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 […]

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?

Five of the bravest international filmmakers working today tell thoughtful, compelling stories in this year’s documentary short film program.

Hollywood movies are often impersonal and risk-free — creative decisions are made by lawyers and accountants. The Oscar Shorts are a celebration of intimate, personal storytelling.

One of the most entertaining categories at the Academy Awards — and one of the least heralded — is for the Best Animated Short Subject. We are screening the five nominees in that category along with three films short-listed for a nomination.

Like short stories, short films are sometimes overlooked. But they often display all of the scope, power, insight and resonance of feature length films..

In a field that has historically embraced few women film critics, Kael was controversial, witty, and fiercely discerning. Her turbo-charged prose famously championed films that were dismissed by most other critics (Bonnie and Clyde, Taxi Driver).

In post-WWII Leningrad, two women, Iya and Masha (astonishing newcomers Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina), intensely bonded after fighting side by side as anti-aircraft gunners, attempt to readjust to a haunted world.

Tickets $6     Where Are Films Shown?     Where Can I Park for free on Campus?     Any other Questions? Send an email to editor@TheRyder.com Two Nights Only!  Lemon Tree is set in the West Bank, where Palestinian widow Salma Zidane tends her lemon grove. However, when Israeli Defense Minister Navon moves in across […]

Giuseppe Verdi’s masterwork – compelling, blood – curdling and beautiful – is being performed for the first time on the breathtaking water stage of Lake Constance, Bregenz.

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, […]

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.

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.

Earth depicts seven places where humans are transforming the planet on a grand scale: Entire mountains being moved in California, a tunnel being sliced through rock at the Brenner Pass, an open-cast mine in Hungary, the world-famous Carrara marble quarry in Italy, a copper mine in Spain, the salt mine used to store radioactive waste in Wolfenbüttel and a Northern Canadian tar sands site where the destruction of indigenous lands threatens local communities.

Anyone who was a fan of The Band or has an interest in Americana will want to see Once Were Brothers. The story of Bob Dylan’s one time legendary backup band is a colorful, cautionary tale. Simply called The Band, they would become one of the most influential ensembles in music history.

In a delightful twist, acclaimed Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, whose inventive comedies such as Police, Adjective and The Treasure have brought deadpan charm and political perceptiveness to his country’s cinematic renaissance, has made his first all-out genre film—a clever, swift, and elegant neo-noir with a wonderfully off-kilter central conceit. “If the Coen Brothers were Romanian, they might have made The Whistlers.” –The New York Times

Antiquarian booksellers — whose job requires the disparate skills of a scholar, a detective, and a businessperson — have personalities and knowledge bases that are as broad and deep as the material they handle. ​This Booksellers burrows deep inside their small but fascinating world, populated by an assortment of obsessives, intellects, oddballs and dreamers.

A lively, entertaining, and eye-opening look
at the number one economic issue of our time
(and the 2020 elections)

SURGE is a feature documentary about the record number of first-time female candidates who ran, won and upended politics in the historic 2018 midterm elections, featuring Liz Watson’s 2018 run for Congress. The film follows three candidates who each were looking to flip their red district to blue: Jana Lynne Sanchez of Texas, Liz Watson of […]

In the early seventies, the world was watching as Chilean voters elected Socialist leader Salvador Allende. His political ideals and aspirations—among them providing education for all children and distributing land to the nation’s workers—terrified the country’s right-wing, as well as the U.S. Nanni Moretti (Caro Diario, Ecce Bombo) tells a story many viewers may not know about: the efforts of the Italian Embassy to save and relocate citizens targeted by the fascist Pinochet regime in Chile.

How did an up-and-coming thespian with a mixed-race mistress and left-wing sympathies make it to the top of Nazi Germany’s theatrical world? Klaus Maria Brandauer overwhelmingly triumphs in the role of Mephistopheles, the demonic tempter in Goethe’s Faust.

In 1956, four years before Jane Goodall ventured into the world of chimpanzees and seven years before Dian Fossey left to work with mountain gorillas, 23-year-old biologist Anne Innis Dagg made an unprecedented solo journey to South Africa to study giraffes

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, […]