis unfolds outside her window, she joins a watch party of women from around the world keen on the same South Korean dog-grooming show, eventually falling down a rabbit hole playing an inexplicable interactive game with them. Rottenberg and Tousi’s film finds new cinematic language to express the desire for physical contact in our increasingly isolated, mediated, and highly consumer-driven environments.

Preceded by:
A Short Story / Po Sui Tai Yang Zhi Xin
Bi Gan, 2022, China, 15m
Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
With his signature long-takes and tightly controlled mise-en-scène, Bi Gan weaves a darkly surrealist fairy tale that follows the odyssey of an anthropomorphic feline across the empty cities and fog-bound exurban spaces of contemporary China. In his encounters with a strange cast of characters—a scarecrow, a robot, an amnesiac, a little girl—Black Cat is on a quest to answer a single question: What is the most precious thing in the world?

Rewind & Play
Alain Gomis, 2022, France/Germany, 66m
English and French with English subtitles
In December 1969, Thelonious Monk arrived in Paris for a concert at the tail end of a European tour. While there, the legendary jazz pianist was invited to appear on a television interview program, where he would perform and answer questions in an intimate, one-on-one studio stage. Using newly discovered footage from the recording of the interview, versatile French-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis (whose dazzling music-tinged drama Félicité played in NYFF’s Main Slate in 2017) reveals the troubling dynamic between Monk and his white interviewer, Henri Renaud, and how Monk stands his ground despite being antagonized by Renaud’s trivializing approach. Gomis’s gripping film is a fascinating behind-the-scenes documentary; a subtle yet searing exposé of casual racism; and, above all, a chance to see one of the monumental geniuses of 20th-century music at work.

Preceded by:
Maria Schneider, 1983
Elisabeth Subrin, 2022, France, 25m
English and French with English and French subtitles
Actresses Manal Issa, Aïssa Maïga, and Isabel Sandoval recreate a 1983 French TV interview with Maria Schneider, which takes a turn when she’s asked about the traumatic filming of Last Tango in Paris with Bernardo Bertolucci and Marlon Brando a decade before. Taken together, they not only perform Schneider’s words and gestures, but inhabit them through their own identities—along with all those silenced, before and after.

Slaughterhouses of Modernity
Heinz Emigholz, 2022, Germany, 80m
German with English subtitles
World Premiere
Contemporary cinema’s preeminent chronicler of architecture and its intersection with the ever-present crisis of 20th-century modernity, Heinz Emigholz returns with an alternately mournful and sly treatise on how the presence—and, in some cases, absence—of municipal and communal building architecture is inseparable from capitalist ideology. Focusing mainly on cities and provinces in Argentina, Germany, and Bolivia, Emigholz’s latest film is a work of quiet observation and historical excavation. From slaughterhouses in Salamone to the flooded former spa city of Epecuén to the newly built Humboldt Forum in Berlin, the film demonstrates the effect of capital on public spaces, where creation and destruction go hand in hand, and as always, Emigholz makes the journey one of intellectual force and cinematic beauty.

Tales of the Purple House
Abbas Fahdel, 2022, Lebanon/Iraq/France, 184m
Arabic with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Iraqi-French filmmaker Abbas Fahdel, whose Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) (NYFF53) captured everyday experiences of his homelands citizens in the years before and after the U.S. invasion, has returned with another extraordinary, expansive cinematic vision combining images of mundane observation with social and political upheaval. Filmed over more than two years, Tales of the Purple House centers on the experiences of Nour Balllouk, a Lebanese artist living in the house she shares with Fahdel (her husband, who stays off-screen) in the dramatic mountainous countryside outside of Beirut. As she works on her latest paintings, communes with stray cats, and bonds with Syrian refugee neighbors, the nation struggles with turmoil, from the breakout of the COVID pandemic to citizens protesting the corruption of the political elite to ongoing violent attacks from neighboring Israel; meanwhile, the vibrant beauty of their home and its surroundings provides solace and regeneration. With the simplest of brushstrokes, Fahdel’s meditative film captures the creation of art amidst pain, the ongoing hope for revolution, and the struggle to live in the present while constantly bearing witness to the past.

Three Tidy Tigers Tied a Tie Tighter
Gustavo Vinagre, 2022, Brazil, 84m
Portuguese with English subtitles
A warm, bittersweet queer utopia bursts from the sidelines of Bolsonaro’s Brazil in Gustavo Vinagre’s loose-limbed comic marvel. Set during a peculiar pandemic that affects people’s short-term memory, the film follows a trio of 20-somethings—roommates Isabella (Isabella Pereira) and Pedro (Pedro Ribeiro), and Pedro’s visiting, same-age nephew, Jonata (Jonata Vieira)—as they explore a vibrant São Paulo one sunny afternoon. Lightly but movingly drawing parallels between the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s and the governmental treatment of disease today, Vinagre’s film nevertheless provides an ultimately hopeful, even joyous picture of the marginalized, an alt universe of people living both online and IRL, indulging in fantasy and pleasure, and maintaining humor despite the specter of death, past and present. Winner of the Teddy Award for Best LGBTQ-themed Feature at the Berlin Film Festival.

The Unstable Object II
Daniel Eisenberg, 2022, U.S./Germany/France/Turkey, 204m
U.S. Premiere
Continuing a project he began in 2011, filmmaker Daniel Eisenberg presents a dynamic triptych that patiently observes people working at three factories around the world: a prosthetics manufacturer in the German city of Duderstadt, a glove maker in the southern French commune Millau, and a jeans plant in Istanbul. Each discrete section of the film presents a place with its own distinct process and scale of production, yet taken together, they create an indelible image of a global workforce, one that never loses sight of the humans at the center, despite the industrial machines they are often seen operating. Eisenberg’s stationary camera pays close attention to both the individual and the collective, showing the rigorous labor as well as the intricate design and craft that go into every detail, encouraging a rich, active viewership. Winner of the Grand Prix of the International Competition at this year’s FIDMarseille Film Festival.

You Have to Come and See It
Jonás Trueba, 2022, Spain, 64m
Spanish with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Jonás Trueba paints an alternately rapturous and neurotic impression of contemporary Western living in his small-scale yet endlessly rich new feature. Two couples reunite for a concert and drinks after they have been kept apart from each other for months by the pandemic and major life changes. During two movements, in winter and summer, set in Madrid and in the countryside, Trueba allows us to eavesdrop on conversations that subtly reveal their emotional and intellectual lives, personal resentments and fears, and ruminations on our modern political limbo. Trueba’s gentle, clear-eyed film is both a cosmopolitan fable and a return to nature, buoyed by a chorus of living artists and philosophers—pianist and composer Chano Domínguez, cultural theorist Peter Sloterdijk, poet Olvido García Valdes—whose words and music are as integral to the overall experience as the characters’ enveloping dialogue.

Preceded by:
Becoming Male in the Middle Ages / Tornar-se um Homem na Idade Média
Pedro Neves Marques, 2022, Portugal, 22m
Portuguese with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Two couples, two quandaries of parenthood and age: a straight couple struggle with infertility and its possible environmental causes, while Vicente undergoes an experimental procedure to implant an ovary in his body so that he and his partner, Carl, can have a biological child. With delicate touches of science fiction, director Pedro Neves Marques explores the bleeding edge of the biopolitics of reproduction and the normative boundaries of the natural and the artificial.

Currents Shorts

 

Program 1: Field Trips
TRT: 78m

Flora
Nicolás Pereda, 2022, Mexico, 11m
World Premiere
A metacinematic reflection on the nature of representation and the ongoing drug war in Mexico, Nicolás Pereda’s Flora revisits locations and scenes from the mainstream 2010 narco-comedy El Infierno, exploring the paradoxes of depicting narco-trafficking on film—its tendency both to romanticize and to obscure. To screen is both to project and to conceal.

Underground Rivers / Los mayores ríos se deslizan bajo tierra
Simón Veléz, 2022, Colombia, 19m
Spanish with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Omens abound in Simón Veléz’s Underground Rivers, which follows the quotidian journey of a young woman from Medellín’s center to the verdant forests beyond—all captured on grainy, desaturated film stock. Archery, fortunetelling, and even an acting audition figure in this loose itinerary, which eventually circles back to the film’s unsettled beginnings.

Watch the Fire or Burn Inside It / Il faut regarder le feu ou brûler dedans
Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, 2022, France, 18m
French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
As water-bombers fight wildfires scorching the island of Corsica, a young woman learns to embrace the flames in an act of resistance. Part mordant karaoke video, part eco-terrorist manifesto, Watch the Fire or Burn Inside It is a work of noise, pyromania, and rage against a world of concrete.

Aribada
Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau and Natalia Escobar, 2022, Germany/Colombia, 30m
Emberá Chamí with English subtitles
In Aribada, the scintillating color and dreamlike imagery of Colombia’s coffee region become a vivid landscape—a space between documentary and mythology, where Las Traviesas, a group of trans women from the Emberá people share knowledge and reinvent rituals. Here, Aribada, a half-jaguar, half-human monster awakens to the formation of their utopic alliance informed by the power of the jais (spirits).

Program 2: Fault Lines
TRT: 78m

Quarries
Ellie Ga, 2022, U.S., 40m
North American Premiere
In the wake of her brother’s paralysis, artist Ellie Ga traces a psychogeography from New York to the Aegean Sea to Kenya to Lisbon, threading narratives about agency in the face of being forgotten. What results is a potent, digressive triptych of palimpsestic imagery that uncovers various histories of humans’ relationships to stone—from prehistoric tools to stonemasonry. Quarries unfolds through sifting juxtapositions and stories of resistance in unlikely places.

45th Parallel
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, 2022, U.K., 15m
World Premiere
Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s 45th Parallel analyzes the contradictions of borders and the laws that govern the liminal space of the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, a municipal building constructed in 1904 that straddles the U.S.-Canadian border. This peculiar site becomes the stage for an investigative monologue about the 2010 shooting of an unarmed 15-year-old Mexican by a U.S. Border Patrol agent and America’s remote murders-by-drone in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan.

Tiger Strike Red
Sophia Al-Maria, 2022, U.K., 23m
U.S. Premiere
Remixing the collections of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, Tiger Strike Red is an oneiric jaunt through an alternative art history that finds playful linkages between classical marble sculpture, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, representations of Judith’s beheading of Holofernes, AI art, and an 18th-century South Indian automaton depicting a tiger mauling a British colonial soldier.

Program 3: Action Figures
TRT: 68m

Fingerpicking / Diteggiatura
Riccardo Giacconi, 2021, Italy, 18m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Voiceover narration written by an artificial neural network guides us through the workshop of the Compagnia Marionettistica Carlo Colla e Figli in Milan, one of the oldest puppet theaters in the world. Here, artisans and performers build and manipulate their multitude of phantasmagoric creations, grotesque and uncanny facsimiles of human and animal life.

Glass Life
Sara Cwynar, 2021, Canada, 20m
U.S. Premiere
A swirling constellation of images—press photos, ads, animal pics, fashion shots, Instagram profiles, emojis, book covers, sports footage, selfies, cartoons, and clippings from an art history textbook—unfurl under the bird’s-eye gaze of Sara Cwynar’s Glass Life, which performs a vivisection of contemporary digital culture, plunging us deep into the hermetic pleasures and traps of the infinite scroll.

F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now
Fox Maxy, 2022, U.S., 11m
U.S. Premiere
Fox Maxy’s vertiginous montage documents the artist’s homecoming to Mesa Grande, California, ancestral lands of the Mesa Grande Band of Iipay/Kumeyaay/Diegueño Mission Indians in what is now called San Diego County. An exuberant mixtape of songs; portraits of friends, family, animals, and landscapes; and documents of confrontations with tribal cops, F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now is an exhilarating, joyful, and relentless disruption. No more drama.

IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS
Diane Severin Nguyen, 2021, U.S./Poland, 19m
A militant K-pop opera set in Warsaw, artist Diane Severin Nguyen’s IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS poses post-socialist theatrics enacted by a new generation whose influences span from Mao to Blackpink. Meshing revolutionary writings with collaboratively choreographed sequences featuring a young Vietnamese girl and a dance troupe of Polish teenagers, Nguyen’s film is a euphoric and paradoxical conflation of socialist and capitalist iconographies and post-Cold War diasporas.

Program 4: Vital Signs
TRT: 71m

Exhibition
Mary Helena Clark, 2022, U.S., 19m
World Premiere
Pivoting between two stories of women and their relationships with objects—a Swedish woman’s marriage to the Berlin Wall, and a suffragette’s hatcheting of Velásquez’s The Toilet of Venus—Mary Helena Clark’s Exhibition is a maze-like tour through images and artifacts, a dense cryptography of the forms and objects that hold us in.

Remembrance: A Portrait Study
Edward Owens, 1967, U.S., 16mm, 6m
As a gay African-American 18-year-old filmmaker, Edward Owens was a marginal figure in the New York avant-garde of the late 1960s. One of his four completed films, Remembrance: A Portrait Study (1967) depicts the filmmaker’s mother and her friends, arrayed in feather boas and pearls, drinking beer, smoking, gossiping, and posing leisurely in Owens’s ethereal chiaroscuro frames and extravagant superimpositions. A program of Edward Owens’s films will also screen in the Revivals section to be announced at a future date.

Restored by Chicago Film Society, The New American Cinema Group, Inc./The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, and the John M. Flaxman Library at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant Program and the Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

PEAK HEAVEN LOVE FOREVER
Jordan Strafer, 2022, U.S., 21m
World Premiere
A private jet over the Atlantic Ocean, in which a family transports their ailing patriarch, becomes the stage, alternately, for ebullient musical theater and morbid fantasies. With its opulent production design, sinister soundscapes, and its flair for the grotesque, Jordan Strafer’s PEAK HEAVEN LOVE FOREVER is a psychodrama in miniature.

NE Corridor
Joshua Gen Solondz, 2022, U.S., 35mm, 7m
World Premiere
Accumulated over three years, Joshua Gen Solondz’s film is a crowded collage of gurgling paint, jagged splices, errant sprocket holes, and puzzling images that conjure the densely material frames of the late queer avant-garde filmmaker Luther Price. A messy assemblage in purples and oranges, NE Corridor is at once a visceral explosion of color and a tortured object.

Qualities Of Life: Living in the Radiant Cold
James Richards, 2022, Germany, 18m
U.S. Premiere
James Richards’ Qualities of Life: Living in the Radiant Cold is a descent into a maelstrom of images and objects—from glitched medical optics, photos from the archive of Horst Ademeit, who documented the impact of radiation on his body, to Richards’ own collection of erotic objects, drug paraphernalia, and other ephemera that swim in a dark techno-pharmacological miasma.

Program 5: After Utopia
TRT: 75m

Adaptation
Josh Kline, 2022, U.S., 11m
World Premiere
The setting for Josh Kline’s Adaptation is the contaminated canyons of a flooded New York City in the near future—here rendered with resolutely analog special effects, including matte shots and scale models. Amid the ruins, life and work continue, as the city’s remaining relief workers adapt to the strange beauty of their newly transformed home and the consequences of a slow, preventable apocalypse.

urban solutions
Arne Hector, Luciana Mazeto, Minze Tummescheit, and Vinícius Lopes, 2022, Germany/Brazil, 16mm, 30m
Portuguese and German with English subtitles
North American Premiere
A German artist on a picturesque journey to Brazil ruminates on the country’s lush floral beauty and its orderly architectures of civilization and security, as apartment complex doormen reflect on their experiences as caretakers, security guards, and confidants for the rich. Shot in vivid 16mm, urban solutions builds a complex, multi-perspectival portrait of the country’s class inequities, in which insurgent energies of the colonial past begin to break through its pristine surfaces.

Life on the CAPS
Meriem Bennani, 2022, Morocco/U.S., 34m
English and Arabic with English subtitles
Interweaving live action and computer graphics, and blending the aesthetics of documentary, music video, surveillance, and viral videos, Meriem Bennani constructs a rich, disorienting vision of a dystopian future on CAPS, a fictional migrant enclave located somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Featuring a score by Fatima Al Qadiri, Life on the CAPS is a vibrant and intricately layered audiovisual commentary on the meaning of data, diaspora, and collective resistance.

Program 6: Inside Voices
TRT: 77m

Bigger on the Inside
Angelo Madsen Minax, 2022, U.S., 12m
U.S. Premiere
Outer and inner space collapse in Angelo Madsen Minax’s cosmic essay film, which diffracts feelings, memories, and longings during a blurry sojourn in a remote cabin in the woods. Looking at the stars, flirting with guys on dating apps, taking ketamine (or not), and watching YouTube lecture videos, Minax draws a warped cartography of desire and distance.

The Sky’s In There
Dani and Sheilah ReStack, 2022, U.S., 11m
World Premiere
In Dani and Sheilah ReStack’s intimate album of sensations, the camera becomes a communal tool, weaving between domestic scenes with children, friends, animals, and collaborators, miniature art worlds, and abstracted natural formations. Threading these scenes with their trademark strategies of feral domesticity, these quotidian spaces of play and repose become models of transformation, experience, and care.

Lesser Choices
Courtney Stephens, 2022, U.S., 8m
World Premiere
The bleached palette and home-movie aesthetics of Super 8 footage provide the image track for this testimonial about an illegal abortion in Mexico City in the 1960s, delivered in voiceover by the filmmaker’s mother. In its account of this intimate and disorienting memory, Lesser Choices summons a time of profound uncertainty—a moment from an era without rights—and offers a warning to the present.

Diana, Diana
Kim Salac, 2022, U.S., 10m
English and Tagalog with English subtitles
World Premiere
In this fractured double-portrait, artist Kim Salac superimposes the story of Princess Diana onto images and narratives drawn from their mother’s life. Through palimpsests of voices and images, the artist’s own dance performances, and archival interviews with the princess just before her divorce, Diana, Diana meditates on iconography and celebrity, globalization and colonization, and women’s shared struggle for autonomy across class lines.

It Smells Like Springtime
Mackie Mallison, 2022, U.S., 16m
Chinese, English, and Japanese with English subtitles
World Premiere
Through family conversations, home movies, still-lifes, and portraiture, Mackie Mallison’s It Smells Like Springtime explores the complexity of Asian-American identity and experience in dialogue with the artist and jeweler Ada Chen and a riotous cadre of kids. Together, they grapple with their ties to their family’s homelands, the paradoxes of representation, and their sense of belonging.

Into The Violet Belly
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, 2022, Belgium/Germany/Iceland/Malta/Denmark, 20m
Vietnamese and English with English subtitles
World Premiere
Interweaving family lore, mythology, science fiction, and digital abstraction, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi’s film follows the collaboration between the artist and her mother, Thuyen Hoa, who fled Vietnam after the end of the American War via a near-calamitous sea journey. Oscillating between voices, visual registers, and timescales—was it seven months or seven thousand years?— Into The Violet Belly offers up an image of its multiplicitous structure: a massive digital swarm, tiny avatars of migrating bodies, swimming in an infinite blue.

Program 7: Ordinary Devotion
TRT: 73m

The Demands of Ordinary Devotion
Eva Giolo, 2022, Belgium, 12m
U.S. Premiere
Flipping a coin, pumping a breast, hand-rolling pasta, winding a Bolex: The Demands of Ordinary Devotion is an accumulation of small gestures, ordinary affects, and cryptic rites—a catalog of moments that captures the elegance and the banality of creation, which Eva Giolo documents through juxtapositions of rich 16mm images and precise sonic events.

Renate
Ute Aurand, 2021, Germany, 16mm, 6m
North American Premiere
Ute Aurand’s delicate portrait of her friend and fellow filmmaker Renate Sami is rich with quiet micro-events, intimating a wealth of shared histories, songs, and readings (including an untranslated passage from the Austrian poet Friederike Mayröcker’s Stillleben), and evoking the fragile beauty of the present.

Lungta
Alexandra Cuesta, 2022, Mexico/Ecuador, 10m
Alexandra Cuesta’s enigmatic film derives its title from the mythical Tibetan creature (literally, “wind horse”) that symbolizes the air or spirit within the body. Combining sound artist’s Martín Baus’s distorted aerophonic score with blurred 16mm footage, Lungta foregrounds the material substructure of the filmic process while invoking the history of Muybridge’s earliest experiments in chronophotography, which gave motion to still images for the first time.

The Newest Olds
Pablo Mazzolo, 2022, Argentina/Canada, 35mm, 15m
U.S. Premiere
Through his deft hand-processing and manipulation of 35mm film stock, Pablo Mazzolo creates a kaleidoscopic landscape study of sites in and around the transborder agglomeration of Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario. Transforming this space into a pulsating environment of liquid terrain, volatile abstraction, and an ever-changing color palette, The Newest Olds also draws on archival sound and field recording to reveal the two cities’ energies of uncertainty and unrest.

Devil’s Peak
Simon Liu, 2022, Hong Kong/U.S., 30m
North American Premiere
In Devil’s Peak, Simon Liu’s frenetically associative montage and shimmering images map a twisted psychogeography of Hong Kong. What emerges is a dizzying portrait of a metropolis bustling with jagged contrasts: between the shiny objects of capitalist futurism and the past’s ghostly whispers, between gestures of resistance and forces of suppression.

Program 8: Time Out of Mind
TRT: 76m

Against Time
Ben Russell, 2022, France, 23m
A fractal almanac, Ben Russell’s Against Time begins in reverse as a means of moving forward. An homage to the late filmmaker Jonathan Schwartz, and filmed between the Carpathian Mountains, Vilnius punk clubs, a Belarusian Independence Day celebration, and Marseille, it hovers in a limbo of drone and fog, then descends into stroboscopic clusters of moments and movements.

In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun
Sylvia Schedelbauer, 2022, Germany, 18m
Japanese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Borrowing its title from the memoir of early Japanese suffragette Hiratsuka Raichō, In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun plunges deep into an oceanic vortex of saturated color and fleeting archival images, conjuring moments from the history of Japanese women’s movements in a headlong montage of bodies in protest, pulsating into abstraction.

What Rules The Invisible
Tiffany Sia, 2022, U.S., 10m
U.S. Premiere
Through archival travelogue footage of Hong Kong and family stories from her mother, Tiffany Sia explores Hong Kong’s tangled colonial histories in What Rules the Invisible. Appropriating and reframing the home movies’ voyeuristic images, the filmmaker finds small disruptions, returned gazes, and the ghostly residue of past resistance left undocumented.

The Sower of Stars / El sembrador de estrellas
Lois Patiño, 2022, Spain, 25m
Japanese with English subtitles
Intricate composite patterns of tiny, dazzling lights break through the inky blackness of night in Lois Patiño’s dream-like Tokyo nocturne. Narrated in dialogue by disembodied voices meditating on the qualities of color, light, and silence, The Sower of Stars is a minor-key city symphony in which the dense metropolis, viewed from afar, becomes a quiet atmosphere of twinkling electronics, snaking reflections, and liquid stars.

Program 9: New York Shorts
TRT: 87m

Same Old
Lloyd Lee Choi, 2022, U.S., 15m
Mandarin Chinese and English with English subtitles
In post-pandemic Manhattan, a Chinese immigrant works nights as a delivery worker, until his world begins to unravel: his e-bike is stolen, and with it his livelihood. In inky night scenes and desaturated neon, director Lloyd Lee Choi captures the precarity of life on the city’s social and economic margins.

Trust Exercises
Sarah Friedland, 2022, U.S., 25m
World Premiere
Experimental dance and corporate management workshops intersect in Sarah Friedland’s Trust Exercises, which connects three spaces—a rehearsal studio, a company team-building retreat, and a bodywork session—in which participants learn to move together. In these complementary zones, the business and social worlds merge in the complex orchestration of rhythm and play.

29 Hour Long Birthday
Mark Jenkin, 2022, U.K., 6m
World Premiere
British filmmaker Mark Jenkin (whose latest feature Enys Men is part of this year’s Main Slate) mails this postcard from a melancholic holiday in New York and its environs, rendering the city in grainy monochrome Super 8 and a familiar urban soundtrack of jackhammers and traffic hum. In voiceover, the filmmaker relates his experiences of celeb-spotting and visiting movie locales, buying overpriced essentials, and counting MAGA bumper stickers on Long Island.

Magic Ring
Alex Ashe, 2022, U.S., 16m
World Premiere
Slipping between planes of consciousness and existence, filmmaker Alex Ashe’s Magic Ring is a work of both subdued tenderness and wry comic surrealism in which an armed pursuit in Brooklyn results in a series of out-of-body experiences: a mystical encounter in a book shop, a chat with an ancestral spirit, a whole life flashing by in an instant.

Little Jerry
Charlotte Ercoli, 2022, U.S., 11m
Channeling the pure chaos of Jerry Lewis and the Three Stooges with jerky rhythms and discomfiting smashcuts, Charlotte Ercoli’s Little Jerry tells the deranged showbiz tale of the frenzied, dysfunctional, jealous relationship between a puppet comedian (played by viral video icon Douglas Levison) and his jittery, incompetent assistant, who is also his son.

as time passes
Jamil McGinnis, 2022, U.S./Turkey, 14m
Turkish, English, and Persian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
as time passes assembles images and memories in a lyrical film-diary through which director Jamil McGinnis traces and retraces linkages between his mother’s home city of Lüleburgaz, Turkey, and his home in Crown Heights. Remixing home movies, original 16mm footage, and appropriated film and video clips, the film maps a deeply rooted landscape of shared emotion and existence.

Screening with a to-be-announced Revivals program
The Potemkinists / Potemkiniștii
Radu Jude, 2022, Romania, 18m
Romanian and Russian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Radu Jude revisits the history of the battleship Potemkin—the source story for Sergei Eisenstein’s classic 1925 work of Soviet montage—as a comic dialogue between a sculptor and a representative from Romania’s Ministry of Culture about cinema, monument-making, and art’s conflicted role in the continual revisionism of history.

 

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Tribeca Film Festival 2022 review: ‘DREAMING WALLS: Inside The Chelsea Hotel’

DREAMING WALLS: Inside The Chelsea Hotel

The Chelsea Hotel was a bohemian enclave in New York City. Artists, movie stars, and musicians passed through the halls during the height of avant-garde Manhattan. Now, the remaining long-term residents of the hotel mingle within the current renovations, attempting to coexist amongst the chaos. 

The residents are an eclectic group of creators. Each possesses a unique story and a timeless aura about them. It just so happens that I know one of the artists and have a few of his pieces. A few years ago, Skye Ferrante (AKA Man Of Wire) recreated selected quotes sculpted from wire for each member of my family. They are one-of-a-kind creations. To watch him is to witness magic. Ferrante provides original and poetic voice-over passages of his own writing as we watch the chemistry between him and his models and his daughter. He is a snapshot, and one of the youngest, of the creative beings left behind.

Filmmakers Maya Duverdier and Amélie van Elmbt watch them maneuver within the halls and their respective spaces, listening to them recall their glory days and how long they think they can survive until renovations are complete. Their emotional attachments vary from apartment to apartment. Haunting footage of dark, cavernous hallways creates an eerie effect, while archival footage and audio layer on top of one another. It’s entrancing and a little rock ‘n roll. Tribeca 2022 audiences are in for a love letter and a history lesson in the form of a breathing time capsule. 


CAST & CREDITS

Directed by Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier

Amélie van Elmbt studied at the IAD Film School. In 2011, she directed her first feature film, Headfirst. Her second feature The Elephant & The Butterfly premiered at Tribeca. Maya Duverdier holds a master’s degree in film from École cantonale d’art de Lausanne. Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel is her first feature-length documentary.

DIRECTOR
Amélie van Elmbt, Maya Duverdier
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER (MAIN CREDIT)
Martin Scorsese
PRODUCER
Hanne Phlypo, Quentin Laurent
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Joachim Philippe, Virginie Surdej
COMPOSER
Michael Andrews
EDITOR
Alain Dessauvage, Julie Naas
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Lori Cheatle
CO-PRODUCER
Frédéric de Goldschmidt, Simone van den Broek, David Herdies
US DISTRIBUTOR

Magnolia Pictures


To learn more about Tribeca 2022 click here!

Tribeca 2022 review: Sex sells in new documentary ‘All Man: The International Male Story,’ how one “It” catalog introduced lifestyle branding for men.

ALL MAN: THE INTERNATIONAL MALE STORY

More than outrageous fashions, hunky models, and scandalous undies, ALL MAN: THE INTERNATIONAL MALE STORY is a journey across three decades of the International Male catalog’s lasting impact on fashion, masculinity, and gay rights. With revenues at its peak of $120 million and circulation of over 3 million, the catalog successfully appealed to both gay and straight audiences, and helped transform conservative notions of American masculinity towards a more carefree, cosmopolitan, and confident expression. Written and produced by Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Peter Jones and narrated by Matt Bomer (MAGIC MIKE, THE BOYS IN THE BAND, etc…), ALL MAN is a character-driven portrait of a band of outsiders who changed the way men looked and how the world looked at them. This is their story – a modern-day fairy tale that really did come true.


The impact of men’s fashion takes center stage in Tribeca 2022 doc ALL MAN: THE INTERNATIONAL MALE STORY. One innovative catalog gave men the freedom to be themselves. Its global and cultural influence spans generations like no other men’s fashion publication. In building International Male, Gene Burkard’s emphasis wasn’t on sex, even if the catalog featured chiseled men in high fashion. He and his creative team broke the mold of selling menswear while pushing a lifestyle brand. In the same way men ogle Victoria’s Secret, International Male became a household object to covet for innumerable reasons. 

Matt Bomer‘s narration adds a brilliant touch of nostalgia in a way that is hard to describe until you experience it for yourself. The film uses archival footage and photography, sit-down interviews, and creative transitional animation. The catalog was bright, smart, sexy, and gave men something to aspire to be. It challenged the idea of masculinity with its European-inspired fashion and copy, written by Gene. He was meticulous in his work ethic, taking customer feedback and recognizing that 75% of their shoppers were women. Watching the images from the catalogs made me want to order (almost) every single article of clothing for my husband. Gene clearly understood the broad appeal. If International Male existed today, I’d be begging them to take my money. 

Everything shifted for International Male once the AIDS epidemic touched the employees and the world. Gene sold the catalog, and the new creative directors were more hesitant to hire queer staff, in fact, firing a huge percentage of them. In the 90s, the positive changes came in the form of more models of color. But with the loss of gay buyers and department stores filled with men’s retail, International Male was no longer a cash cow. But it’s easy to see how the catalog catapulted our current influencers in pop culture with the freedom to express themselves on a gender spectrum now celebrated across the globe. So, thank you, International Male. You made a difference while allowing us to drool.


Written and Produced by
Peter Jones
Directed and Produced by
Bryan Darling
Jesse Finley Reed
Executive Producer
Peter Jones


World Premiere: June 12 2022, 8:30pm (ET) at
Village East Cinema
Run Time: 83 minutes
Rating: Not Rated
Language: English


The countdown is officially on for Tribeca Film Festival 2022. Here are 20 films we’re keeping our eyes on this year.

Tribeca is back in action. The 2022 interaction of the festival will have events including films, talks, masterclasses, immersive selections, and a watch at-home option if you’re not in the city. There is so much to experience this year, but here is a list of films we’re keeping our eyes on. More to come as the festival rolls on over 12 days.


HALFTIME

– Opening Night –

Launches on Netflix on June 14th

HALFTIME offers an intimate peek behind the curtain revealing the grit and determination that makes Jennifer Lopez the icon she is, from her performances onscreen and on stages around the world, to her Super Bowl Halftime show, to the recent Presidential inauguration. The documentary focuses on an international superstar who has inspired people for decades with her perseverance, creative brilliance, and cultural contributions. And it’s only the beginning. HALFTIME serves as the kickoff to the second half of Lopez’s life, as she lays bare her evolution as a Latina, a mother, and an artist, taking agency in her career and using her voice for a greater purpose.

Directed by: Amanda Micheli

Produced by: Benny Medina, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, Dave Broome, Angus Wall, Terry Leonard, Jennifer Sofio Hall, Kent Kubena, and Serin Marshall

Screenings: 

6/8 at 7:00pm – United Palace

6/9 at 9:00pm – Village East by Angelika: Theater 1

6/11 at 11:30am – Cinépolis: Theater 4


CAROL AND JOHNNY

The unbelievable, decade-spanning, and surprisingly heart-warming true story of two of America’s most successful bank robbers, Carol & Johnny provides the opportunity for the real-life Bonnie and Clyde to reflect upon and record their unique love story in their own words. Comparing and contrasting the oral histories of both now-elderly ex-cons, Colin Barnicle’s riveting biographical documentary traces the history of the duo with equal intensity and intimacy, transforming true crime into a rich, literary epic. 

If you’re not obsessed with true crime at this point, I don’t know what rock you’ve been living under. This one has an intimate and personal touch to it.

Directed by: Colin Barnicle 

Produced by: Barnicle Brother with Words and Pictures

Section: Viewpoints, Feature Documentary

Screenings:

6/12 a 5:00pm – Village East by Angelika: Theater 2

6/14 at 6:00pm – At-home Virtual Screening  

6/15 at 2:45pm – Village East by Angelika: Theater 6

6/16 at 8:00pm – Village East by Angelika: Theater 2


RUDY! A DOCUMUSICAL

Whether you love, hate, or loved then hated Rudy Giuliani, everyone knows his name. He was “America’s mayor,” Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and a personal lawyer to the former President of the United States. Dissecting the rise and fall of its titular subject with thorough research and an inquisitive eye, Rudy! A Documusical is a political documentary that goes beyond well-known headlines to explore the psyche and circumstances of a man in free-fall.

The downfall of “America’s Mayor” (and yes, we did call him that as someone who experienced 9/11 here in the city as a college student) is one of the most shocking things to witness. Share in the media-frenzied weirdness why don’t you?

World Premiere

Directed by: Jed Rothstein

Produced by: Ross M. Dinerstein and Sarit G. Work

Section: Spotlight Documentary

Screenings: 

6/9 at 8:30pm – SVA Theater 1 Silas 

6/10 at 2:45pm – Cinépolis: Theater 5

6/17 at 8:15pm –  Tribeca Center


FAMILY DINNER

It’s no surprise that the Midnight films happen to be the ones I covet most during Tribeca. This year, Peter Hengl’s film Family Dinner features a young woman named Simi visiting her family for Easter. Seeking the guidance of her famous nutritionist aunt, Claudia, she is introduced to a diet that will take every ounce of willpower. The film simmers in uncomfortable tension. Don’t think that for a moment, I missed  Ant Timpson as one of the executive producers. Family Dinner has all the ingredients for a feast, that might just come back up later.

Fri June 10 – 9:00 PM
Village East by Angelika: Theater 6
 
Sat June 11 – 9:45 PM
Village East by Angelika: Theater 4
 
Wed June 15 – 8:15 PM
Tribeca Film Center

BODY PARTS

This stellar documentary dives headfirst into the “reality” of sex scenes in Hollywood. In conversation with actresses, directors, and intimacy coordinators, Body Parts mixed social relevance and amazing editing to bring you into the bedrooms of some of the most iconic sex scenes in cinematic history. And that’s only the beginning of what this film tackles. Get ready for a lesson in industry intimacy.

DIRECTOR

Kristy Guevara-Flanagan

 
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
Ruth Ann Harnisch, Abigail Disney, Daniel Chalfen, Adrienne Becker, Roger Clark
 
CAST
Jane Fonda, Joey Soloway, Angela Robinson, Karyn Kusama, Rose McGowan, David Simon.
 
Sun June 12 – 2:45 PM
Village East by Angelika: Theater 1
 
Mon June 13 – 8:15 PM
Tribeca Film Center
 
Tue June 14 – 6:00 PM
At Home

Only available in New York state

Thu June 16 – 9:00 PM
Cinépolis: Theater 6
 

THE YEAR BETWEEN

(US Narrative Competition) – Clemence Miller, played by comedian writer/director Alex Heller, is coming home to live in her family’s basement after dropping out of college with a newly diagnosed mental illness. Having to face her battered relationships and responsibilities of adulthood, she is driving everyone around her… crazy.

Alex Heller is a tour de force in this unapologetic and in-your-face indie. Wearing all the hats in this film as star, writer, director, and producer. 
 
DIRECTOR
Alex Heller
 
PRODUCER
Eugene Sun Park, Amanda Phillips, Sonya Lunsford, Rachel Gould, Caterin Camargo-Alvarez, Alex Heller
 
SCREENWRITER
Alex Heller
 
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Jason Chiu
 
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Adrienne Becker, Susanna Fogel, J. Smith-Cameron, HaJ
 
CAST
Alex Heller, J. Smith-Cameron, Steve Buscemi, Wyatt Oleff, Emily Robinson, Kyanna Simone, Rajeev Jacob, Waltrudis Buck
 
Sun June 12 – 5:30 PM
Village East by Angelika: Theater 1
 
Available Starting
Tue June 14 – 6:00 PM
At Home
 
Tue June 14 – 8:45 PM
Village East by Angelika: Theater 3
 
Fri June 17 – 9:00 PM
Cinépolis: Theater 6

NAKED GARDENS

(Documentary Competition) – An immersive film from filmmakers Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan (Pahokee), about the unseen world of nudism. Set in the Florida Everglades, NAKED GARDENS follows the stories of individuals drawn to this lifestyle and the dilemmas they face, as they prepare for the Midwinter Naturist Festival.

Charming and insightful, push your judgment aside and meet a community attempting to live and accept one another. They just happen to be nude.

DIRECTOR
Ivete Lucas, Patrick Bresnan
PRODUCER
Patrick Bresnan, Ivete Lucas, Tabs Breese, Julia Nottingham, Roberto Minervini, and Denise Ping Lee
SCREENWRITER
Ivete Lucas
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Patrick Bresnan
EDITOR
Ivete Lucas
 
Fri June 10 – 5:45 PM
Village East by Angelika: Theater 3
 
Sat June 11 – 5:15 PM
Tribeca Film Center
 
Thu June 16 – 5:45 PM
Village East by Angelika: Theater 3


AMERICAN DREAMER

Based on a true story. American Dreamer is the story of Dr. Phil Loder (Peter Dinklage), a low- level, adjunct professor of economics, whose grand dream of owning a home is tragically out of reach…until an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity comes his way when a lonely, near-death widow (Shirley MacLaine) offers Phil her sprawling estate for pennies. But Phil quickly learns the deal is too good to be true and the American dream is not quite what it used to be.

You had me and most viewers at Peter Dinklage. The man can do no wrong in my book and we’re beyond excited to see him tackle this role based on a true story.


Directed by: Paul Dektor
Written by: Theodore Melfi
Produced by: Toyo Shimano, Emily Shimano, Theodore Melfi, Kimberly Quinn, Peter Dinklage, David Ginsberg, Paul Dektor
Starring: Peter Dinklage, Shirley MacLaine, Matt Dillon, Danny Glover, Kimberly Quinn, Danny Pudi

RT: 106 Minutes

Public Screenings
Saturday, June 11, 2022, 8:00 PM at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center
Tuesday, June 14, 2022, 5:30 PM at Village East Cinema: Theater 3
Friday, June 17, 2022, 3:00 PM at Village East Cinema: Theater 3



THERE THERE

World Premiere – Spotlight Category

Directed by: Andrew Bujalski
Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Lili Taylor, Molly Gordon, Lennie James, Avi Nash, Annie LaGanga 
Music by: Jon Natchez, Roy Nathanson

RT: 93 minutes

Ever wonder if falling in love again is worth the effort? If someone you cared about were crazy, or if you were crazy for caring? Could someone you trust destroy you while trying to support you, or vice versa? What if the boundaries were getting awfully blurred? Are we being judged for these choices, and who’s judging? Should we have another drink? Are we even communicating now, are we on the same planet, in the same time and place here?

A lover’s doubt in the cold light of morning leads to a chain of uneasy intimacies–counselors, disrupters, peacemakers, and firestarters–everyone looking to have a little faith rewarded.


Public Screening
Friday, June 10, 2022, 5:30PM at SVA Theater 2 Beatrice
Saturday, June 11, 2022, 6:00PM at Cinépolis: Theater 6
Friday, June 17, 2022, 3:45PM at Village East by Angelika: Theater 4



CORNER OFFICE

World Premiere – Spotlight Narrative Category 
 

Directed by: Joachim Back
Starring: Jon Hamm

RT: 101 minutes

CORNER OFFICE an absurdist tale of a man lost in his own space. Orson (Jon Hamm) is a corporate drone trying to move up in his newly acquired entry-level job who discovers a secret room in his drab, soul-crushing office building; a discovery that causes problems with his new colleagues (Danny Pudi and Sarah Gadon). Director Joachim Back’s Kafka-esque debut feature, adapted by Ted Kupper from Jonas Karlsson’s international best-selling novel The Room, explores how to be sane in a world gone mad.

Public Screenings

Thursday, June 9, 2022, 8:00 PM at BMCC Tribeca PAC
Friday, June 10, 2022, 3:00 PM at Cinépolis: Theater 6
Wednesday, June 15, 2022, 8:30 PM at Village East Cinema: Theater 1



THE COURTROOM

World Premiere – Online Premieres 

Directed by: Lee Sunday Evans
Executive Produced by: Lee Sunday EvansArian MoayedRyan ChanatryGena KonstantinakosAnne Carey
Starring: Marsha Stephanie BlakeMichael BraunKathleen ChalfantHanna CheekMichael ChernusMichael Bryan FrenchMick HilgersLinda PowellKristin VillanuevaBD Wong

 
RT: 87 Minutes
 
In this powerful drama from director Lee Sunday Evans and writer (and Succession breakout star) Arian Moayed, the legal thriller is given a bold and innovative new twist. Adapted verbatim from court transcripts, The Courtroom follows the harrowing journey of Elizabeth Keathley (Kristin Villanueva) a Filipina immigrant who mistakenly registers to vote while on a K3 visa, a crime punishable by deportation. Married with a newborn baby, Elizabeth, with the support of her husband and the tireless efforts of their lawyer, struggles to navigate an increasingly convoluted and nightmarish legal system.
 
Originally presented as a critically-acclaimed off-Broadway play, The Courtroom successfully captures the intensity and intimacy of live theater while also feeling undeniably cinematic. Audiences are thrown directly into Elizabeth’s story and through fluid, immersive direction and striking set design, experience her terror and desperation right alongside her. Evans and Moayed’s fascinating experiment with dramatic reenactment and hybrid storytelling is anchored by standout performances from an accomplished cast of actors – including BD Wong in a moving third act appearance – who bring genuine nuance and emotional heft to an already gripping true story.

Online Screening
Sunday, June 12, 2022, 8:00 PM


THE DROP 

World Premiere – US Narrative Competition

Written & Directed by: Sarah Adina Smith 
Produced by: Mel Eslyn, Jonako Donley, Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass
Starring: Jermaine Fowler, Anna Konkle, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Jillian Bell, Robin Thede, Elisha Henig, Jennifer Lafleur, Joshua Leonard, Aparna Nancherla

RT: 92 Minutes

Lex and Mani’s happy marriage is thrown into a tailspin when Lex accidentally drops their friend’s baby during an otherwise picturesque destination wedding weekend. While the baby is fine, the adults are not.  Lex’s mistake causes a crisis of confidence in those around her, challenging our most primal gender expectations.   

Can a relationship withstand the stress of when things get real? When things get “baby-on-the-pavement” real? 



Public Screenings
Saturday, June 11, 2022, 8:30 PM at SVA1 – Silas
Sunday, June 12, 2022, 9:00 PM at Cinepolis Chelsea -06
Friday, June 17, 2022,  9:30 PM at Village East Cinema -07


 NEXT EXIT 

DIRECTORMali Elfman
WRITERMali Elfman
CAST: Katie Parker, Rahul Kohli, Rose Mciver, Tongayi Chirisa, Tim Griffin, Diva Zappa, Nico Evers-Swindell, and Karen Gillan
 
SYNOPSIS: When a research scientist makes national news proving she can track people into the afterlife, Rose sees a way out and Teddy sees his chance to finally make it. These two strangers, both harboring dark secrets, race to join the doctor’s contentious study and leave this life behind. While Rose is haunted by a ghostly presence that she can’t outrun, Teddy is forced to confront his past. As these two misfits humorously quarrel their way across the country, they meet people along the way who force them to reckon with what is really driving them.
 
This genre-bending road trip film will get under your skin with its incredibly thoughtful performances. Parker and Kohli’s chemistry is cinematic magic. 
 
RUN TIME: 106 minutes
GENRE: Dramedy, Horror, Fantasy
 

TRIBECA PREMIERE DATE: June 10, 2022 / 6:15 p.m. ET / Village East by Angelika Theater 7 


TAURUS

DIRECTOR: Tim Sutton
WRITER:  Tim Sutton
CAST: Colson Baker, Maddie Hasson, Demetrius “Lil Meech” Flenory, Megan Fox, Ruby Rose, Scoot McNairy, Lil TJay, Naomi Wild
 
SYNOPSIS: A rising but troubled musician searches for the inspiration to record one last song, pushing himself deep into the void. A work of fiction that explores fame, addiction, the artistic process, and the music industry, Taurus is a soulful and universal cautionary tale. 
 
 Colson Baker ( AKA Machine Gun Kelly) gives an award-worthy performance. While described as a work of fiction, the story is a cautionary tale. 
 
RUN TIME: 95 Minutes
GENRE: Drama, Music
 

TRIBECA PREMIERE DATE: June 9, 2022 / 8 p.m. ET / Beacon Theatre


FOUR SAMOSAS

*WORLD PREMIERE**
 
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Ravi Kapoor
CAST: Venk Potula, Sonal Shah, Sharmita Bhattacharya, Nirvan Patnaik, Karan Soni, Summer Bishil, Meera Simhan


 
 Synopsis: Determined to disrupt the wedding of his ex-girlfriend by stealing her dowry, underachieving, wanna-be rapper Vinny and his neighborhood pals in LA’s “Little India” concoct a plan to take her family jewels from a supermarket safe.
 

Tribeca Film Festival 2022 In-Person Screening Info
– Friday, June 10th at 6:00pm ET at VEC-06 (181-189 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10003) *World Premiere*
– Saturday, June 11th at 8:45pm ET at CIN-04 (260 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10011)
– Saturday, June 18th at 2:45pm ET at CIN-04 (260 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10011)
 
Tribeca Film Festival 2022 Online Screening Info
– Available online starting on June 12th at 6:00p EST


CHERRY

**WORLD PREMIERE**
 
DIRECTOR: Sophie Galibert
CAST: Alex Trewhitt, Joe Sachem, Dan Schultz, Sandy Duarte, Alice Bang, Hannah Alline, Melinda DeKay, Angela Nicholas, Charlie S. Jensen, Darius Levanté
 
 

Synopsis: Cherry, a driftless 25-year-old young woman discovers she is 11 weeks pregnant and has only 24 hours to make a consequential decision.
 

Tribeca Film Festival 2022 Online Screening Info
– Available online starting on June 11th at 6:00p EST

 


GOD SAVE THE QUEENS

**WORLD PREMIERE**

WRITER/DIRECTOR: Jordan Danger
CAST: Justin Andrew Honard AKA Alaska Thunderfuck, Jay Jackson AKA Laganja Estranja, Kelly Mantle, Jordan Michael Green, Peter Facinelli, Michelle Visage, Joaquim De Almeida, Lunell, Zack Gottsagen

Synopsis: A dramedy about four Drag Queens who find themselves at the very same therapy retreat. In an effort to overcome issues holding them back, they dissect their dilemmas, seen through vignettes of their lives. They discover common ground; Perhaps, it wasn’t serendipity that brought them together. Maybe they’re not alone? 


Tribeca 2022 Online Screening Info
– Available online starting on June 8th at 8:00p EST


YOU CAN LIVE FOREVER

**WORLD PREMIERE**
 
WRITER/DIRECTORS: Sarah Watts, Mark Slutsky
CAST: Anwen O’Driscoll, June Laporte, Liane Balaban, Deragh Campbell, Tim Campbell, Antoine Yared, Hasani Freeman
 

Synopsis: When lesbian teen Jaime is sent to live in a Jehovah’s Witness community, she falls hard for a devout Witness girl and the two embark on an intense affair with consequences that will reshape the rest of their lives. 


Tribeca Film Festival 2022 In-Person Screening Info
– Saturday, June 11th at 5:30p ET at VEC-06 (181-189 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10003) *World Premiere*
– Sunday, June 12th at 2:30p ET at VEC-06 (181-189 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10003) 
– Tuesday, June 14th at 9:00p ET at VEC-06 (181-189 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10003)
 

The Integrity of Joseph Chambers

Desperate to acquire the skills necessary to provide for his family in case of an apocalypse, insurance salesman Joseph Chambers goes deer hunting for the first time ever, alone, when his experienced buddy is too sick to join him.
 
DIRECTOR
Robert Machoian
 
PRODUCER
Clayne Crawford, Kiki Crawford, Robert Machoian
 
SCREENWRITER
Robert Machoian
 
 
CAST
Clayne Crawford, Jordana Brewster, Jeffrey Dean Morgan
 
WORLD PREMIERE – Thursday, June 9th, 5:30 PM at SVA Theater 2 Beatrice

Subject

SUBJECT explores the life-altering experience of sharing one’s life on screen through key participants of acclaimed documentaries The Staircase, Hoop Dreams, The Wolfpack, Capturing the Friedmans, and The Square. These erstwhile documentary “stars” reveal the highs and lows of their experiences as well as the everyday realities of having their lives put under a microscope. Also featuring commentary from influential names in the doc world, the film unpacks vital issues around the ethics and responsibility inherent in documentary filmmaking. As tens of millions of people consume documentaries in an unprecedented “golden era,” SUBJECT urges audiences to consider the often profound impact on their participants.

DIRECTOR
Jennifer Tiexiera, Camilla Hall
 
PRODUCER
Camilla Hall, Jennifer Tiexiera, Joe Caterini
 
SCREENWRITER
Jennifer Tiexiera, Camilla Hall, and Lauren Saffa
 
 
CAST
Arthur Agee, Ahmed Hassan, Margie Ratliff, Michael Peterson, Mukunda Angulo, Jesse Friedman, Elaine Friedman, Lisa Walsh, Susanne Reisenbichler
 
Sat June 11 – 4:30 PM
SVA Theater 2 Beatrice

At this time, SVA Theatre requires proof of vaccination for entry. Masks must be worn at all times. More Info

Mon June 13 – 5:30 PM
Cinépolis: Theater 4
 
Sat June 18 – 3:00 PM
Cinépolis: Theater 6

Don’t forget to check in here at Reel News Daily throughout the fest for reviews, photos, insights, and shared content from our amazing friends at UnseenFilms!

The 2022 Tribeca Festival will take place across the city from June 8-19.


HOT DOCS 2022 review: ‘Images Of A Nordic Drama’ pits art lovers against the art world.

IMAGES OF A NORDIC DRAMA

Who would have ever guessed that the discovery of paintings by an unknown Norwegian artist would cause such upheaval in the art world? When art collector Haakon Mehren was led to a barn filled with oversized canvases, his jaw immediately hit the floor. Who was this artist? After some sleuthing, Mehren introduces the world to Aksel Waldemar Johannessen, an unapologetic alcoholic who did the unthinkable. Johannessen painted the poor, often using his image mixed with dark and twisted imagery of inner turmoil.

Self-portrait painted by Aksel Waldemar Johannessen

Art is subjective, but there is undoubtedly a most elite shroud in curating. Norway’s most coveted paintings never before depicted the lower class. Their claim to fame was Edvard Munch. If you know even a sliver about art, you can immediately conjure the image of “The Scream.” The curatorial staff at the National Museum and gatekeepers of the Munch Museum immediately pushed back on adding the works to Norway’s collective narrative. Mehren made it his life’s mission to share Johannessen’s artistic contributions, scheduling exhibitions throughout Europe. The public’s reaction was overwhelmingly delightful. That only fueled the fire from Norway’s elite.

Director Nils Gaup uses a gorgeous score while repeatedly showcasing Johannessen’s paintings. This distinctive choice brings due awe to each piece. There’s no denying that some of the work is frightening, while others are simply breathtaking. The variety of subjects is astounding. You will find yourself lost in them. IMAGES OF A NORDIC DRAMA is the perfect addition to this year’s HOT DOCS 2022 lineup. If you weren’t an art lover before, get ready for your world is about to change.

The painting “Man on a diving board” by Aksel Waldemar Johannessen. This painting was exhibited at The Met.


HOT DOCS 2022 Link to buy tickets:

https://hotdocs.ca/whats-on/hot-docs-festival/films/2022/images-of-a-nordic-drama

@hotdocs #HotDocs22


HOT DOCS 2022 FESTIVAL SCREENINGS:
PUBLIC SCREENINGS:

Saturday, April 30 at 11:30 am
Location: Varsity 8 (55 Bloor Street West)

Thursday, May 5 at 8:45 pm
Location: Varsity 8 (55 Bloor Street West)

Running Time: 71 minutes

Language: English, German, Norwegian

Country: Norway, Germany (Feature Documentary)


Review: ‘THE HUMANS’ is a living, breathing tableau of the American family.

THE HUMANS

Erik Blake gathers three generations of his Pennsylvania family to celebrate Thanksgiving at his daughter’s apartment in lower Manhattan. As darkness falls and eerie things go bump in the night, the group’s deepest fears are laid bare.


I wish I had seen Stephen Karam‘s stage version of The Humans. As a theatre major/lover, I could immediately feel the weight of the dialogue; subjects that feel mundane, long pauses fill the air, then the delicious, sharp back and forth. Karam developed his Tony-award-winning script for the screen and every single second of it is authentic. The most magical part of The Humans for a kid that grew up in the Connecticut burbs and then attended a theatre conservatory on the Upper West Side is the specificity to every detail of the sets and sound editing. Now 41, owning a co-op a block away from school, I realize how immune I’ve become to the sounds of a clanking and hissing radiator or the banging footsteps of the neighbors overhead. It is only when I visit home for the holidays that I notice the birds chirping or the silence of a neighborhood with picket fences. And yet, The Humans taps into a universality of the American family. There is something so familiar about the generational divides that appear around a dinner table; the brazen backtalk of the youngest adult, the words of wisdom, often misconstrued, from the parental units. Relationships are rubbed raw by alcohol or exhaustion. It’s a visceral discomfort that is highlighted brilliantly in this film. 

Karam’s use of sound, in particular, makes The Humans a genre-bending ride. Don’t be confused when your heart sounds and you think you’ve mistakenly turned on a horror film. The deliberate panic-inducing score and sound editing exacerbate buried secrets in The Humans. Karam’s carefully curated script is a masterclass in storytelling. He clearly understands the natural rhythm of familial banter. Each character experiences an arc over a few hours. The Humans plays in real-time. The blocking is coordinated chaos, and I mean that in the highest regard. The camera sits quietly, like an observer in an adjacent part of the apartment. Speaking of, in seeing photos of the two-story unit set from the Broadway run, I am even more impressed at the similarities in the film. With the cramped spaces down to the water stains on the walls, the production team deserves all the awards. 

The cast is superb. Amy Schumer stuns in the role of eldest daughter Aimee. The quiet anguish in her eyes and understanding tones of an adult kid attempting to maintain peace resonates immediately. Her performance has an authenticity that will make you take notice. Steven Yeun is a gentle pleaser as youngest daughter Brigid’s (Beanie Feldstein) boyfriend. He is attentive and honest, with perfectly played outsider energy. It should be no surprise to anyone paying attention to Yeun’s roles since leaving The Walking Dead. His talents are limitless. Dementia takes hold of matriarch Momo, played by the legendary June Squibb. While she technically has little dialogue, each syllable has weight. You’re fully aware of her importance. 

Beanie Feldstein as a musician and wide-eyed optimist, Brigid gives us the know-it-all baby of the family, please treat me as an adult vibe we need. You know her character. Feldstein’s delivery is chef’s kiss. Reprising her Tony Award-winning role as Deirdre is Jayne Houdyshell. The underlying pain is precisely masked by good humor and sass. This behavior comes with a breaking point. I could have sworn I was listening to my mother tell stories about her day. Houdyshell doesn’t take any shit. She’s loving but refuses to be a doormat.

Richard Jenkins‘s performance is immaculate. Karam tapped into the plight of the middle-class white man. From working the same job for decades, sending his kids to college, and entering the next phase of life feeling like the rug has been pulled from underneath him. What you aren’t expecting is the PTSD aspect to loom so large. As someone who experienced 9/11 in college and was downtown two days prior, that day hits differently, more so if you lived through it here in Manhattan. That trauma is key to who Erik has become. It is part of his very essence. Jenkins’s physicality is a story unto itself. He is outstanding. 

The Humans is the perfect film to watch with your family. Its nuance will bowl you over. The Humans is timeless and completely relatable. It’s a snapshot of what kitchen tables have looked like for years. Do not overlook this one. 


RELEASE DATE: In Theaters November 24 and on Showtime


From writer/director Stephen Karam and starring Richard Jenkins, Jayne Houdyshell, Amy Schumer, Beanie Feldstein, Steven Yeun, and June Squibb.


Review: ‘That Cold Dead Look In Your Eyes’ is genre-destroying madness.

Synopsis

Leonard is about to lose his girlfriend, home, and job. Upon that, he’s having strange hallucinations. Is it stress or an after effect of new technology installed all over the city? He must figure it out or he’ll be trapped in this nightmare forever.


I got the email and all I saw was the director’s name. You had me at Onur Tukel, send me the film. If you aren’t familiar with the genre of weird and wonderful that Tukel has put forth into the world of cinema, you’re seriously missing out. From titles like Applesauce to Black Magic for White Boys, if you ever think you know where one of his scripts is headed, you’re sorely mistaken. Enter his newest creation, That Cold Dead Look In Your Eyes.

Leonard blew up his life by cheating on his girlfriend. She is kicking him out. In the meantime, her photographer father that she so clearly adores is visiting at an inopportune time, leaving Leonard to play an awkward host. Dennis is loathsome. He regards himself very highly and cares little for the opinion of others. He’s brash and his attitude seems to be contagious. Leonard is spiraling in every aspect of life. His cooking skills are garbage, he’s running out of money, what’s left of his personal space has been invaded. The entire film seems to be one bashing extravaganza of Leonard, or is it? There is a sadness that consumes him. Maybe it’s the strange new technology that begins appearing around the city. There’s a 5G joke in here, perhaps, and it isn’t subtle. 

Franck Raharinosy as Leonard is just as helpless as you need him to be. Put this man out of his misery in some form or fashion. That’s probably the oddest compliment I could give him. He plays such a convincing sad sack of a man, you feel bad for him. Alan Ceppos is magnificent in his ability to make you cringe. He just doesn’t give a f*ck, for lack of eloquence. This is a performance akin to watching a car crash. You want to look away but you cannot. You are transfixed by Ceppos’ nonchalance. He’s unreal.

The decision to use color for the past and black and white for the present threw me. It became a revelatory choice. Unsurprising for Tukel, whose films tend to center on relationships. You’ll always be taken aback by whatever comes out of his brain next. Tukel can make the mundane hilarious. In Cold Dead Look, we get everything from gaslighting to buffoonery, cruelty to madness, and depression with a side of hideous hallucinations. The film feels like one lengthy Twilight Zone episode in French. Do I have any inkling of what the hell happened once the credits rolled? No, I do not. But, That Cold Dead Look In Your Eyes is unlike anything you’ve seen before, while simultaneously, very obviously being an Onur Tukel film.


The newest film from acclaimed director Onur Tukel (Catfight, Summer of Blood), and featuring Nora Arnezeder (Army of the DeadUpcoming series “The Offer”) and Max Casella (“The Sopranos”, The Tender Bar), THAT COLD DEAD LOOK IN YOUR EYES will release On Demand 11/9.


Brooklyn Horror Film Festival (2021) review: ‘What Josiah Saw’ reigns holy terror on your nerves.

WHAT JOSIAH SAW

After two decades, a damaged family reunite at their remote farmhouse, where they confront long-buried secrets and sins of the past.


As a child forced to attend Catholic school for eight years, I know a little something about the trauma religion imprints on a young mind. Irrational guilt dwells in my brain to this day. Director Vincent Grashaw’s staggering third feature, What Josiah Saw, delves into how zealous behavior and extreme dysfunction go hand in hand. A portrait of a family’s unspeakable darkness and how it haunts them forever. It is a film that will consume your soul.

Kelli Garner‘s vulnerability as Mary is a stunning turn. With a palpable fear, Garner leaves it all on-screen in an unapologetic performance. Her arc is astonishing. Nick Stahl scared the Jesus out of me most recently in Hunter Hunter. As Eli, Stahl maneuvers past sins with an anxious undercurrent. Like Garner, the emotional journey of Eli will leave you blindsided.

Robert Patrick plays Graham family patriarch, Josiah. His monstrous behavior appears superficially enabled by newfound holy retribution that looks a whole hell of a lot like dogmatic abuse. Patrick’s innate ability to intimidate with as little as a whisper is terrifying. This performance drips with brutal vitriol.

Scott Haze hit the ground running in James Franco‘s Child of God. That part was a brilliant warm-up to playing the role of a traumatized, devoted son. Haze’s character is the final human whipping post on that farm. He breathes life into the part of Thomas, as every beat is a complete journey. The chemistry between Patrick and Haze is electric. 

Carlos Ritter‘s cinematography reflects an ominous mood. He takes advantage of shadows and natural light to create a visual eerieness. Robert Pycior‘s score makes your skin crawl. Writer Robert Alan Dilts‘ screenplay unfolds in chapters. What Josiah Saw could have been developed into a series. Dilts created fully fleshed-out characters. There is that much life in this story. The script’s structure also allows the audience to focus on each Graham family member and their demons. Everyone teetering on the edge of a potential psychotic break. The repeated visual of each character gazing out the farmhouse window is striking. Its cyclical pattern is sheer brilliance.

Each of these elements creates a visceral disquiet that is unshakable for the nearly two-hour run. What Josiah Saw was relentlessly unnerving. The stakes get higher and higher. I had to remind myself to breathe. It is impossible to think Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2021 audiences saw this story coming. The final act is so twisted it will blow your mind, again and again. What Josiah Saw is an unexpected, complex, and shocking watch. It is hands down, the best horror film of the year.


Director:
Vincent Grashaw
Screenwriter:
Robert Alan Dilts
Producer:
Ran Namerode, Vincent Grashaw, Bernie Stern, Angelia Adzic
Cast:
Robert Patrick, Nick Stahl, Scott Haze, Kelli Garner, Tony Hale, Jake Weber


Tribeca Festival 2021 review: ‘My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To’ proves blood is thicker than water.

My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To

Two mysterious siblings find themselves at odds over care for their frail and sickly younger brother.

Isolation, survival, depression, organized chaos. These are heavy-hitting words to describe a film with a blunt force trauma of an opening. My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To is a film that’s been on everyone’s lips for a year now. It’s been killing it on the festival circuit, and rightly so. This slow-burn horror puts three siblings at odds due to one’s unique affliction. Jesse has become the taskmaster Mamabird, driving the survival of her family. Dwight is stuck between resentment and loyalty as his patience is running out. Youngest brother Thomas just wants to break free of his physical and emotional prison. Stunted in every way possible, what would life look like without his elder siblings? Is blood thicker than water? My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To begs that very question, quite literally.

Patrick Fugit as Dwight is heartbreaking. The cracks are evident from the very beginning. His conscience weighs on him as his desire for normalcy and peace are all-consuming. Ingrid Sophie Schram as Jesse is everything we need her to be. Focused and utterly exhausted. The survival of this family unit is driven by her sense of duty and not necessarily by love this many years in. She and Fugit are brilliant scene partners. Owen Campbell as Thomas is a nuanced mix of childlike and monster. You simultaneously sympathize and loathe him. These are striking performances.

My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To has a finale that will first crush you then slowly, you’ll start to breathe again. It’s the perfect catharsis. Writer-director Jonathan Cuartas gives us every single emotion in this script. It’s meticulously thought out. To think that this is a feature debut sends shivers down my spine in anticipation of what’s next. How this story manages to walk the line between horror and morality tale is simply genius. You never really know what’s going on behind closed doors. Some are better left closed.

Tribeca Festival 2021 review: ‘False Positive’ is horrifyingly twisted and now available on HULU.

FALSE POSITIVE

Lucy and Adrian find their dream fertility doctor in the illustrious Dr. Hindle. But after becoming pregnant, Lucy begins to notice something sinister behind Hindle’s charm, and she sets out to uncover the unsettling truth about him.

It took 8 months to get pregnant with my son. In the grand scheme for a lot of women, that isn’t long at all. Since I turned 35 in the first month of my pregnancy, it was deemed a “geriatric pregnancy.” That felt about as awesome as you might imagine. Growing a human being is stressful enough without the constant barrage of opinions. People telling you what you can and cannot eat, how you should parent, and what you should be feeling. It’s super fun. And by that, I mean it sucks, just in case you didn’t catch the heavy-handed sarcasm. Tribeca Festival 21 film FALSE POSITIVE takes all of that anxiety and cranks it to 11. Ilana Glazer and Justin Theroux play Lucy and Adrian, a couple that has a personal connection with a famed fertility doctor. From the moment Lucy gets a glimpse of her baby on the sonogram, she knows something is very, very wrong.

The script does a solid job setting the stage with the misogyny and gaslighting thrust upon pregnant women. While the internet can be their worst enemy (for the love of God, stay away from WebMD) a mother has instincts that she should never ignore. False Positive smartly plays upon those anxieties and adds highly macabre stakes. You’re not quite sure what is real. It’s intensely dark. Ilana Glazer is pitch-perfect at every turn. Cast her in every genre, right now. Justin Theroux is a fantastic foil. You feel the skin-crawling vibe he unleashes once the audience is placed in Lucy’s shoes. His straight man act makes him all the more unsettling. Dr. Hindle is played brilliantly by Pierce Brosnan. His charm and calmness are grossly offputting even through his perfect smile.

False Positive will hit differently for women with or without fertility issues. It will also have a unique reaction from genre fans. It’s a multifaceted feature from director John Lee, who also wrote the script with Ilana Glazer. While the finale is so batshit crazy it may make your head spin, I can attest that you will not be able to get the images out of your head. They are seared into my brain. I’m still shuddering a week later.

Hulu & A24 will release

FALSE POSITIVE

as a Hulu Original Film on

June 25, 2021

Netflix review: ‘Sisters on Track’ Proves that You’ve Got to Work for Your Dreams, They Don’t Just Come.

Sisters on Track chronicles the coming-of-age story of the Sheppard sisters: Tai, Rainn, and Brooke who were propelled into the national spotlight in 2016 with their first-time wins at the Junior Olympics. The resulting media storm landed the trio on the cover of Sports Illustrated Kids as “SportsKids of the Year” and they were able to move from shelters into their own home. The film offers a rare intimate glimpse into a tight-knit Brooklyn family’s journey to recover from trauma and tragedy. With the support of their mother, Tonia Handy, and the guidance of coach Jean Bell, the Sheppard sisters aim to beat the odds, dream big, and aspire to higher education as they are finding their voices as athletes and students – all while processing the growing pains of adolescence. At the heart of the story is the bond between sisters and an entire community of women, passing the baton of self-empowerment and hope through track and field, from one generation to another.

“You’re not the only one raising these girls,” Coach Jean Bell says to Tonia Handy, mother of the Sheppard sisters Tai, Rainn, and Brooke in a heartfelt moment that perfectly articulates the thesis of this story. Although the sisters have faced the kind of adversity that makes their success all the more inspiring, the magic of the film is in watching a village pull together to prepare these young ladies for bright futures of their choosing. 

The sisters’ meteoric rise in the track world is only amplified by the challenges they have faced. When they exploded onto the track scene in 2016 with first-time wins at the Junior Olympics, the family was living in a homeless shelter. The resulting media storm landed them on the cover of Sports Illustrated Kids as “SportsKids of the Year” which caught the attention of director Tyler Perry. Inspired by their story, Perry generously secured the family a furnished apartment in their Brooklyn neighborhood and committed to paying the rent for two years. 

The documentary picks up in the aftermath of these exceptional events as the girls navigate the demands of high-level competitive sport and more universal trials like coming-of-age. In the hands of a different group of filmmakers, the documentary may have focused gratuitously on the tragedy and hardship of the girl’s early lives or the precariousness of what they have now. Sisters On Track, however, is a joy to watch. Although the reality of the girls’ home lives is apparent, it is not exploited for pathos. Instead, the bulk of the film is watching a group of talented young women train and compete at the highest levels amid a continuous stream of motivational pep talks from Coach Jean Bell who is an inspiration in her own right (I could write an entire piece on the Jeuness Track Club where they train).  

The documentary is extremely heartfelt and honest, bolstered by the Sheppard sisters themselves who are blessed with vibrant personalities in addition to their clear athletic talents. Middle sister Rainn says it best, “You’ve got to work for your dreams, they don’t just come.”

Watch the Official Trailer:

SISTERS ON TRACK launches on Netflix on Thursday, June 24th
Directed by: Corinne van der Borch & Tone Grøttjord-Glenne
Producer: Anita Rehoff Larsen & Tone Grøttjord-Glenne
Executive Producer: Sam Pollard
Story Consultant: Shola Lynch
Run Time: 94 minutes
Featuring the Original Song:
“The Dream”
Performed by: Mark Batson featuring Tarriona “Tank” Ball
Written by: Mark Batson and Tarriona “Tank” Ball

Tribeca Festival 2021 capsule Review: ‘Last Film Show’ is a glorious nostalgic hug for movie lovers.

Last Film Show

When the magic of movies conquers nine-year young Samay’s heart; he moves heaven and earth in pursuit of his 35mm dreams unaware of heartbreaking times that await him.

Stunningly beautiful cinematography, including thoughtful close-ups and overhead shots of Samay’s mother cooking his lunches, will make you remember the impact a great film has on all the senses. Last Film Show is the perfect way to celebrate being back in person at Tribeca. Performances from every single cast member are triumphant. It feels like an ode to film lovers. You’ll fall head over heels in love with Bhavin Rabari in particular. It’s rare that child is so spectacular in a role that you forget that’s it’s a narrative and not a documentary. Last Film Show gives us everything we’ve been missing since this pandemic began. To say much more about the plot is truly a disservice. It’s one I implore you to see for yourself. We’ve missed this more than we realized. Last Film Show is a cinematic masterpiece.

TRIBECA 2021
WORLD PREMIERE / Spotlight Narrative Competition

 

Available Starting

Fri June 11 – 6:00 PM

At Home

$15

Streaming Tribeca at Home is not available outside the USA. Purchased films remain available to stream on-demand from the above date through June 23

 

 

Review: ‘STREET GANG: How We Got To Sesame Street’ is a nostalgic hug of legacy and love.

STREET GANG: HOW WE GOT TO SESAME STREET

STREET GANG: HOW WE GOT TO SESAME STREET reintroduces this visionary “gang” of mission-driven artists, writers, and educators that audaciously interpreted radical changes in society and created one of  the most influential and impactful television programs in history.

This eclectic documentary traverses from the inception to the nuance of programming this iconic television show. Everything from the production design to intimate interviews with the actors, from the musical guests to the writers’ room is in this film. It hits on the social, racial, and educational impact of the show. The show’s schedule was one of the most intense I’ve ever heard of. 100 episodes per year filled to the brim with original sketches (both muppet and street scenes), animation, and original songs, Sesame Street has changed the lives of countless families across the globe.

John Stone isn’t a household name in the way that Jim Henson and even Frank Oz are. Stone was the director chosen by television executive Joan Ganz Cooney. His passion and work ethic combined with an extraordinary group of artists made Sesame Street the beloved program we know today. Street Gang doesn’t sugarcoat the naysayers. It does not ignore the internal conflict. It’s an honest look at bringing it to life. The conversations between the curriculum creators and the writers were key to reaching the audience, making learning both fun and engaging.

Some of the most charming bits in the film are the blooper reels. The genius, off-the-cuff moments between cast members staying in muppet character will slay you. One very poignant time in the show’s history was anything but unscripted. The death of Mr. Hooper was a carefully curated scene. It sticks with me still today. In 1990, when Jim Henson passed at the age of 53, the world mourned alongside the cast and crew of Sesame Street. Caroll Spinney as Big Bird singing “It’s Not Easy Being Green” at Jim’s funeral is heartbreaking and eternal.

I grew up with this show. As a 40-year-old moth of a 4 and 5-year-old, my children are now growing up with this show. I’m not ashamed to say I sit and watch with them. I’m just as enthralled with Sesame Street as I ever was. Their ability to grow with the times is what keeps them relevant and brilliant. Each scene in Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street held me with its nostalgia as it peeked behind the curtain. It left me with the hope that the show will continue its legacy long after we’re gone.

THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED DOCUMENTARY WILL OPEN IN THEATERS ON APRIL 23, 2021, AND ON-DEMAND MAY 7, 2021

Directed by Marilyn Agrelo (Mad Hot Ballroom) and produced by Trevor Crafts (Experimenter 2015) and Ellen Scherer Crafts, the documentary chronicles the improbable origins and expansion of the groundbreaking show that not only changed children’s television programming, but had real-world effects on equality, education, and representation worldwide. The film is inspired by Michael Davis’ New York Times best-selling book of the same name.

About Screen Media Ventures, LLC

Screen Media Ventures, LLC, a Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment (Nasdaq: CSSE) company, acquires the rights to high-quality, independent television series and feature films. Screen Media Ventures acquires worldwide rights for distribution through theatrical, home video, pay-per-view, free, cable and pay television, video-on-demand, and new digital media platforms. The company acquires AVOD rights for third-party networks and is the main supplier of content for Crackle Plus and other Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment properties. With a library of over 1,500 television series and motion pictures, Screen Media Ventures is one of the largest independent suppliers of high-quality tv series and motion pictures to U.S. and international broadcast markets, cable networks, home video outlets, and new media venues. For more information, visit: www.screenmedia.net

About Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, Inc. (Nasdaq: CSSE) operates streaming video-on-demand networks (VOD). The company owns Crackle Plus which owns and operates a variety of ad-supported and subscription-based VOD networks including Crackle, Popcornflix, Popcornflix Kids, Truli, Pivotshare, Españolflix, and FrightPix. The company also acquires and distributes video content through its Screen Media subsidiary and produces original long and short-form content through Landmark Studio Group, its Chicken Soup for the Soul Originals division, and APlus.com. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment is a subsidiary of Chicken Soup for the Soul, LLC, which publishes the famous book series and produces super-premium pet food under the Chicken Soup for the Soul brand name.

 About Macrocosm Entertainment

Trevor Crafts and Ellen Scherer Crafts created Macrocosm to bring dynamic engaging content to global audiences by building and showcasing unique worlds. Films include Sundance Film Festival World Premiere Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street (2021), 7 Splinters in Time (2018) Manson Family Vacation (Netflix, SXSW 2015 premier), and Experimenter (Magnolia, Sundance 2015 premier). In publishing, they created Lantern City, one of UPROXX Top Ten Comics of 2015, and The Not-So-Secret Society (2017) the first original children’s graphic novel for KaBOOM! an imprint of BOOM! Studios. For more information visit: www.macrocosm.tv.

Review: Will HBO docuseries ‘ALLEN v. FARROW’ finally lead to accountability?

ALLEN v. FARROW

The four-part documentary series Allen v. Farrow, from award-winning investigative filmmakers Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering and Amy Herdy, goes behind the years of sensational headlines to reveal the private story of one Hollywood’s most notorious and public scandals: the accusation of sexual abuse against Woody Allen involving Dylan, his then 7-year-old daughter with Mia Farrow; their subsequent custody trial, the revelation of Allen’s relationship with Farrow’s daughter, Soon-Yi; and the controversial aftermath in the years that followed.

There is a chilling feeling while watching this series. As a critic, I long fell into the same category as the journalists featured at the beginning of the episode. You grow up with the notion that Woodey Allen represented the quintessential essence of what New York City culture was. You’re enamored with it all. While inarguably furthering the early careers of actresses Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, and Mia Farrow (they made 12 films during their relationship), the pattern of behavior and theme of his obsession with young women run through his scripts. Woody Allen has somehow been allowed to continue to work mostly unscathed, even after the world knew about his relationship with Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi, even after the #MeToo movement continues to rain hell down on abusers. Allegations swirled about the sexual abuse of adopted daughter Dylan. This is the first time that Dylan gets to tell her story in earnest. This doc utilized Allen’s own words against him as excerpts of him narrating his 2020 memoir play in between intimate sitdown interviews with Mia, Dylan, Ronan, family, and friends of the once power couple. Mia took endless hours of home videos for years, adding to the amount of readily available footage from the media. Finally hearing all the details from the source is brutal. It’s a visceral watch.  As a parent, it is next-level painful. Watching the cycle of emotional abuse Mia endured from one man to the next, all while unconditionally loving her children adds another complex layer to this situation. This series will undoubtedly be controversial. It will be interesting to see the apologists come out loud and proud. There’s an enormous amount of evidence to digest. You will be shocked, sickened, furious, heartbroken. All this just at the end of the first of four episodes. ALLEN v. FARROW has to potential to reopen old wounds for a lot of trauma survivors. It also has the potential to knock another man off the pedestal we’ve kept him on for far too long.

The remaining episodes of ALLEN v. FARROW will air over the next subsequent Sunday nights on HBO at 9 pm.

Tribeca Film Festival 2020 review: Angela Bettis clocks in for ’12 Hour Shift’

It’s 1998 and over the course of one 12 Hour Shift at an Arkansas Hospital, A Junkie Nurse (Angela Bettis), Her Scheming Cousin (Chloe Farnworth) and a group of black market Organ-Trading criminals (Mick Foley, David Arquette, Dusty Warren) start a heist that could lead to all of their demises.

Angela Bettis is horror royalty in my book. Watching her interpret Brea Grant’s script is heaven. During this uncertain, weird, and exhausting time in our history, watching an overworked nurse with vices for days adds an extra element of terrifying WTF. Bettis is a revelation. The weight of desperation and the constant barrage of emotional abuse is palpable. It is written on her face. There is so much backstory bubbling under the surface. I would watch an entire series developed from 12 Hour Shift. (Hint, Hint)

The opening scene is divine in establishing the attitude of Bettis’ character. It’s a symphonic white trash word vomit. The attention detail of Y2K paranoia and the late ’90’s in general land perfectly between over-the-top and completely legit. If you lived through it, you’ll laugh and nod. But it’s the delicious moral dilemma that Grant has given us that keeps your eyes glued to the screen. We’re definitely rooting for bad over worse and it is fun as hell. The climax is so batshit crazy it’s like watching a ping-pong tournament; super fast and just as fantastically absurd. Performances all around are stellar. Practical FX are gagworthy and wonderful. The final scene is actually the most frightening. Brea Grant, I’ll be looking forward to a sequel to 12 Hour Shift, ASAP.