Runs & Limited Engagements

Raunchy and heartwarming are qualities that rarely go together, but this most unusual comedy/road movie is the exception. No self-pity seen here, when three men with significant disabilities set out to shed the shackles of dependent living, at least for a glorious pratfall-filled few days, and stake their claim to full manhood by losing their virginity in a fabled Montreal brothel that caters to men with special needs. A loose remake of the 2011 Belgian film HASTA LA VISTA, and based on the experiences of wheelchair-bound disabilities activist Asta Philpot (who fully endorses COME AS YOU ARE), it’s less about the end goal than the journey. Scotty (Rosenmeyer), quadriplegic amateur rapper and certified hothead jerk, forms a plan. Scotty’s paraplegic nemesis Matt (Szeto), a former boxer, and blind middle-aged Mo (Ravi Patel) join for an adventure into the unknown, with skeptical no-nonsense nurse Sam (Sidibe of PRECIOUS) as their driver. DCP digital widescreen. (BS)

Unseen for over 35 years, this mature and soulful romance was considered lost until the chance discovery of a 35mm negative led to its recent recognition as a classic of African American cinema. Returning to his hometown in rural Louisiana, former college football star and aspiring poet Peter Metoyer (Romain) quickly strikes sparks with local girl Maria Mathis (Myrick). Their budding relationship is threatened by complicating factors, starting with Peter's background as a light-skinned Creole whose ancestors owned slaves. Intended as a corrective to the blaxploitation cycle, the film is remarkable for the way it maps its central romance against the complexity of the African American experience, inflected by such factors as history, class, religion, colorism, and feminism. But, for all its cultural breadth, CANE RIVER is first and foremost a full-throttle love story, boosted by lyrical photography; a beautifully integrated, partially sung music score; and the lead performances of two attractive actors with chemistry to spare. New 4K DCP digital restoration. (MR)

Conceived by Belgrade-based curator Greg de Cuir Jr. as an “intervention into the status quo,” Avant-Noir brings together contemporary films and videos by international artists of African descent to showcase visual representations of Black cultures in their many complexities. Part of a much larger project of iterative screenings and exhibitions, this special edition spotlights works from the last two years. Baloji’s stunning ZOMBIES (2019) is both an Afrofuturist music video and satire of digital consumer culture. Ayo Akingbade’s poetic A IS FOR ARTIST (2018) charts the artist's growing political consciousness. Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s A QUALITY OF LIGHT (2019) is an Afrosurrealist portrait of the artist’s composer grandmother. Edgar Arceneaux’s UNTIL, UNTIL, UNTIL… (2017–18) probes the history of African American representation on stage and screen through the bifocal lens of Broadway actor Ben Vereen and vaudeville star Bert Williams, America’s first mainstream Black entertainer. Multiple formats. (Greg de Cuir)

Audrey Hepburn made one of the most sensational debuts in screen history, winning an Academy Award for her first starring role. In this modern-day fairy tale (reputedly based on a real-life experience of Britain’s Princess Margaret…but also remarkably similar to the reel-life model of Frank Capra’s IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT), a cooped-up princess on an Italian tour runs away from her royal duties and into the arms of an American newsman (Peck), who must choose between a career-making scoop and a risky romance. 4K DCP digital. (MR)

An extravagant ankle-length neon-yellow fur coat becomes the focus of desire and the symbol of dreams of fame for Goldie (model and Rihanna muse Woods), an 18-year-old Bronx woman living in a homeless shelter with her mom, her adoring little sisters Sherrie and Supreme, and her mom’s drug-dealer boyfriend. GOLDIE pulsates with energy, bumped to the max at every turn by Woods’s abundant charisma and eye-popping street style, enhanced by Dutch director de Jong’s use of colorful graffiti-like animation overwriting the images. Radiating optimism fueled by driving ambition and an impressive sense of self, Goldie prepares for an entry-level gig as a backup dancer in a hip-hop video, the break that she imagines will make her a star. Reality is dangling a different possibility when the family is evicted from the shelter, mom is arrested, and the two little girls become the sole responsibility of their big sis. Music by Emmy-nominated composer Nathan Halpern. DCP digital. (BS)

While the countries in southern and eastern Europe share common histories and cultures, they have alternately been classified as Balkan and Mediterranean, as capitalist and socialist, as Western and non-Western, and as European and non-European. South by Southeast convenes a wide range of artistic works, many of which are screening for the first time in the United States, to deconstruct both geopolitical and aesthetic boundaries while mapping out a new conception of Europe. Originally established by Belgrade-based curator Greg de Cuir Jr. as an annual program of the Alternative Film/Video Festival in Belgrade, this edition features works produced for cinemas, galleries, and the internet by Damir Čučić, Armando Lulaj, Igor Simić, Peter Lichter, Julia Lazarkova, Diana Vidrascu, belit sağ, and Igor Bošnjak. Multiple formats. (Greg de Cuir)

Betrothed to a wealthy industrialist old enough to be her father, Joan Webster (Hiller) knows where she’s going: off the coast of Scotland to the remote, picturesque Isle of Kiloran for her imminent wedding. Waylaid by inclement weather on the Isle of Mull, however, Joan finds ever more obstacles placed in her way, from a raging whirlpool of legend to the provincial charms of a British naval officer (Livesey) marooned alongside her. Handsomely shot in part on location, I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING! would take full advantage of its dewy Celtic atmosphere, transforming every potentially banal landscape into a moment of idyllic splendor. Powell and Pressburger's luminous spin on the romantic comedy would also prove to be one of the company’s most enduring and beloved films, fleshing out its central love story with tales of family curses, rogue eagles, Highland dancing, and other bits of characteristic local color. 35mm. (CW)

An eerily windswept landscape, a vacated prison, and one missing death-row inmate figure into this precisely calibrated mystery/thriller. Set in 1966, with the authentic retro look and feel of the culture of pre-revolutionary Iran, the plot pits a preening, promotion-hungry warden (Mohammadzadeh of SHEEPLE) against a wily escapee, who is improbably unaccounted for just as the facility is being evacuated prior to teardown for the site of Tehran’s new airport. Director Javidi (MELBOURNE) makes the story less about the cat-and-mouse game between warden and prisoner than a pressure cooker drama revolving around ambition, guilt in high places, and the warden’s barely disguised attraction for a self-possessed and most stylishly attired female social worker who comes to plead on behalf of the missing man. In Persian with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)

This chronicle of the creative journey of New York Times “On the Street” photographer and fashion historian Bill Cunningham (1929-2016) might well bear the alternate title "Tales of Lost New York." The evolution of the city as the cradle of great personalities, fascinating eccentrics, and true originals is compellingly woven through Cunningham's story, based on an extended 1994 interview conducted by director Bozek. Following a conservative Catholic upbringing in Boston, where he was distracted in church by the ladies' hats, Cunningham was transplanted to the city he came to love with a passion, along with anything and everything that signaled personal style. Ensconced in one of the famed Carnegie Hall studios, he went from milliner to the likes of Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe to journalist, becoming a self-taught photographer after the gift of a small camera opened up the world of street style. Although shy and self-effacing, no one drops names and tells stories quite like Cunningham. Names like Marlon Brando, Leonard Bernstein, Jacqueline Kennedy, Diana Vreeland, Liza Minnelli, Andy Warhol, Balenciaga, and Dior roll off his tongue, accompanied by hundreds of stunning and essential candid photos, many never made public during his lifetime. DCP digital. (BS)

With almost mystical power, love and death cement the codependence of two Russian women in 1945 Leningrad amid the devastation of war, in a film hailed as a major work at festivals including Cannes and Toronto. Former comrades at the front, Iya (Miroshnichenko), a tall ghostly-pale woman nicknamed Beanpole, and her brusque, pragmatic friend Masha (Perelgina), each coping with the legacy of psychic trauma, negotiate a delicate dance of a relationship that centers around the death of Masha’s child and the strange deal with the devil that she proposes to Iya. Director Balagov (CLOSENESS), winner of the Un Certain Regard Best Director prize at Cannes, demonstrates a masterfully poetic command of sound and image that recalls the work of his mentor Alexander Sokurov. Dark and evocative color-blocking and a strategic use of silence contribute to creating a world apart that seems suspended magically in its own time and place despite the grim aftermath of war. In Russian with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)

Though now better known for his Polish-made Oscar nominees IDA and COLD WAR, director Pawlikowski first made his mark with a series of critically acclaimed British productions. MY SUMMER OF LOVE is a classic entry in the adolescent summer- romance tradition, reinvigorated by its same-sex orientation and by Pawlikowski 's unique ability to mix dark twists with exhilarating bursts of self-assertion. Orphaned, dumped by her boyfriend, and dismayed by her ex-con brother's recent embrace of religious zealotry, 16-year-old Mona (Press) is stagnating in a Yorkshire village when she encounters the glamorous, self-dramatizing rich girl Tamsin (Blunt, charismatic in her breakthrough role). Collaborating on reckless pranks and lazy summer outings, Mona bonds, makes love, and falls in love with Tamsin, but class differences, her brother's new-found moralism, and Tamsin's taste for fantasy threaten to turn it all into a seasonal mirage. 35mm. (MR)

There was a time when nightclubbing babes, motorcycle mamas, and mini-skirted temptresses ushered in an era of genre-driven Iranian popular cinema, comprising a stark counterpoint to the idealized image of the modest maternal figure in a chador. The multifaceted images and stereotypes of Iranian women as portrayed by Iranian male directors between 1932 and the 1979 Islamic revolution comprise the subject of this revealing and sometimes hair-raising documentary showcasing clips from over 120 archival films. Director Nouri presents an intelligent compendium of films and genres, showcasing beloved and prolific stars including Pouri Banaei, Forouzan, Gougush, Susan Taslimi, Behrouz Vossoughi, Shoreh Aghdasloo, and scores more, whose pre-1979 work has been largely lost to the punishing arc of history. In Persian with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)

In the early 1970s, Mariah Garnett’s father fled Northern Ireland after being the subject of a BBC documentary about relationships that crossed the country’s violent religious and political divide. Four decades later, the Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker returned to her father’s native Belfast, immersing herself in the city’s sectarian upheavals to make her own film about his early life. Named one of Sight & Sound’s best films of 2019, TROUBLE mixes archival footage, contemporary interviews, and a series of extraordinary performances in which Garnett plays her father, reenacting both the BBC documentary and his present-day reflections on the period. Through its multifaceted form, the film depicts the complexities of identity and the echoing effects of personal and historical trauma. DCP digital. (Amy Beste)

Smartly satirical and shamelessly hilarious, this Irish spoof on the mechanics of poltergeist-hunting features spousal abuse by a ghost and a side of mid-life romance, while sending up films including THE EXORCIST and GHOSTBUSTERS. Meek widower Martin (Ward of MAZE and JIMMY’S HALL) is haunted by the spirit of his chain-smoking, trash-talking dead wife, who aims to lay claim to him body and soul from beyond the grave. Meanwhile, a has-been American rock star and practicing Satanist (Forte), ensconced in a nearby rented castle, seeks to boost his career by snaring Martin’s teen daughter for a virgin sacrifice. Enter Rose (Higgins), a mousy driving instructor who hides her talent as a psychic under a bushel, owing to a certain traumatic incident in her youth. It’s a sure formula for comic chaos, culminating in an over-the-top slapstick conjuring-gone-wrong, leading to hellish retribution galore. Check out the dark side of the St. Patrick’s Day spirit! DCP digital widescreen. (BS)

Drawing on principles of video game design, improvisation, and cognitive science, Ian Cheng's practice explores the nature of mutation and the capacity of humans to relate to change. He produces computer-generated simulations whose complex ecosystems are programmed to evolve without end. These projects include the Emissaries trilogy (2014–17), a set of works in which the motivation of a narrative agent—the emissary—is set into conflict with the open-ended chaos of the simulation. In 2019, he debuted BOB (Bag of Beliefs), an AI creature whose personality, body, and life story evolve across exhibitions, what Cheng calls “art with a nervous system.” Multiple formats. Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Visiting Artists Program