from Italy: MARTIN EDEN

Based on the 1909 autobiographical novel by Jack London, young Martin Eden is a charming, impoverished, self-taught sailor who dreams of becoming a writer. Martin Eden might be the BEST FILM OF THE YEAR!

ZAPPA

"We were loud. We were coarse. We were strange. And if anyone in the audience ever gave us any trouble, we told them to fuck off." There has yet to be a film about the life and times of the brilliant and genuinely maverick musician Frank Zappa. The music he composed and performed with his band, The Mothers of Invention

from Romania: COLLECTIVE

ONE OF THE GREATEST MOVIES ABOUT JOURNALISM and the Dark Forces in Confronts...Alexander Nanau’s bracing, relentless documentary plays like a gripping real-time thriller, merging the reportorial intensity of Spotlight with the paranoid uncertainty of The Manchurian Candidate. When Nanau screened Collective to rave reviews at the Venice, Toronto and Sundance festivals, he had no idea that his exposé would prove

MAYOR

Filmmaker David Osit subtly – and with a keen eye for black humor – explores the absurdities of a worldly politician trying to turn his city into a Middle Eastern Amsterdam while in the midst of a geopolitical storm. Follow the mayor of Ramallah – de facto capital of the Palestinian people – and you’ll see him greeting grateful constituents on the street, planning the town’s neon-bright Christmas celebrations, mulling “city branding” slogans with his aides in an effort to boost tourism…or dodging gunfire from an Israeli army fracas. It’s all in a day’s work for Mayor Musa Hadid, a liberal Christian and civil engineer by training, whose charming public persona is balanced by a self-effacing, realist streak. “I feel jealous when I visit other cities,” he laments. “They can do so much that we cannot.” “Thoughtful and gripping. There are whiffs of Veep-like humor throughout MAYOR. It’s also a sincere tale of a public servant who’s seeking to lead in a world that’s stacked against him.” – Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

His ultimate mission: to end the occupation of Palestine. Rich with detailed observation and a surprising amount of humor, Mayor offers a portrait of dignity amidst the madness and absurdity of endless occupation while posing a question: how do you run a city when you don't have a country?

FREE TIME

You can watch Free Time right here, right now   Free Time, the latest film by one of our greatest documentarians, Manny Kirchheimer. A New York Film Festival selection, Free Time presents meticulously restored and poetically assembled 16mm black-and-white footage shot in New York between 1958 and 1960, set to the stirring music of Ravel, Bach, Eisler, and Count Basie.

from Argentina: The Weasel’s Tale

Schemers meet their match in The Weasel's Tale, a comedic thriller by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Juan José Campanella (The Secret in Their Eyes). Four long-time, showbiz friends share a decaying mansion in the countryside outside of Buenos Aires. Their peaceful coexistence is menaced by a young couple who, feigning to be lost, slowly insinuate themselves into their lives. It's Sunset Boulevard meets The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, with a Latin twist. Financial gain, seduction, betrayal, and memories run amok are the elements that create the recipe for this delightful game of cat...and weasel.

FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO

Over a period of 35 years between 1984 and 2019, filmmaker Lynne Sachs shot 8 and 16mm film, videotape and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant and pioneering businessman from Park City, Utah. Film About a Father Who is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings.

from Italy: The Mouth of the Wolf

Winner of major prizes at the Berlin and Turin film festivals, the hauntingly beautiful debut feature from Pietro Marcello (Martin Eden) is the story of a Sicilian tough guy and a transsexual former junkie whom he met in prison. Commissioned by the Fondazione San Marcellino, a Jesuit order dedicated to helping society’s poor and marginalized, The Mouth of the Wolf

from Italy: CITIZENS OF THE WORLD

It is never too late to change your life. Three Italians in their seventies, all single and looking for a change, decide to leave their beloved Rome and settle abroad. But where? A rash decision?--perhaps. The Professor, retired after teaching Latin his whole life, is getting bored. Giorgetto, one of the last true Romans, struggles to make ends meet every month. Attilio, an antiques dealer, wants to experience once again the sense of adventure he had while traveling as a hippie-youth. Things will change for our three musketeers, but not quite as expected.

from Italy: SICILIA!

Film has never seen a collaboration like that between Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, a fiercely intellectual husband-wife duo whose decades-spanning oeuvre aimed to spark a revolution among the masses. It contains adaptations of Kafka and Brecht, homages to D.W. Griffith, Renoir, and Bresson, and treatises on political matters both current and eternal.

from Portugal: FRANCISCA

With its elaborate title cards, its abundance of shots in which the action is oriented directly toward the camera, its evocative interiors, and its show-stopping gala set-pieces, Francisca is an exacting, sumptuous and utterly inimitable cinematic experience, and one of Oliveira’s crowning achievements.With its elaborate title cards, its abundance of shots in which the action is oriented directly toward the camera, its evocative interiors, and its show-stopping gala set-pieces, Francisca is an exacting, sumptuous and utterly inimitable cinematic experience, and one of Maneol de Oliveira’s crowning achievements. opens Nov 13th

from Iran: COUP 53

This twisty documentary takes a deep dive into the secret history behind the 1953 CIA-MI6 led coup that overthrew the democratically elected president of Iran, and changed the course of the Middle East. Featuring Ralph Fiennes in a surprising role.

from Japan: WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES

Alone in the world with no future, no dreams, and no way to move forward, four 13-year-olds dress themselves in scraps from a garbage dump, track down musical instruments, and decide to form a kick-ass band. CRITIC’S PICK! Wry humor, absurd dialogue and unflagging energy propel this dazzling, manic debut from Makoto Nagahisa…. he throws an entire box of tricks at the screen. Splitting it in two, fading to black and white, writing over it, and dunking an entire scene into a fishbowl, he fashions a fantasia of pranks so unexpected and colors so intense, they could make you hallucinate. – The New York Times

from Germany: BUNGALOW

A major work of the celebrated Berlin School, the debut of Ulrich Köhler is a mesmerizing portrait of a young German soldier named Paul who goes AWOL and returns to his childhood home in the countryside

from Hungary: DAMNATION

A loner tries to win back his estranged lover, a lounge singer in a bar named Titanik, in Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr’s otherworldly film noir. Some of you may have seen Tarr's classic, 7-hour film Satantango when it was screened at the IU Cinema in 2019. Relax, Damnation is a mere 1 hour, 56 minutes. Originally filmed in 1988, Damnation has recently been released in the States in a new 4K restoration by the Hungarian National Film Institute

from Hungary: PREPARATIONS TO BE TOGETHER FOR AN UNKNOWN PERIOD OF TIME

Márta Vizy (Natasa Stork) is a 39-year-old Hungarian neurosurgeon. After 20 years in the United States, she returns to Budapest for a romantic rendezvous at the Liberty Bridge with János (Viktor Bodó), a fellow doctor she met at a conference in New Jersey. Márta waits in vain, while the love of her life is nowhere to be seen. When she finally tracks him down, the bewildered man claims the two have never met.

MARY LOU WILLIAMS: THE LADY WHO SWINGS THE BAND

Mary Lou Williams was ahead of her time, a genius. Her musical career began in the 1920s; in an era when jazz was the nation’s popular music, she was one of its greatest innovators. As both a pianist and composer, she was a wellspring of daring and creativity who helped shape the sound of 20th century America.

Black Lives, Black Voices: OUR RIGHT TO GAZE

In this collection of six shorts, filmmakers gaze at themselves and their world, attempting to make sense of what they see reflected back. From gripping drama to heart-warming comedy, Our Right to Gaze: Black Film Identities features timely stories from Black artists that take us outside of the ordinary.

Black Lives, Black Voices: THE INHERITANCE

After nearly a decade exploring different facets of the African diaspora — and his own place within it — Ephraim Asili makes his feature-length debut with The Inheritance, an astonishing ensemble work set almost entirely within a West Philadelphia house where a community of young, Black artists and activists form a collective.

Black Lives, Black Voices: TEST PATTERN

Part psychological thriller, part realist drama, this exhilarating debut feature from Shatara Michelle Ford, Test Pattern offers a Black woman's perspective on institutional racism and misogyny, inequitable healthcare, and issues of sex and consent.

from France: UN FILM DRAMATIQUE

Shot over a period of four years, Un Film Dramatique follows the creative intuitions of 20 budding Parisian artists at Dora Maar Middle School in Saint-Denis as they experiment with cameras on their own terms, theoretically reflect on the medium, and debate issues of ethnicity, discrimination, and representations of power and identity.

YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY

Winner of the Lion of the Future Award for best Debut Feature at the Venice Film Festival, You Will Die at Twenty is a visually sumptuous “coming-of-death” fable. During her son’s naming ceremony, a Sheikh predicts that Sakina’s child will die at the age of 20.

The Manchurian Candidate – Free in Bryan Park – Sat Night

Saturday, June 19 at Dusk     Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh star in The Manchurian Candidate. Raymond Shaw (Sinatra) is a war hero and is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery in Korea. What no one knows, including Shaw, is that he had been captured by the Chinese Communists and brainwashed. He