Lifeboat

“In 2015 our team produced 50 Feet from Syria – focused on the civilian impact of the Syrian conflict. This was the first of a triad of films focused on one of the great humanitarian crises of our time – the plight of refugees in a global and interconnected world.

LIFEBOAT bears witness to refugees desperate enough to risk their lives in rubber boats leaving Libya in the middle of the night, despite a high probability of drowning. With few resources but certain that civil society must intervene, volunteers from a German non-profit risk the waves of the Mediterranean to pluck refugees from sinking rafts.

In a real-life context with dire consequences, LIFEBOAT puts a human face on one of the world’s greatest contemporary, global crises and provides a spark of hope surrounding how civil society can intervene in the refugee crisis in a meaningful way.” — the filmmakers

Official selection: Hamptons Int’l Film Festival; Winner – Best Short Doc, Woodstock Int’l Film Festival; Winner – Best Short Doc, Mountainfilm Telluride; Best Short 2018 Nominee – Int’l Documentary Association

Science Fair

Hailed by critics as “immensely likeable,” “brilliant and quirky” and an “ode to the teenage science geeks on who our future depends,” and winner of the audience award at Sundance and SXSW, National Geographic Documentary Films’ Science Fair follows nine high school students from around the globe as they navigate rivalries, setbacks and, of course, hormones, on their journey to compete at The International Science and Engineering Fair. As 1,700 of the smartest, quirkiest teens from 78 different countries face off, only one will be named Best in Fair. The film, from Fusion and Muck Media and directed by the DuPont Award-winning and Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaking team Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster, offers a front seat to the victories, defeats and motivations of an incredible group of young men and women who are on a path to change their lives, and the world, through science.

Official selection: SXSW Film Festival; Sundance Film Festival; Sun Valley Film Festival

Girl

GIRL was originally slated to open on Nov 16, 2018 but is being released instead in January, 2019.

With the support of her father, a 15-year-old girl born in a boy’s body pursues her dream of becoming a professional ballerina. Winner of the Camera d’Or for best first film at this year’s Cannes Film Festival as well as the Best Actor Prize for Un Certain Regard.

“A stunning debut for both director Lukas Dhont and star Victor Polster… deeply humane.” – Variety

Swimming With Men

Faced with a full-blown mid-life crisis, accountant Eric (Rob Brydon) joins an all-male group of synchronised swimmers, discovering that making patterns in a pool can, for a couple of hours at least, smooth out the bumps in his work and marriage. Initially keeping their personal lives in the locker, the ramshackle squad and coach Susan slowly learn to reveal their inner lives, as well as their paunches. But can they get their lives and routines in sync as they embark on an unlikely journey to Milan to compete in the World Championship?

Official selection: Edinburgh Int’l Film Festival; Denver Film Festival

DriverX

Official selection: Best Drama Feature – Woods Hole Film Festival; Special Jury Award – Durango Film Festival; Nashville Film Festival; Phoenix Film Festival; RiverRun International Film Festival

The House That Jack Built

Special One-Night-Only Screening of the Director’s Cut of Lars von Trier’s Latest! Star Matt Dillon in-person for the 6:00, 7:00, and 9:15 shows (ALL SOLD OUT!) on Wed Nov 28! Tickets still available to the 4:00 and 10:00 shows.

Lars von Trier’s THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT has its North American premiere Wednesday, November 28, with a special one-night-only show of the director’s cut—the same version that was shown at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and prompted both a 10-minute standing ovation and more than a few disturbed walkouts.

USA in the 1970s. We follow the highly intelligent Jack (Matt Dillon) through 5 incidents and are introduced to the murders that define Jack’s development as a serial killer.

We experience the story from Jack’s point of view. He views each murder as an artwork in itself, even though his dysfunction gives him problems in the outside world. Despite the fact that the final and inevitable police intervention is drawing ever near (which both provokes and puts pressure on Jack) he is – contrary to all logic – set on taking greater and greater chances. The goal is the ultimate artwork: A collection of all his killings manifested in a House that he builds.

Along the way we experience Jack’s descriptions of his personal condition, problems and thoughts through a recurring conversation with the unknown Verge – a grotesque mixture of sophistry mixed with an almost childlike self-pity and in-depth explanations of, for Jack, dangerous and difficult maneuvers.

An R-rated version of the film will open at IFC Center on December 14, with tickets on sale in early December.

Tyrel

Silva’s latest (The Maid, Nasty Baby) centers on Tyler, who joins a friend on a weekend trip to the Catskills with several people he doesn’t know. Once they get there, it’s clear that (1) he’s the only black person around, and (2) it’s going to be a weekend of heavy drinking. As the combination of testosterone and alcohol gets out of hand, his situation starts to feel like a nightmare underscored by racial stereotyping – from the beginning when one drunk stranger mishears Tyler’s name as Tyrel.

Official selection: Sundance Film Festival

“2018’s answer to Get Out. A devillish roller coaster ride.” – Jordan Hoffman, Vanity Fair

The Last Race

Passionate drivers struggle to hold on to an American racing tradition in this intimate portrait of a Long Island stock car racetrack threatened by development. Award-winning filmmaker Dweck’s kinetic camera takes viewers deep inside the world of grassroots racing, its drivers, and the owners whose love of the track and its community is the only thing keeping the bulldozers at bay.

“Beautiful and immersive… a kind of stock car symphony all by itself.” – Los Angeles Times

Official selection: Sundance Film Festival

The Clovehitch Killer

A shocking revelation turns a teenage boy’s world upside down in this chilling look at the evil that can lurk below even the most wholesome surface. Tyler Burnside (Charlie Plummer) is a Boy Scout, a volunteer at his local church, and the dutiful son of an upstanding, community leader dad (Dylan McDermott). Only one thing troubles the quiet Kentucky town he lives in: the unsolved murders—in which ten women were brutally tortured and killed by a psychopath known as Clovehitch—that rocked the community more than a decade ago. When Tyler discovers a cache of disturbing images in his father’s possession, he begins to suspect that the man he trusts most in the world may be Clovehitch—and that his deadly rampage may not be over. With unrelenting tension, director Duncan Skiles crafts a picture-perfect vision of the all-American family—and then piece by piece rips it to shreds.

Roma

Special sneak preview screenings on Nov 21 – Nov 25, Nov 29 – Dec 2, and Dec 6 – Dec 9. Regular engagement starts Fri Dec 14.

Academy Award-winning director Cuaron’s (Gravity, Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambien) luminous, lyrical drama is named for the Mexico City neighborhood of his childhood. Shot in widescreen black-and-white and set in the early 70s, the story charts a tumultuous year in the lives of a young, live-in maid (quietly stunning newcomer Yalitza Aparicio) and the upper-middle class family she works for and watches over.

Official selection: New York Film Festival; Golden Lion for Best Film – Venice Film Festival

“From the raw material of memory [Cuaron has] made something that nearly erases the difference between artifice and life, as well as the distance between past and present.” – A.O. Scott, The New York Times