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About Dry Grasses
Samet is disillusioned. A teacher in remote Turkey, for his years of work he’s accused of inappropriate behavior by a student. In love with a politically active teacher from another town, Samet ponders the meaning of his life.
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African Giants
Alhaji is an aspiring actor and Sheku is a law student. They are first-generation Sierra Leonean American brothers in their twenties and each believes their brother has it made. But, not all is as it seems. Omar S. Kamara’s assured and charming feature debut won the Audience Award at Slamdance and radiates wisdom and affection in this exploration of enduring brotherly bonds.
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Afterbirth
Nicole Brending upends traditional joyful narratives about motherhood in this kaleidoscopic documentary that explores the darker and often unspoken side of the early months with a newborn child.
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All About the Levkoviches
A heart-warming dramedy set in contemporary Budapest. After his wife's death, a stubborn boxing coach agrees to let his estranged Orthodox Jewish son come from Israel to sit shiva as long as he brings the grandson he has never met. –Alissa Simon
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All to Play For
Sylvie is a single mom, trying to make life work for her two boys. One night, her youngest burns himself while she’s at work bartending. Now she’s in the fight of her life against France’s child protection system.
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Àma Gloria
Cléo is a young Parisian girl essentially raised by a nanny, Gloria, whom the little girl loves more than anything. When Gloria’s mother dies and she has to return to Cabo Verde, Cléo must learn compassion and selflessness.
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Amal
A Brussels high school literature instructor tries to inculcate a love of reading and freedom of expression as well as a sense of cohesion amongst her diverse class, but some of the students come from a fundamentalist background. –Alissa Simon
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Animalia
Itto is a pregnant woman from a modest background, married to an extremely wealthy man in Morocco. When he travels for business, she’s able to stop putting on airs–but when nationwide mysterious phenomena arise, will Itto adapt or succumb?
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The Arctic Convoy
In 1942, seamen with supplies for the Eastern front brave brutal Arctic seas and enemy-infested waters as they head for Murmansk. A companion piece of sorts to the poignant period drama War Sailor from a few years back. –Alissa Simon
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Art For Everybody
Everyone knows Thomas Kinkade, the “Painter of Light” (insert trademark logo here), who rocketed to success in the ‘90s and whose paintings were sold in malls everywhere. But when he died in 2012, his daughters uncovered a trove of darker works, which revealed a man they never really knew.
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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Perhaps the last great western, The Assassination of Jesse James boasts an incredible cast, a brilliant and moving script, and, of course, Roger Deakins’ lush cinematography, which beautifully evoked 19th Century America, earning him another Oscar nomination.
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Bad Actor
It’s the dream of a lifetime–Sandra and Daniel are burgeoning actors making a film with a top-shelf director. But when they begin an intimate scene and Daniel crosses a line, no one will ever be the same.
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Bad Press
Mvskoke Media is the free press of the Muscogee Nation, the fourth largest Native American tribe in the country. That is, until 2018, when the tribal government repeals laws to protect the free press, in an effort to silence criticism.
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Banel & Adama
Banel and Adama are deeply in love, so much so that nothing else seems to matter, including Adama’s role in daily prayers and as village chief. When a drought devastates the countryside, the couple’s love is put to its greatest test.
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Beast, The
2044: Gabrielle is terrified of her emotions. To suppress them, she undergoes a surgical process to extract past lives from her DNA. But when she meets Louis, she realizes that her fate, and those troubling emotions, are inexorably linked with his.
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Big Dreams
Inspired by the 1998 Olympics, 11-year-old Dom imagines himself a star goalie. In this Bad News Bears style dramedy, a disparate group of small town Czech kids form a makeshift hockey team to prove that no dream is too big. Age 10+ –Deb Girdwood
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Blaga's Lessons
The director of the festival favorite The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner completes his trilogy on social problems and moral ills in contemporary Bulgaria with this cautionary drama about an older woman duped by a telephone scam aimed at the country’s pensioners. –Alissa Simon
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The Blue Star
Based on the life of Mauricio Aznar, an enigmatic Spanish rock musician who, fatigued by his own music, traveled to Latin America for inspiration. There, he met Don Carlos, who rekindled his love for music with his unconventional style.
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Bonjour Switzerland
A wacky comedy that pokes fun at the multilingual Swiss. When a referendum leaves the country with only one national language, French, it catalyzes a crisis among the German and Italian speakers. –Alissa Simon
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Book Signing with Roger & James Deakins
BYWAYS BOOK SIGNING
Purchase a copy of Byways (Damiani, 2021), Roger Deakins’ hardcover collection of photography, and meet Roger & James Deakins at the book signing.
After graduating from college Deakins spent a year photographing life in rural North Devon, in Southwest England, on a commission for the Beaford Arts Centre; these images are gathered here for the first time and attest to a keenly ironic English sensibility, while also documenting a vanished postwar Britain. A second suite of images expresses Deakins’ love of the seaside. Traveling for his cinematic work has allowed Deakins to photograph landscapes all over the world; in this third group of images, that same irony remains evident.
Books picked up at signing.
This is a ticketed event to moderate attendance. Ticket price includes price of the book and space during one of the allotted starting times (every 30 minutes).
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Brief History of a Family
When popular and wealthy student Wei accidentally hits Shuo, his introverted classmate, with a ball, they strike up an unlikely friendship. As Shou spends more time at Wei’s house, Shou slowly transforms from an awkward fish-out-of-water to a comfortable surrogate member of Wei’s family.
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Broken Eyes
When Lasik eye surgery wrecks Minnesota filmmaker Dana Conroy’s vision, she begins to make a documentary about her experience. It soon grows into an investigation into a multibillion industry and the discovery of thousands who have suffered like her.
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Bufis
Eastleigh Nairobi, Kenya is home to many Somalis who fled the Somali Civil War. When the US embassy opens the green card lottery visa, two men concoct a monumental scheme to create fake families in the hopes of immigrating to the US. Based on true events, Bufis delivers a humorous and ambitious story about actualizing a dream of a new life.
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The Burdened
Isra’a and Ahmed and their five children are engaged in a daily struggle against poverty in war-torn Yemen. When they discover that Isra’a is pregnant, they scrape together their meager funds to procure an abortion, against all odds.
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The Buriti Flower
The Krahô are the indigenous people of Northern Brazil. In The Buruti Flower, directors João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora present four tales, cinematic representations of the Krahô’s oral histories, detailing four tragic events from this people's history.
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Call Me Dancer
Overcoming impossible odds, an impoverished breakdancer from the streets of Mumbai stumbles into ballet class and, with the help of a stern but loving 70-year-old Israeli ballet master, pursues his dream of dancing on the world’s stage. –Alissa Simon
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Catching Fire: The Story Of Anita Pallenberg
In the 1960s and 70s, Anita Pallenberg was a style icon, actress, and muse. Using her unpublished memoir as a basis, this brilliant documentary shows her impact on The Rolling Stones, cinema, fashion, and reveals a woman ahead of her time.
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Viva
Thursday, March 21 at 7:00pm | The Main Cinema
Its hero, is a gay hairdresser who dreams of becoming a drag entertainer at the nightclub where he coifs the noisy, squabbling divas. His mother is dead and his father abandoned him, he lives in a slum. His father, a former boxer released from prison reappears and his. initial reaction to his son’s homosexuality and fondness for drag is all too predictable.
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Sisters of the Heart (Hermanas del corazon)
Thursday, March 28 at 7:00pm | The Main Cinema
This documentary covers the origins of the Oblate Sisters of Providence and it is dedicated to the work of the Oblates in Cuba. Religious education – Catholic – was accompanied by a requirement for preparation to face a society full of discrimination based on skin color.
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Habana Blues
Thursday, April 4 at 7:00pm | The Main Cinema
This is a Spanish and Cuban film which tells the story of two young musicians in Cuba, Ruy and Tito, whose music is a mix of traditional Cuban music and more modern music such as rap, get a chance at an international breakthrough through a Spanish record company, but they would have to change their Cuba-themed lyrics to cater to an international audience.
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Chicken for Linda!
This gorgeous, boldly painted animated feature is a delightfully French slapstick comedy about a frazzled single mother going to outrageous lengths to get a chicken for her plucky 8-year-old daughter, Linda. Expect the unexpected. Age 10+ –Deb Girdwood
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City of Wind
Ze is a typical high-school student–confused, troubled and rebellious–but he is also the village shaman. When Ze helps a teenage girl during a ceremony, he falls in love, which threatens his shamanic path.
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Claire Facing North
Claire returns to Iceland on a solo trip, intending to confront her past and tend to a difficult task. There she meets Iris, a young, irreverent, somewhat irresponsible hitchhiker, and together they forge a bond neither will soon forget. Minnesota filmmaker Lynn Lukkas’ debut feature is a moving portrait of self-discovery and healing.
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Cold
Óðinn Hafsteinsson is an investigator and single father living with his 13-year-old daughter, Rún, who witnessed her mother’s suicide. As Óðinn investigates mysterious deaths at a juvenile treatment center, he begins to wonder if these seemingly unrelated cases are connected.
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The Convert
Set in New Zealand in the 1830s, this breathtaking revisionist Western stars Guy Pearce as a mysterious lay preacher who arrives at a British settlement, only to find himself at the center of a war between Maori tribes. –Alissa Simon
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Copa 71
Years before the first Women’s World Cup in 1991 was COPA 71: a hundred thousand people packed into Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium to watch the world’s finest female soccer players compete for the world title, an event lost to history. Until now.
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Critical Zone
Amir drives through Tehran in the night, dealing drugs and talking to the users, prostitutes, pimps, people in physical pain and other troubled souls. With his dog, he contemplates his loneliness and his, and his country’s, future.
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Daughters
A moving lesson in empathy and forgiveness, Daughters is a result of an eight-year documentary journey that filmmaker Natalie Rae and Angela Patton, an activist advocating for “at-promise” girls, embarked upon.
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Day Dreaming
Zhu Tong is starting a new school and it’s not going well. Saved by his imagination, the hopeful third grader is caught up in an outlandish but relatable comedy of errors. Age 10+ –Deb Girdwood
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Days of Happiness
Emma is one of the shining stars in Quebec’s classical music scene. Her father, Patrick, her agent, controls her every move. Until Naëlle, a cellist and single mother, enters the picture, and Emma sees a whole new world unfold.
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Dead Mail
An ominous, bloody help note finds its way to the desk of a seasoned “dead letter” investigator at a 1980’s midwestern post office. As he begins to piece together the letter’s origins, it leads him down a violent, unforeseen path to a kidnapped keyboard engineer and his demented business associate.
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Deserts
Absurdist comedy and mythic tragedy coexist in this gorgeous genre mix, which follows the bittersweet travails of two not-very-successful Casablanca-based debt collectors as they traverse the arid villages of Morocco in search of loan deadbeats. –Alissa Simon
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A Difficult Year
Albert and Bruno are debt-ridden friends always looking for ways to cadge free stuff. One day they stumble on an environmental activist group offering free food and brews, and they slip in, and immediately sense a way to scam these true believers.
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Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Radu Jude’s bizarre and radical film sees Angela juggling two jobs: the first as a film production assistant, and the second as her infamous face-filtered, foul-mouthed, misogynistic TikTok alter ego Bobita–an act of defiance that punches with anger, poise and absurdity.
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Dune: Part Two
Now Playing | The Main Cinema
The saga continues as award-winning filmmaker Denis Villeneuve embarks on Dune: Part Two, the next chapter of Frank Herbert’s celebrated novel Dune, with an expanded all-star international ensemble cast.
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Elaha
Elaha is a young Kurdish-German woman torn between unconditional love for her family and her own aspirations in life. Ultimately, she must decide: tell the truth or live a lie. A compelling drama about emancipation. –Alissa Simon
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The Electric Indian
Henry Boucha was a legendary hockey player from Warroad, MN and member of the Ojibwe Nation, playing in the NHL and the USA Olympic team before he was assaulted on the ice. Temporarily lost without his hockey career, he was forced to start again off the ice.
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Evil Does Not Exist
Takumi is a single dad to his daughter, Hana. Life is hard in their village but peaceful. However, when a Tokyo company descends on the village with the intent of building a “glamping” resort, the village will never be the same, with potentially devastating results.
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Fargo - In Conversation with Roger & James Deakins
IN CONVERSATION & FARGO SCREENING
Join us for a film conversation, with Roger Deakins & collaborator James Deakins, and a screening o thef Oscar winning movie Fargo.
Tickets for these events are on sale for MSP Film Society members now thru this weekend. Tickets will go on sale to the general public Monday, March 18th.
About the film
An instant classic when it was released in 1996, and Minnesota’s most famous film, Fargo is often overlooked for its stunning visuals. Roger Deakins’ camera captured our frigid landscape better than anyone before or since, and earned his second Oscar nomination.
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The Fishing Hat Bandit
Known as “the Fishing Hat Bandit” when he robbed 23 banks in Minnesota over 18 months in the early 2000s, John Whitrock’s story unfolds in utterly surprising ways in director Mark Brown’s riveting documentary.
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Flipside
When filmmaker Chris Wilcha revisits the record store he worked at as a teenager, he finds the once-thriving bastion of music and weirdness from his youth falling apart. Flipside documents his tragicomic attempt to revive the store while revisiting other documentary projects he has abandoned over the years.
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Foremost By Night
When Vera was young, she gave up her baby for adoption. Now, years later, she navigates Spain’s callous bureaucracy trying to find her biological son. Víctor Iriarte's visionary debut feature is a mysterious neo-noir experience.
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Gassed Up
Ash needs money. He’s trying to support his younger sister and his mother needs rehab. His back against the wall, he joins Dubz’s gang, zooming around London engaging in petty crime… until he finds himself on the wrong side of Armenian gangsters.
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Ghostlight
Closing Night Film. When melancholic construction worker Dan finds himself drifting from his wife and daughter, he unwittingly joins a local theater’s production of Romeo and Juliet, where he discovers community and purpose. As the drama onstage starts to mirror his own life, he and his family are forced to confront a personal loss.
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Girls Will Be Girls
Mira is a star student at a strict boarding school who falls in love with a charming new boy. As the two start spending more time together, Mira’s mother, herself a bit repressed and jealous of the warm friendship the two have, also falls for the boy’s charisma.
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The Gospel of the Beast
Mateo is a Filipino teenager failing high school. With his father missing, he relies on the paternal protection of his Uncle Berto, a local gang leader. When Mateo runs out of options and needs to leave town, he finally turns to his Uncle, accepting a seemingly inevitable life of violence.
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Grace
Grace and her father are in pain. Grieving the loss of her mother and his wife, they travel across Russia in a beat-up old van, screening movies to rural crowds and eking out a living in Ilya Povolotsky’s subtle and moving tale.
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Green Border
At the “green border”, an almost impassable swamp between Poland and Belarus, immigrants struggle to reach the former, which is doing everything possible to keep them out, with traumatic results. “[A] righteous, infuriating and woefully compelling watch.” –Laura Babiak, Observer
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Guardians of the Formula
This engrossing period thriller fuses Cold War politics with medical history as the Yugoslav team trying to create nuclear fission are accidentally irradiated and smuggled to France for treatment, leading to the first human bone marrow transplant. –Alissa Simon
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The Gullspång Miracle
Sometimes truth is even stranger than fiction. In this riveting Scandinavian documentary bloodline mysteries meet true crime as the filmmaker follows the twists and turns in a Norwegian family’s unexpected reconfiguration. –Alissa Simon
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Handling the Undead
Three families struggling with profound grief are stunned when the dead rise again–are their loved ones truly home? Or is this a new form of terror? From the creator of Let the Right One In.
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Hesitation Wound
In the provincial town of Usak, a tightly-wound criminal defense attorney juggles urgent matters on the job and within her family in this engrossing drama. This finely-tuned second feature is a superior example of new Turkish filmmaking. –Alissa Simon
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High & Low: John Galliano
In fashion circles, the name John Galliano is fraught with contrasts: one of the highest profile fashion designers, an icon of British culture, and a man whose antisemitic outburst brought it all down.
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Holiday
At only 20, Veronica has had more life than most people—having been found not guilty for the brutal murder of her mother, she retreats to her small hometown hoping to start her life anew.
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Holly
Holly skips high school on the day a fire breaks out, killing classmates. When she attends a support group and almost magically helps the grieving, the townspeople begin to demand more and more, driving her to the edge of madness.
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The Home Game
In an isolated Icelandic village, a man built a regulation soccer pitch in effort to host a championship game. 25 years later, his son is determined to finally realize that dream, and a few others, on his dad’s field.
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Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
Sasha is a teenage vampire who just doesn’t want to kill humans. When her exasperated parents cut off her blood supply, Sasha’s life is in jeopardy. She meets Paul, a dour teenager, who’s eager to die to nourish his new friend.
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I Am Sirat
Sirat is a transgender woman who is caught between duty and self-determination. As Aman, she lives in New Delhi with her widowed mother as a son. But for herself, her friends and co-workers, she identifies as Sirat, the woman she has always felt she is.
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The Idea of You
Based on the acclaimed, contemporary love story of the same name, The Idea of You centers on Solène (Anne Hathaway), a 40-year-old single mom who begins an unexpected romance with 24-year-old Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), the lead singer of August Moon, the hottest boy band on the planet.
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Igualada
In one of Latin America’s most unequal countries, Francia Márquez, a Black Colombian rural activist, challenges the status quo with a presidential campaign that reappropriates the
derogatory term “Igualada” — someone who acts as if they deserve rights that supposedly don’t correspond to them — and inspires a nation to dream.
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In Flames
With her father dead for years and her grandfather recently passed, medical student Mariam and her mother are without a financial and social safety net in a very patriarchal culture. Mariam’s imminent graduation could save them, but a series of calamities unleashes a haunting specter in her midst.
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In Our Day
Festival favorite Hong Sang-soo’s latest feature, his 30th, weaves together the seemingly unrelated stories of a former actress who is in retreat, and a middle-aged poet whose work is galvanizing to the younger generation.
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In the Blind Spot
When a German documentary crew descends on a small Turkish village to interview a woman whose child vanished decades ago, they find themselves caught in what looks like supernatural circumstances. Shot from three perspectives, Ayse Polat’s thriller is riveting.
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In the Land of Brothers
Following the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, three members of the same family flee to Iran, only to find that, even after decades, they’re still struggling to fit in. This triptych covers decades in the lives of these three survivors.
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In the Rearview
Alarmed by the Russian invasion, director Maciek Hamela bought a van and helped evacuate civilians. With his cameraperson (and driver), he captured the quotidian details of civilian life, and escape, during wartime in this intimate and heartbreaking documentary.
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Industry Night with Roger & James Deakins
MN FILM INDUSTRY NIGHT
MSP Film and CineMechanics invite you to a MN Film Industry night with acclaimed cinematographer Roger Deakins & collaborator James Deakins as they talk about Roger’s monumental career in cinematography, their photography book Byways (Damiani, 2021), and their popular cinematography podcast TEAM DEAKINS.
This in-person conversation will be moderated by on-set photographer Wilson Webb
Industry night is the perfect time to connect with your fellow Minnesota filmmakers.
Co-Presented by CineMechanics
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Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
After a family tragedy, Thi?n drives his motorcycle back to his village in rural Vietnam, which soon becomes a profound spiritual journey. Though Ph?m Thiên Ân’s meditative film eschews conventional narrative, it’s a gripping look at grief and salvation.
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Io Capitano
Now Playing | The Main Cinema
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (Italy). In this acclaimed film which won top directing and acting prizes at the Venice Film Festival, writer-director Matteo Garrone presents a “reverse shot” of the immigration experience while unfurling an epic, cinematographically magnificent odyssey from West Africa to Italy.
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Janet Planet
In rural Western Massachusetts, 11-year-old Lacy spends the summer of 1991 at home, enthralled by her own imagination and the attention of her mother, Janet. As the months pass, three visitors enter their orbit, all captivated by Janet and her spellbinding nature.
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Kidnapped
In 1858, in the Jewish quarter of Bologna, the Pope’s soldiers burst into the home of the Mortara family. By order of the cardinal, they have come to take Edgardo, their seven-year-old son. Acclaimed director Marco Bellocchio’s film is at once intimate and operatic.
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Lady Like
The origin story of Lady Camden, the drag persona of Rex Wheeler, as they navigate the fame of being on RuPaul’s Drag Race and confront the ghosts of childhood trauma.
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LaRoy, Texas
Ray is a sad sack whose wife is having an affair. So, he decides to kill himself, but he’s confused for a hitman. OK, he’ll do the job. Soon, bodies pile up, accusations fly, and Ray is in deep trouble.
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The Last Daughter
When she was young, Brenda was taken from her Aboriginal family and placed in a white one, where she lived, and was loved, for five years. Then, just as suddenly, she was returned, but the emotional toll resonates for years.
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Last Summer
Anne is a successful lawyer married to Pierre, a wonderful man who has adopted two daughters and has a 17-year-old son, Théo. When the boy returns to living with Pierre, Anne cannot help but fall in love with him.
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Laurel Massé: How Can I Keep from Singing?
Laurel Massé, founding member of The Manhattan Transfer, dedicated her life to her music in an industry that saw her as a product to be discarded. Yet she has endured to craft a decades-long career that has delighted millions.
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Les Indésirables
When a well-meaning doctor is chosen as an interim mayor in a Parisian suburb, and finds himself confronting a brave activist fighting for immigration rights (and herself running for mayor), his overreaction may destroy lives in Ladj Ly’s incendiary film.
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Lies We Tell
This taut 19th century thriller, crackling with tension, pits smart but stubborn young heiress Maud against her scheming guardian Uncle Silas, his odious son, spoiled daughter and daughter’s sinister governess. –Alissa Simon
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Limbo
Troubled detective Travis Hurley is tasked with solving a 20-year-old cold case in the remote Australian outback. An Indigenous girl was murdered, her killer still in town. But is Hurley helping, or causing more emotional damage to Charlotte’s family?
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Listen Up!
The Mahroofs are Pakistani émigrés to East Oslo who don’t quite fit in. Based on the popular novel by Gulraiz Sharif, it’s bold and angry, charming and generous, and always full of love. –Alissa Simon
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Lost in the Night
Emiliano is obsessed with finding his missing mother–an activist who vanished while protesting a local mine. When Emiliano starts digging to get to the bottom of this mystery, he finds a wealthy family that he thinks holds the key to his mother’s disappearance. His revenge, misguided or not, is exacted with plenty of collateral damage.
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Love is a Gun
Sweet Potato is doing his best to rehabilitate–working in a small shop by the sea and laying low and trying to go straight after a stint in prison. When his old crime boss wants him back, he’s not going to run, but fight.
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Love Lies Bleeding
Now Playing | The Main Cinema
From Director Rose Glass comes an electric new love story; reclusive gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) falls hard for Jackie (Katy O’Brian), an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Vegas in pursuit of her dream. But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family.
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Luther: Never Too Much
Luther Vandross was an R&B legend. Originally a supporting singer, he sought his own path, and the result was becoming one of the most influential pop artists of all time. Dawn’s Porter’s joyful documentary will have you dancing in the aisles.
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Mad About the Boy: The Noel Coward Story
Noël Coward–songwriter, playwright, singer, actor, spy–possessing tremendous talent… and contradictions. A gay icon terrified of being outed, who knew he wanted to be a star at age two, he charmed the world and hid his secrets well.
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Madame Luna
This social-issues thriller asks the question “What price, survival?” as Eritrean fugitive Almaz (Meninet Abraha Teferi) arrives in Italy on a boat of refugees. As in director Espinosa’s best films, Madame Luna finds the humanity in morally compromised characters. –Alissa Simon
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Maestra
Following the buzz surrounding the Leonard Bernstein bio-pic Maestro, the informative documentary Maestra is even more compelling. It profiles five fiercely tenacious female orchestra conductors in the early stages of their careers who participate in France’s “La Maestra” competition. –Alissa Simon
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Mambar Pierrette
Pierrette is a seamstress in Douala, Cameroon, crafting custom clothes–everything from school uniforms to beautiful dresses–to support her family. When she’s robbed and a flood nearly destroys her business, she’s pushed to the breaking point, but her work keeps her from utter desolation.
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A Man of Reason
Korean actor Jung Woo-sung stars and directs A Man of Reason, a critical favorite at the Toronto International Film Festival about a hitman released from prison who seeks to rekindle his relationship with his ten-year-old daughter.
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Mandoob
In the heart of Riyadh, Fahad Algadaani's gripping journey from a struggling delivery man to the depths of a city's underworld, as he battles to save his father amidst desperation and opportunity.
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Merchant Ivory
Their films were perennial Oscar nominees, showcases for some of the best actors in the world, and they delighted audiences everywhere. Merchant Ivory tells the story of the incredible creative team of James Ivory, Ismail Merchant and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.
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Midnight Mayhem: Killer Condom
Midnight Mayhem: Saturday, June 1 at 10:00 PM | The Main Cinema
Based on the best-selling adult comic by Germany's Ralf König and featuring special effects by notorious splatter master Jörg Buttgereit and creative consulting from the legendary H. R. Giger, Martin Walz's Killer Condom is a delirious queer horror comedy, newly restored to its unseen original director's cut.
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Midnight Mayhem: Little Shop Of Horrors: The Director's Cut
Midnight Mayhem: Saturday, April 6 at 10:00 PM | The Main Cinema
A skid-row florist's "mean green mother" of a monster plant is the center of "the looniest, nuttiest, most outrageous movie musical comedy in years." The Director’s Cut featuring the newly restored 20-minute alternate ending.
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Midnight Mayhem: Road House
Midnight Mayhem: Saturday, May 4 at 10:00 PM | The Main Cinema
Dalton (Patrick Swayze) is a true gentleman with a degree in philosophy from NYU. He also has a flip side - he's the best bar bouncer in the business. When Dalton's brought in to clean up a popular establishment that become particularly rowdy, his calm is put to the test by the town bully, in this throwback to the great westerns of the 40's and 50's.
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MMXX
From acclaimed filmmaker Cristi Puiu comes this quadriptych of tales about four different people enduring life in the eponymous year, one of the most fraught in human history. These seemingly unrelated short films perfectly capture life during the pandemic.
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Mother of All Lies, The
Asmae El Moudir’s grandmother Zahra always refused to get her photo taken. Seeking to understand her family’s past, El Moudir creates a miniature of their Casablanca neighborhood, and invites the family to reenact moments in the past, with eye-opening results.
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Mountain Boy
Suhail is a young boy with Autism living alone in the mountains, in tune with nature and away from a father who does not understand him. Lost in a desert storm, a young girl meets Suhail, and the adventures begin. Age 10+ –Deb Girdwood
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The Movie Teller
It’s the 1960s in a drought-stricken mining town in the Chilean Atacama Desert. María’s family can only afford one ticket to the movies. When she comes home, she performs the movie for them. Soon, everyone wants to listen to María’s incredible “movies.”
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Música!
Over the course of five years, Música! follows four young Cubans who view music as a way of life. Through music, they hope to find success and fulfillment, some choosing to remain in Cuba, and some seeking to venture out into the world beyond.
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Name Me Lawand
In Iraq, 5-year-old Lawand is deaf, with virtually no opportunity for an education His family makes the journey to the UK so he can attend the Royal School for the Deaf, where he eventually thrives---until the family is threatened with deportation, putting everything Lawland has accomplished at risk.
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The Nature of Love
Sophia and Xavier have been together for over a decade, but they seem like an old couple, comfortable more than passionate. When Xavier hires Sylvain, a charismatic and handsome contractor, the door to passion is opened to Sophia.
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A New Kind of Wilderness
On a small farm in the Norwegian forest, the Payne family seeks a wild and free existence. They practice home-schooling and strive for a closely-knit family dynamic in harmony with nature. However, when tragedy unexpectedly strikes the family, it upends their idyllic world and forces them to forge a new path into modern society.
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No One Asked You
Comedian and disruptor-extraordinaire Lizz Winstead is angry–and she’s got good reason to be. With the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, she and her group Abortion Access Front are rolling up their sleeves and taking the fight to the streets to secure abortion freedoms across the US.
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The Old Oak
County Durham used to thrive, but now the town, and its favorite pub, The Old Oak, are winding down. But when pub owner TJ and a young Syrian woman named Yara begin to form a friendship, hope once again emerges.
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Once Again (for the very first time)
DeRay, a legendary street dancer, falls from the sky to land on the doorstep of his true love, the poet Naima. Boaz Yakin’s beautifully surreal film fuses rap, poetry, dance, and bold visuals to create a dreamlike cinematic fantasy.
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One Life
Now Playing | The Main Cinema
One Life tells the incredible true story of Nicholas “Nicky” Winton, a young London broker who helps rescue hundreds of predominantly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia in a race against time before Nazi occupation closes the borders on the verge of World War II. Fifty years later, Nicky (Sir Anthony Hopkins) is haunted by the fate of those he wasn’t able to bring to safety.
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Only the River Flows
Ma Zhe is a detective in rural China. When a woman’s body is discovered by the river, he is pressured into making a quick arrest. Though the case is closed, he’s troubled, and his personal investigation drives him to the edge of his own sanity.
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Perfect Days
Now Playing | The Main Cinema
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (Japan). From writer/director Wim Wenders. Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.
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Porcelain War
Amidst the chaos and destruction of the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, three artists defiantly find inspiration and beauty as they defend their culture and their country. Porcelain War embodies the passion and fight that only an artist can put back into the world when it’s crumbling around them.
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Power
In the United States, police have been granted extraordinary power over our individual lives. In this sweeping documentary, director Yance Ford traces the accumulation of money, the consolidation of political power, and the nearly unrestricted bipartisan support that has created the institution of policing as we know it.
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Problemista
Starts March 21 | The Main Cinema
Alejandro (Julio Torres) is an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador, struggling to bring his unusual ideas to life in New York City. As time on his work visa runs out, a job assisting an erratic art-world outcast (Tilda Swinton) becomes his only hope to stay in the country and realize his dream. From writer/director Julio Torres comes a surreal adventure through the equally treacherous worlds of New York City and the U.S. Immigration system.
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Profe
In Minnesota, the Latine community burgeons amidst a vast opportunity gap. Two charter schools, rooted in decades of struggle, champion equity through decolonized, bilingual education. Profe delves into this educational revolution, blending history and contemporary narratives to illuminate its profound impact.
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Property
Teresa lives in terrified seclusion. Needing a change, she retreats to her family’s rural estate, driving there in an armored car. When the exploited farm workers are pushed too far, they rise up, and she’s trapped in the vehicle.
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The Queen of My Dreams
Azra is constantly at odds with her conservative mother. A lesbian, Azra just tries to get along, but when her beloved father suddenly dies, her grief plunges her into a Bollywood-style examination of her family’s past and present.
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A Ravaging Wind
Trapped in a destiny she did not choose, Leni joins her father, Reverend Pearson, in his Evangelical mission. When their car–also their home–breaks down in rural Argentina, Leni begins to see her father for who he really is.
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Remembering Every Night
Three women wander through a Tokyo suburb, and cross paths briefly but profoundly on a gorgeous summer’s day. Yui Kiyohara’s lyrical film captures, with Proustian detail, these women’s lives.
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Richland
A US nuclear company town stakes its identity on its little-known atomic origin story in
this timely examination of the habits of thought that normalize the extraordinary
violence of the past.
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Romaissa
Discovering that she has secret superpowers, the extraordinary Romaissa and her best friend Lionel organize the tenants of their apartment building to fight a greedy Rotterdam developer and save their homes. Age 11+ –Deb Girdwood
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The Rye Horn
Maria is a midwife, who finds herself on the wrong side of the law in Franco’s Spain, so she flees to Portugal by boat and on foot. Risking her life she makes a decision that will change her life forever.
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Seeking Mavis Beacon
Jazmin Renée Jones investigates the mysterious Mavis Beacon, whose courses taught millions of people to type in the ‘80s. But who was she? Was she even real? Seeking Mavis Beacon is an inventive look at technology and Black representation.
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Sequencing Hope
Directors Lindsey Seavert (Love Them First) and Maribeth Romslo (Raise Your Voice) return to MSPIFF with this intimate and often gut-wrenching portrait of an Alabama family grappling with a new frontier in medicine as their toddler becomes the first patient in the US to receive an experimental gene therapy treatment for a rare disease.
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Shoshana
Michael Winterbottom delivers his long-gestating political thriller/period romance. Set during Britain’s post-WWI administration of Palestine, it follows the fraught, cross-cultural relationship between a ranking member of the British Palestine Police Force and a young Jewish woman. –Alissa Simon
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Silent Roar
Teenager Dondo loves surfing, but he is endlessly searching for his “missing” father, not believing the common knowledge that he is dead. When a minister arrives to offer Dondo some answers (and a path to God), his best friend Sas must step in and try to help.
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Sing Sing
Opening Night Film Divine G (Colman Domingo), imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other incarcerated men, including wary newcomer (Clarence Maclin), in this stirring true story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art, starring an unforgettable ensemble cast of formerly incarcerated actors.
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Sira
En route to her wedding, Sira, a young Fulani woman, is attacked by Islamist terrorists, her family murdered. Left for dead, Sira retreats to a cave near the terrorist camp, and bides her time.
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Sleep
Hyun-su and Soo-jin are recently married, installed in a cozy apartment, and expecting their first child. But soon Hyun-su begins sleepwalking, his nightly sojourns becoming increasingly troubling until Soo-jin begins to wonder if her unborn child is his subconscious target.
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Snow Leopard
On the Tibetan plateau, a herder is enraged that a snow leopard has killed nine of his rams. Vowing to kill it, he is opposed by his brother, a monk, who believes he can communicate with the snow leopard.
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Solids by the Seashore
At a small seaside village, Fon arrives to install a new art exhibit at a gallery where Shati works. Shanti, from a conservative family, is drawn to Fon’s free spirit. The two women spend time together and become easy friends, allowing a love to slowly blossom.
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Solo
Simon is a rising star in Montreal’s drag queen scene. It’s love at first sight when he meets Olivier, the new recruit at the bar-show where he performs. While Simon believes he is living an electrifying love story, a toxic and destructive dynamic develops between them.
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Songs of the Earth
With Norway’s beautiful mountain landscapes as a monumental backdrop, the filmmaker’s 84-year-old father is our guide to the place where his family has lived side-by-side with nature for generations. A stunningly cinematic work about life, death and nature. –Alissa Simon
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Story & Pictures By
Children’s books are some of the most influential reading we will do in our lives, but until now, no documentary has delved into this wonderful subject. Story & PIctures By follows three great picture book creators whose experimental work is changing the world.
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Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink
Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund whose goal is to buy up newspapers around the country and tear them apart. This seems to go against common business sense, until journalist Julie Reynolds investigates, and her findings galvanized reporters everywhere.
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The Successor
When his father dies suddenly of a heart attack, Ellias, an up-and-coming Parisian fashion designer, is forced to return home only to discover secrets so horrifying they threaten to drag him from his gilded pedestal.
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Sugarcane
An investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school ignites a reckoning on the nearby Sugarcane Reserve. A stunning tribute to the resilience of Native people and their way of life – Sugarcane, the debut feature documentary from Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie – is an epic cinematic portrait of a community during a moment of international reckoning.
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Sujo
Sujo was orphaned at age 4, the scion of a notorious cartel gunman, and his life seems marked from the beginning. As he grows into a man, confronted by his father’s collateral damage, he tries to transcend this violent world.
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Sweet Dreams
When Jan, the owner of an Indonesian sugar plantation, dies suddenly, he leaves everything to his young illegitimate son that he had with his lover and housekeeper. His widow and his adult son have nothing to lose as they try to save their crumbling fortune.
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The Taste of Things (La passion de Dodin Bouffant)
Now Playing | The Main Cinema
Official Selection for France - Best International Feature Film, 96th Academy Awards Set in France in 1889, the film follows the life of Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel) as a chef living with his personal cook and lover Eugénie (Juliette Binoche). They share a long history of gastronomy and love but Eugénie refuses to marry Dodin, so the food lover decides to do something he has never done before: cook for her.
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Tehachapi
French artist JR gathered 40 inmates from Tehachapi prison to create another of his signature epic photo collages in their prison yard, hoping to tell the stories lost behind bars, bring a unifying power to the inmates, and give them a small amount of grace.
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Terrestrial Verses
Inspired by ghazal, a style of Persian poetry, Terrestrial Verses collects interviews with people from Iran as they navigate the perplexing bureaucracy that penetrates everyday life. From birth to death, these citizens try desperately, often with humor, to endure.
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Thelma
Thelma Post (June Squibb) is a 93-years-old grandmother, and the victim of a phone scam. Thelma loses a lot of money, but… these scammers messed with the wrong nonagenarian. Enlisting a reluctant friend (the late Richard Roundtree) and his mobility scooter, Thelma is out to find the culprits.
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Tiger Stripes
The first amongst her friends to hit puberty, Zaffan, 12, discovers a terrifying secret about her body. Ostracized by her community, Zaffan fights back, learning that to be free she must embrace the body she feared, emerging as a proud, strong woman.
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Tomorrow Is a Long Time
Chua is an exterminator, overworked by his boss; Meng is his son, bullied, grief-stricken over his dead mother and grandma’s illness, usually brooding in an empty home. Soon, events pile up to push the young man to survive by any means necessary.
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Tuesday
A mother (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, in a profoundly moving performance) and her teenage daughter (Lola Petticrew) must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird. From debut filmmaker Daina O. Pusic, Tuesday is a heart-rending fairy tale about the echoes of loss and finding resilience in the unexpected.
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UnBroken
The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, embarks on an international quest to uncover answers about the plight of her mother and her six siblings who, as mere children, escaped Nazi Germany relying solely on their own youthful bravado and the kindness of German strangers.
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Valentina or the Serenity
Raised in a close-knit Indigenous Mixtec community and inspired by comic books, superhero cape-wearing Valentina uses all her powers to prove that her father, who drowned in a nearby river, is still alive. Age 11+ –Deb Girdwood
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Victoria Must Go
Hedvig and Henrik are a pair of posh, overly coddled kids who normally get what they want. But there is a new sheriff in town in the form of their stepmother, Victoria. They both know one thing: Victoria must go.
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Voy! Voy! Voy!
Inspired by stranger-than-fiction actual events, this hit black comedy follows a cheerily amoral protagonist who is willing to try almost anything to escape his country and his dead-end life… from pretending passion to faking vision loss. –Alissa Simon
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Watershed
When Mallory Weggemann was an 18-year-old student at the U of MN, she walked into a routine medical procedure, and never walked out. Instead accepting her newfound paralysis as her life defining moment, she channeled her grief and determination into the water, eventually becoming a five-time Paralympic gold medalist before facing equally insurmountable odds with her husband to become new parents.
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We Have Never Been Modern
The discovery of a dead intersex infant amidst the rubble in factory town in 1937 sends shockwaves through a society fixated on only one kind of progress. A masterfully-crafted drama about privilege, prejudice and gender identity. –Alissa Simon
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White Plastic Sky
In the future, humans live in a biodome, where, at age 50, they’re implanted with a seed that turns them into a tree for needed oxygen. One couple will defy this in Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó’s animated dystopian film.
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Wildcat
Flannery O’Connor was one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, a troubled soul whose intense Catholicism collided with the grotesqueries she witnessed in the mid-century American South. Maya Hawke plays O’Connor in Ethan Hawke’s unconventional bio-pic.
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Within
When a demolition crew uncovers human remains sealed up in a wall, Inspector Han struggles to stay objective about the case. The dilapidated building was his primary school, and the ten year-old homicide stirs up memories that he has worked hard to forget.
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Without Air
Ana Bauch is a literature teacher in a small (and repressed) Hungarian town. When one of her students is caught watching a film she recommended, about the love affair between Rimbaud and Verlaine, the repercussions are calamitous.
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Working Class Goes to Hell
After losing their loved ones, jobs, and dignity to a tragic factory fire and corrupt privatization, a group of ex-workers seeks hope and justice in the supernatural. Gloomy, violent, fierce and funny, Working Class Goes to Hell is like nothing you’ve seen before.
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