Sirat
A father (Sergi López) and his son arrive at a rave deep in the mountains of southern Morocco. They are searching for Mar — daughter and sister — who vanished months ago at one of these endless, sleepless parties. Surrounded by electronic music and a raw, unfamiliar sense of freedom, they hand out her photo again and again. Hope is fading, but they push through and follow a group of ravers heading to one last party in the desert. As they venture deeper into the burning wilderness, the journey forces them to confront their own limits.
OBEX
In pre-internet 1987, Conor and his dog Sandy live a life of seclusion, lost in the slow-rendering graphics of early Macs and televisions aglow with late night horror movie marathons. But when he begins playing OBEX, a new and mysterious, state-of-the art computer game, he finds himself trapped in a low-tech, but high-stakes analog hellscape as the line between reality and game blurs.
Audacious and uncanny, writer-director Albert Birney’s OBEX is a delightfully skewed lo-fi fantasy. Shot in striking black and white, this surreally nostalgic nightmare revisits the dawn of personal computing to reflect on the loneliness of our always-online present day.
Official Selection: Sundance Film Festival
A Useful Ghost
Worried about her husband being allergic to dust, Nat, a recently-dead woman, returns as a ghost possessing a vacuum cleaner to clean the house and protect her family from other vengeful ghosts in the house. To become a useful ghost, she needs to get rid of the useless ones.
Atropia (Open Captioning)
Please note that there are additional showtimes of ATROPIA that screen without open captions (on-screen display of dialogue and sounds). For those showtimes, click here.
When an aspiring actress (Alia Shawkat) in a military role-playing facility falls in love with a soldier (Callum Turner) cast as an insurgent, their unsimulated emotions threaten to derail the performance. What unfolds is an audaciously funny satire that asks: In the performance of war, who are the winners and who are the losers?
Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival
Young Mothers
In a shelter in Liège, Belgium, a group of young women face the challenges and exhilaration of motherhood. Looking ahead to an uncertain future, the new mothers aspire to break free of the past and not repeat the cycles of neglect, abuse, and abandonment that have defined their young lives. Jessica grew up in a foster family, and must understand why her biological mother could not keep her. Perla wrestles with the unreliability of her boyfriend, and confronts the possibility that she may need to raise her child alone. Julie has a more stable partner, but cannot imagine parenthood until she overcomes her drug habit once and for all. And Ariane must protect her baby at all costs, with the daunting recognition that her home may not be safe for her daughter.
Winner of the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes, the latest film from master directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta; Two Days, One Night), YOUNG MOTHERS is a delicate and hopeful study of women on the brink of new life
The Mother and the Bear
In a snow-swept Winnipeg, school teacher Sumi (Leere Park) is hospitalized after a fall. On hearing the news, her anxious mother, Sara (Kim Ho-jung), flies over from Seoul to be with her comatose daughter — and once Sara sets herself up in the young woman’s apartment, she discovers she doesn’t really know Sumi at all.
Sara despairs about her daughter’s single status, so she immediately starts catfishing the pleasant Min (Jonathan Kim) to be Sumi’s boyfriend — once she wakes up, of course — and also gets unwittingly entangled with Min’s estranged father, Sam (Won-Jae Lee), who runs a Korean restaurant in the city. As Sam and the widowed Sara connect over their mutual melancholies, a chance meeting with Sumi’s co-worker Amaya (Amara Pedroso Saquel) leads Sara to learn more about the life from which her daughter has chosen to exclude her.
A unique mash-up of genres, this stylized, whimsical story of crossed wires, secret lives, and conflicting agendas marks a bold new direction for filmaker Johnny Ma (Old Stone).
The Love that Remains
Anna, an artist, and Magnús, a fisherman, live with their three children and charismatic sheepdog in the quiet grandeur of the Icelandic countryside. As the fractures in their marriage come to the surface, the couple try to hold onto the afterimages of a life together and make sense of a deep and lingering devotion. Filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason (Godland) brings surprising humor and emotional weight to this gorgeous, intimate, and brilliantly expansive scenes from a marriage, amidst the majestic backdrop of the changing seasons.
Official selection: Cannes Film Festival, NYFF, TIFF
Official submission for Iceland, Academy Awards
Magellan
Wednesday, January 7 at 7:30: Sneak preview + Q&A with star Gael García Bernal
Thursday, January 8 at 6:30: Sneak preview + Q&A with star Gael García Bernal
Saturday, January 10 at 6:20: Post-screening Q&A with director Lav Diaz
Sunday, January 11 at 2:30: Post-screening Q&A with director. Lav Diaz
Gael García Bernal stars as Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who, at the dawn of the modern era, navigated a fleet of ships to Southeast Asia, attempting the first voyage across the vast Pacific Ocean. On reaching the Malay Archipelago, the crew pushed to the brink of madness in the harshness of the high seas and overwhelming natural beauty of the islands, Magellan’s obsession leads to a rebellion and reckoning with the consequences of power. A vast, globe-spanning epic from Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz (Norte, the End of History), MAGELLAN presents the colonization of the Philippines as a primal, shocking encounter with the unknown and a radical retelling of European narratives of discovery and exploration.
Official Filipino submission, Academy Awards
Official selection: Cannes, New York Film Festivals
Additional showtimes for the week of January 9 to be announced.
Buddies
Monday, December 15 at 7:00: Introduction by Elizabeth Purchell and KJ Shepherd, with special guests star David Schachter and Jenni Olson and Roe Bressan from the Bressan Project.
David (David Schachter) is a twentysomething gay yuppie who volunteers to be a “buddy” to older AIDS patient Robert (Geoff Edholm). Initially put off by Robert’s very 70s gay lib sensibilities and political consciousness, David soon finds himself growing closer to his new friend—and becoming changed in the process. The first American theatrical feature film about AIDS, Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.’s Buddies is a devastating, yet bittersweet drama and a pioneering work of queer independent cinema that’s every bit as powerful 40 years later.
Screening as part of our monthly queer series programmed and hosted by Elizabeth Purchell and KJ Shepherd, Cruising the Movies.
Batman Returns
Presented by The Queer Review!
Tuesday, December 23 at 9:15: In-person introduction by The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann with electronic pop musician Bright Light Bright Light
Special recorded intro by screenwriter Daniel Waters!
Join The Queer Review under the mistletoe for a special 33rd anniversary screening of the ultimate Christmas movie for misfits, Tim Burton’s BATMAN RETURNS. Batman (Michael Keaton) might have his name in the title, but for us it’s all about the queer icon that is Michelle Pfeiffer’s skintight latex-clad antiheroine, Catwoman, purring and whipping her way across Gotham delivering one-liners like, “I am Catwoman, hear me roar!” Screenwriter Daniel Waters (Heathers, Hudson Hawk) keeps the deliciously camp and quotable dialogue coming.
There’s something about superheroes and villains wrestling with their double identities that those of us who grew up queer, feeling forced to hide our authentic selves, strongly identify with. The heightened tone of this gothic pop-up book of a movie charms, while production designer Bo Welch’s (reuniting with Burton following Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice) twisted urban fairytale is a festive feast for the eyes. Look out for a memorable cameo from Paul Reubens as The Penguin’s (Danny DeVito) father and remember kids: “mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it” but “a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it.”
BATMAN RETURNS-themed costumes encouraged!