Runs & Limited Engagements

This hilarious, award-winning one-woman show that inspired BBC’s hit TV series is a rip-roaring look at some sort of woman living her sort of life. Fleabag (Waller-Bridge) may seem oversexed, emotionally unfiltered and self-obsessed, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With family and friendships under strain, and a guinea pig café struggling to keep afloat, she suddenly finds herself with nothing to lose. DCP digital. (Description courtesy of NT Live)

Although he made only two features and five shorts, Mambéty (TOUKI BOUKI, THE LITTLE GIRL WHO SOLD THE SUN) ranks as one of Africa's most important filmmakers. Beautifully restored from the original negative, Mambéty's final feature HYENAS looks fresher and more relevant than ever. Adapted from Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 1956 classic The Visit, the film is set in a desert town wracked by poverty and unemployment. Deliverance appears in the form of a fabulously rich woman (Diakhate) who plans to shower the townspeople with wealth, but there's a catch: they must first kill the local storekeeper Dramaan (Diouf), who had impregnated and abandoned her many years ago. At first the good citizens are indignant, but the lure of easy credit and consumer goods soon erodes their principles. Beneath the film's rowdy humor and vibrant colors is a caustic parable about Africa exploited and corrupted by foreign capital, as well as a more universal commentary on human greed and self-delusion. In Wolof with English subtitles. New DCP digital restoration. (MR)

Whether the lush, timeless, contemplative music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is your longtime obsession or a new discovery, this musical portrait is guaranteed to satisfy. Known for albums including Tabula Rasa, Arbos, and Miserere, Pärt’s neo-classical instrumental compositions and choral works have been described by critics as “ethereal,” “sublime,” and “spiritual.” Dutch music-documentary director Hegeman (LIVE TO BE A HUNDRED) wisely eschews the standard bio-doc format to set his film almost exclusively within the confines of various concert halls. Among the exquisite performances of Pärt’s work captured, from northern Europe to Zaire, an intense but mild-mannered Pärt himself rehearses the Cello Octet Amsterdam. Interviews include Tonu Kaljuste, Candida Thompson, and Daniel Reuss. In English, Dutch, German, and French with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)

In the early 1980s, in the depths of the Reagan era, Los Angeles spawned an explosive punk scene that was relentlessly harassed by the LAPD. In response, 21-year-old Stuart Swezey founded Desolation Center, a DIY organization that staged events in remote desert locations where fans and performers (including Meat Puppets, Sonic Youth, Minutemen, Savage Republic) could cut loose in environments that mirrored punk's elemental ethos and gave free rein to its anarchic energy. These legendary events were amazingly influential (the founders of Burning Man, Coachella, and Lollapalooza were all present and inspired by them), but their story had never been told before this eye-opening documentary (directed by founder Swezey himself) that draws upon a trove of previously unseen archival footage. Winner of the Audience Award at the 2019 Chicago Underground Film Festival. DCP digital. (MR)

Chicago-based independent filmmaker Sikora (BULLET ON A WIRE, THE EARL) presents a program of early work centered on his involvement with the L.A. punk/hardcore scene. Unseen for nearly twenty years, CHAR-BROILED depicts three conversations between punk survivors Jack Brewer, onetime front man for Saccharine Trust, and Mike Watt, celebrated bassist for the Minutemen and the Stooges. (Both men also appear in DESOLATION CENTER.) Together they look back on the legacy and decline of the movement, with the contrast between the frumpier Brewer and the more successful and articulate Watt providing an emotional undertone to their exchanges. Sikora calls the film a chapter in the secret history of rock 'n' roll, as well as a reflection on friendship and change. Filling out the program are some of Sikora's music videos featuring such bands as Urge Overkill, Tar, Mutts, Sabers, and the Leaving Trains. Multiple formats. (MR)

Directed by longtime friend and noted photographer Greenfield-Sanders, this documentary portrait of the great African American novelist is as rich and abundant as the extraordinary woman it depicts. At its heart is a meaty interview with Morrison, a warm but formidable presence as she recalls her remarkable life as a book-crazy girl in an Ohio steel town, a schoolteacher raising two children on her own, an influential editor at Random House, and an author who revolutionized writing about race in America en route to winning the Nobel Prize. The film's perspective is broadened by friends and admirers including Oprah Winfrey, Angela Davis, Sonia Sanchez, and Fran Lebowitz, while, in the manner of Morrison's celebrated anthology The Black Book, a steady stream of archival materials and works by notable black artists (Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, Kara Walker, et al.) evokes the immensity of African American experience to which she gave such eloquent shape. DCP digital. (MR)

Director Fatih Akin (IN THE FADE, THE EDGE OF HEAVEN) takes an atypical deep dive into grotesquery with this serial-killer story based on Heinz Strunk’s bestseller on the life of notorious German serial killer Fritz Honka, set in the early Seventies in Hamburg’s Reeperbahn red light district. Not for the faint of heart, the film caused a critical furor in its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, with bizarre caricatures of scarred, rat-like Honka (Dassler, handsome co-star of THE SILENT REVOLUTION completely transformed with prosthetics) and the washed-up prostitutes, elderly bag ladies, and wasted junkies he lures to his fetid hole of an apartment to rape and murder. With mannered performances and flourishes of finely honed craft, Akin pushes his cold-blooded horror premise to the limit while spiking the plot with unsettling hints of rudely transgressive black humor. In German and Greek with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)

In this extravagantly tongue-in-cheek satire, an unusual finishing school for young ladies of the upper-crust conceals a sinister purpose. Headstrong debutante Uma (Roberts) balks at her upcoming arranged marriage with a young mogul with all the personality of a Ken doll. Rebellion lands her in Paradise Hills, an über-luxurious establishment on a remote Mediterranean island, overseen by an iron-willed duchess (Jovovich). Director Waddington unpacks a trunk-full of candy-colored fantasy, with fluffy-dress uniforms and obsequious servants, futuristic spa treatments, and memory re-training on a whirling carousel. Uma bonds over make-up lessons with a handful of equally resistant inmates, including Chinese heiress Yu (Awkwafina of THE FAREWELL) and Latin American pop star Amarna (Eiza González of WELCOME TO MARWEN), for a daring stab at escape from their paradise prison. Wildly wacky horror, romance, and action blend for a finale with a feminist undercurrent. In English. DCP digital. (BS)

Set in 1942, during the Nazi occupation of France, director Losey's unnerving drama of identity and complicity channels Kafka's parables of nightmarish bureaucracies, Hitchcock's thrillers of mistaken identity, and Losey's own experiences as a blacklisted leftist during the McCarthy era. The protagonist is Robert Klein (Delon), an elegant Parisian art-dealer who is comfortably profiting off the fire-sale prices extracted from Jews fleeing the country. Then a copy of a Jewish newspaper is delivered to Klein's door, apparently by mistake. Contacting the authorities, he discovers that there is another Robert Klein in Paris, resembling him in many respects but notably different in one: he is Jewish. Our Mr. Klein sets out on a quest for his elusive double, in the process entangling himself ever deeper in the net of suspicion and surveillance that is engulfing France. Recently revived in a new digital restoration, MR. KLEIN enjoyed a record-breaking run at New York's Film Forum. In French with English subtitles. (MR)

A harrowing adventure tale and a probing/tense psychological drama are played out against the background of Tibet's political struggle in this gripping film, the second fictional feature (along with over 20 documentaries) by the husband-wife team Sarin and Sonam (DREAMING LHASA). The narrative interweaves two different timelines. The first, set in the present, centers on Dolkar (Dolker), a 26-year-old Tibetan woman living in the Tibetan exile community in North Delhi, India. The second, taking place 18 years earlier, details the tragedy-haunted trek Dolkar and her father made with a group seeking to flee Chinese persecution. Effectively contrasting the cramped alleys of Delhi with the vast reaches of the high Himalayas, the two sides come together when Dolkar recognizes Gompo (Tamang), a refugee activist recently arrived in Delhi, as the guide who abandoned her and her father on that fateful journey. Thoughts of revenge prompt her to follow Gompo, but the truths she uncovers prove to be more complex than she expected. In Tibetan with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (MR)

Enjoy the Tony Award® nominated Broadway musical sensation celebrating Janis Joplin and her biggest musical influences—icons including Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Odetta, Nina Simone, and Bessie Smith, who inspired one of rock & roll’s greatest legends. Joplin’s unmistakable voice, filled with raw emotion and tinged with Southern Comfort, made her a headliner from Monterey to Woodstock. Featuring a remarkable cast, and fueled by such unforgettable songs as “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Piece of My Heart,” “Mercedes Benz,” “Cry Baby” and “Summertime,” this show is a must-see for Joplin fans. DCP digital. (Description courtesy of CineLife Entertainment)

This revealing, politically hair-raising documentary portrait makes it clear that, at the age of 90, the vain, shoe-loving former first lady of the Philippines still has a firm grip on power behind the scenes as she maneuvers to catapult her son Ferdinand Jr., aka Bongbong, to the nation’s presidency. Palming a wad of cash, Imelda Marcos blithely peels off bills out the window of her limousine to scores of clamoring street kid kids—just one astonishing scene of noblesse oblige captured in a grippingly fascinating survey of the past and dangerously active present of this controversial grande dame. A beauty pageant contestant who snagged Marcos, a rising politician, after an eleven-day courtship in 1954, Imelda has long been famed as the luxury-loving power behind her husband’s bloody and corrupt regime, alleged to have fleeced the nation of billions. Gaining her subject’s eager participation, director Greenfield (QUEEN OF VERSAILLES) rolls out an incredible tale with obvious parallels in the world’s other political dynasties. DCP digital. (BS)

Guy Maddin (MY WINNIPEG) once again uses his special brand of voodoo alchemy to transform old movie tropes into something wildly and wittily original, this time focusing obsessively on the cinema's supreme monument to obsession, Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO. The premise is simple, the execution dizzyingly intricate: the story of VERTIGO is retold with clips from over a hundred San Francisco-set movies and TV shows that uncannily match (and, at times, imaginatively expand upon) moments from the original. The results are eerie, awesome, and hilarious. DCP digital. (MR)

This most fragmented, self-referential, and self-indulgent neo-Western in history—produced, written, directed, and featuring Dennis Hopper at the height of his drug-fueled post-EASY RIDER triumph—gave the star the screen martyrdom of his dreams and the career-trashing move of his nightmares. A Hollywood film crew takes over a remote Peruvian village high in the Andes, carousing nightly in sight of the uncomprehending locals. The production moves on, but stuntman Kansas (Hopper) sticks around, only to become the sacrificial victim chosen to pay the steep price for cultural transgression. Referencing Godard and the Abstract Expressionist painters, Hopper slashes, splatters, interrupts, and deconstructs his story, delivering the narrative as a nonsequential pageant studded with dream sequences, hallucinations, and asides, and given breathtaking presence through the cinematography of Laszlo Kovacs. The cast is a veritable Who’s Who of Seventies New Hollywood icons and hipsters, including Peter Fonda, Severn Darden, Samuel Fuller, Michelle Phillips, Kris Kristofferson, Henry Jaglom, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn, Sylvia Miles, and more. 4K DCP digital restoration. (BS)

Real-life medical stories don’t come any more exciting or engaging than this one. Can a harmonica-playing good ol’ Texan boy and pal of Willie Nelson cure cancer? This profile of Dr. Jim Allison, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine, introduces the good-humored raconteur and amateur musician who is equally at home in a research lab or a blues bar. Having begun his life shadowed by cancer through the loss of his mother to lymphoma when he was eleven, Allison is seen as a maverick researcher relentlessly in pursuit of the disease in the once-debunked field of immunology. Ignoring skepticism and accepted theories, his unorthodox approach and intuitive thinking about the role of T-cells in the blood ultimately leads to a major advance in the cure for cancer. Director Haney finds suspense at every turn in Allison’s story as his breakthrough becomes a five-year race to the finish against considerable odds. DCP digital. (BS)

Produced independently with grassroots support from union organizations and members, THE KILLING FLOOR was broadcast on PBS, received critical acclaim, then virtually disappeared outside of murky VHS copies. A new 4K digital restoration brings back this powerfully authentic historical drama, with events and characters drawn from real life. Beginning in 1917, the hard-hitting narrative centers on Frank Custer (Leake), who leaves his destitute Mississippi farm for the promised land of Chicago. He gets a job in the stockyards, but he soon finds himself caught in a crossfire of bitter conflicts—labor against management, union workers against non-union workers, blacks against whites—that will explode in the infamous race riot of summer 1919. Director Gunn (A RAGE IN HARLEM, DEEP COVER) draws vivid characterization against a broad canvas of the racial, ethnic, and class tensions that shook Chicago during a crucial period of turmoil and growth. New 4K DCP digital restoration. (MR)

Lurching and sprawling into new territory for comedy, this saga of one day in the life of Milwaukee medical transport van driver Vic (Galust), a conscientious young Russian American, turns into a manic melting-pot adventure. On the wacky, star-crossed day in question, Vic, who drives clients with special needs to their daily destinations, becomes the backseat protagonist in a high-energy urban road movie that puts the interlocking stories of a clutch of unscheduled passengers in the driver’s seat. Rider Tracy (Spencer), who doesn’t let a wheelchair slow down her queenly sense of command, is joined by a rambunctious group of mourners en route to an impromptu Russian funeral, including Dima (Stoianov), the life-of-the-party nephew of the deceased, and an odd assortment of regulars and hangers-on. Director Mikhanovsky’s marvelous non-professional cast of stars in the making neatly overturns any stereotypes regarding differently-abled actors, for a rollicking and profoundly touching caper. In English and Russian with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)