PMA Films: Last call for Oscar Shorts, plus nominees ‘Sirât’ and ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’!
February 17, 2026
Screening Times and Tickets:
Documentary Shorts:
Live Action Shorts:
Animated Shorts:
2026 Oscar Nominated Shorts
This year’s three Oscar Nominated Shorts packages–honoring the best in Live Action, Documentary, and Animated shorts–begin screening on February 20, and will continue running for three weeks. I’m still working my way through this year’s crop, but I had a good evening with the Documentary shorts, which are almost uniformly solid and topical. The program begins with the sole short that doesn’t directly engage politics, Alison McAlpine’s Perfectly a Strangeness, a visually striking look at a trio of donkeys who happen upon an abandoned astronomical observatory. Best in class among the other films for me were probably two shorts: All the Empty Rooms, by Joshua Seftel, chronicles an effort by journalist Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp to transcend the numbing effect of how school shootings are discussed in the media; The Devil is Busy, by Geeta Gandbhir and Christalyn Hampton, is set at an Atlanta healthcare clinic for women, and primarily focuses on the work of the clinic’s head of security, who must respect the rights of protestors while providing comfort and safety to incoming patients. (Co-director Gandbhir, it should be noted, is also nominated for her feature documentary The Perfect Neighbor, a very interesting spin on the true crime doc that is available to watch on Netflix.)
The Live Action category – often a rather grueling batch – is quite a bit lighter than it has been in recent years, with only one film (Butcher’s Stain) occupying the “tough story framed by contemporary political concerns” bucket. The other four films are, in one way or another, comedies. My favorite is maybe the opening film, The Singers, a really well-cast and handsomely assembled short set in a dive bar; it has the look of something by a hip, talented young filmmaker yet goes to very earnest places. Other crowd pleasers abound in A Friend of Dorothy and Jane Austen’s Period Drama, while the longest film on offer (Two People Exchanging Saliva) presents a surprisingly ambitious sci-fi premise inside an aesthetic that is deliberately “’90s French black-and-white perfume commercial.” It’s pretty cool.
If you’re wavering, I’d probably opt against taking young children to this year’s Animated shorts batch, the first three of which have been deemed appropriate for all audiences. Outside of Forevergreen, they have a generally mature tenor. The two most simply drawn shorts in this group were my favorites: opening short The Three Sisters, about a trio of siblings that live in separate, adjacent homes on a tiny island who are visited by a strapping sailor. Equally charming is Retirement Plan, narrated by the actor Domhnall Gleason, who recites the hopes and dreams of a man who has the rest of his life ahead of him. The most visually striking film of the batch is Papillon (Butterfly), a watercolor wonder that creatively portrays the life of Alfred Nakache, a Jewish French swimmer who competed at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Sirât
At long last, I’m excited to bring Oliver Laxe’s bold, Oscar-nominated Sirāt to our screen. The French-Spanish filmmaker, probably (until now) best known for 2016’s Mimosas, deftly mixes genre conventions with a heavy dose of existentialism, which Sirāt deploys in a shocking manner. The film follows father Luis (Sergi López) and his son Esteban (Bruno Núñez) as they search for Luis’s daughter, who is believed to be at a desert rave in Morocco. They receive the assistance of a reluctant group of traveling ravers, a remarkable ensemble that Laxe discovered during his research for the film. Their voyage through the desert takes place in the backdrop of an elusive but major armed conflict, and it transpires like a meditative Sorcerer, with moments of incredible tension. I’ll caution that Sirāt will surely upset some audience members and some of you may want to do additional research. (I gasped numerous times when I watched the film at a festival this fall.) I think one of the reasons Sirāt has caught on to the degree that it has – it is already a major favorite among filmmakers and actors — is its debt to Sorcerer and other 1970s films, marked primarily by an eagerness to delve into the existential and a refusal to qualify itself. It’s a formidable film that, in a nice piece of Oscar trivia, boasts the first all-female sound crew to be nominated for an Academy Award.
The Voice of Hind Rajab (Encore screenings)
By popular demand, we’re offering a couple more opportunities to see Kaouther Ben Hania’s Best International Feature-nominated The Voice of Hind Rajab.Like Ben Hania’s other works (Four Daughters), this is an unusual film in form – I’d call it a docudrama based on real events, which utilizes both actors and the real voice of its title character, paced to the beat of a thriller. The film received what is said to be the longest film festival ovation ever upon its premiere at Venice last year. It follows the work of Red Crescent responders as they attempt to locate and send an ambulance to five-year-old Hind, whose family has come under attack while traveling by car in Gaza.
Screening Times and Tickets:
The President’s Cake
Winner of an Audience Award and the Caméra d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, The President’s Cake is the massively impressive debut feature of Iraqi writer/director Hasan Hadi. Set in a period of economic sanctions after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in the early 1990s, the film is a modern piece of neorealism. At school, nine-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) “wins” a lottery requiring her to make a birthday cake honoring Saddam Hussein’s birthday. Ingredients and resources are scarce in her home, so she and grandmother Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat) head into the city to fill out the recipe. Their journey takes more than a few unexpected turns, which Hadi captures with striking photography and an easy way with his actors, painting a portrait of youth brushing up against the social and political realities of their era.
Past Screenings
The Day Iceland Stood Still (Free screening introduced by director Pamela Hogan)
For International Women’s Day, we’re pleased to show Pamela Hogan’s documentary The Day Iceland Stood Still, and by a happy coincidence we’re even more pleased that Hogan herself will be in attendance for the screening! She’ll deliver an introduction before the film, and will be available after the film to chat outside of the auditorium. The Day Iceland Stood Still tells the story of a grassroots feminist political movement that materialized just over fifty years ago, where nearly all of the nation’s women took the day off from work in protest of wage inequality and unfair labor conditions. Told by many of the participants themselves, the film is a fleet and inspiring portrait of organizing and communion.
Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong (with panel discussion)
The local documentary sensation Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong returns for a special screening and panel discussion organized by the Greater Portland Council of Governors. Representatives from that group, Portland Water District, and filmmaker Alex Wolf Lewis will be on hand to discuss some of the quality of life and infrastructural issues raised by this extremely winning film.
Come See Me in the Good Light
We’re very fortunate to be one of very few theaters screening the Oscar-nominated documentary Come See Me in the Good Light. Ryan White’s film follows the poet Andrea Gibson and their partner Megan Falley through Gibson’s terminal cancer diagnosis. It’s a film that insists on life and living. Gibson, the Colorado poet laureate who passed away last year, grew up in Maine and discovered poetry after moving to Colorado in the late 1990s, eventually becoming a renowned and beloved performer. White’s film is framed around Gibson’s hope to perform a final show as her health prospects fluctuate, but most of our time is spent with Gibson, Falley, and a rotating cast of visitors,in scenes teeming with humor and intimacy. It’s an inspiring portrait.
Mr. Nobody Against Putin
Pasha Talankin has what seems like one of the few jobs suiting a creative type in his rural Russian town. He’s a teacher tasked with filming all school events at his primary school, with a large office where like-minded students can gather. But his job takes on a new angle after Russian invades Ukraine, and Talankin becomes something of a forced propagandist, recording highly patriotic new ceremonies and curricula. To the Russian government, this footage serves as proof that Talankin and his teachers are following orders.
With David Borenstein, Talankin is co-director of Mr. Nobody Against Putin, one of this year’s nominees for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars. As you may expect, Talankin’s anguish over his new role and his country’s actions prompt him to take drastic actions. This film was completed after he left his job and fled the country. What he’s captured is remarkable, and resonant, a story about how quickly politics can fundamentally alter your existence, both socially and professionally. Borenstein and Talankin convey this with an intimate and often light touch; the film is perhaps as enjoyable as a story like this can be.
The Love That Remains
The Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason had something of an international breakthrough with 2022’s Godland, and ambitious and tonally complex portrait of a young priest sent on mission to rural Iceland in the 19th century. I’m an even bigger fan of Pálmason’s new film, The Love That Remains, a totally gorgeous and uniquely mounted chronicle of everyday domestic concerns. Winner of the Palm Dog at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival – this is a critics’ award honoring the best canine performance at the festival, an honor well deserved in this case – the film stars Saga Garðarsdóttir as Anna, a struggling artist with three children (two played by Pálmason’s own kids). Her marriage to industrial fisherman Magnús (Sverrir Páll Guðnason) appears to be on the outs, though this is just one of a number of mysteries Pálmason’s tantalizing sense of scene-setting and framing leaves a bit unresolved.
Instead, Pálmason elects to largely highlight the mundane as deeper feelings roil under the surface. Despite its very unique tone, the film is surprisingly (pardon the bland word) relatable. Hikes are hiked, tweenage boys behave strangely, children gently try to figure out if their normal family is indeed as normal as they believe it to be. It’s lovely stuff, all gorgeously lensed by Pálmason himself.
Arco
I’m delighted that Ugo Bienvenu’s animated film, Arco, received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature. This is a very Hayao Miyazaki-adjacent fable about a 10-year-old boy from the distant future who disobeys his parents wishes and travels back in time to 2075. There, he finds a slightly more recognizable world and a new best friend, Iris. In classic children’s story fashion, Iris’s home is essentially absent of parents (they appear in hologram form), but she and her younger sibling are looked after by a really cool robot housekeeper, Mikki. Together, Mikki, Arco, and Iris face an environmental calamity they may be able to prevent. The film is rated PG for some peril, but on the whole it’s a lovely film, featuring the voices of Natalie Portman, Will Ferrell, Flea (!), and others.
Resurrection
For American audiences, the Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan is perhaps just another brilliant young guy who puts out a dazzling movie every few years. I remain astonished to be reminded that his career in China is quite different. His previous film, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, was (erroneously!) marketed as a New Year’s date movie and topped the Chinese box office on its opening weekend. Somehow, his new Resurrection accomplished the same feat. This must be a boon to the budgets of his films, because Resurrection is quite a remarkable production: a journey through dreams and cinema unfolding over five chapters and a century of cinematic modes and styles, from the silent era to an epic, 30+ minute single-shot wonder.
For me, after one viewing (I’m eagerly awaiting another), this is a movie to experience rather than fully comprehend, though I was astounded by Justin Chang’s review in the New Yorker, which seems to have the movie pinned down quite nicely and is probably worth reading before you head into the theater. Resurrection transpires in a space that’s both quite Lynchian and very earnest, a sentimental love letter to film that explores its byways and crevices. There is simply nothing like it.
“Reflections”: Wisdom of Happiness
Thursday, January 29 at 3:30 p.m.
For those of you entering the new year seeking grounding and intention, Wisdom of Happiness ought to be just the ticket for you. The film, directed by Barbara Miller, Philip Delaquis, and Manuel Bauer, concludes our “Reflections” series and finds the Dalai Lama addressing the viewer about the challenges of modern stressors as we seek inner peace and global justice.
Magellan
- Friday, January 30 at 2 p.m.
- Saturday, January 31 at 12 p.m.
- Sunday, February 1 at 3 p.m.
- Thursday, February 5 at 3 p.m.
Balancing a hypnotic, sumptuous tone with a righteous post-colonial perspective, Magellan is the first film by the Filipino director Lav Diaz to receive a relatively wide release. Gael García Bernal stars as the explorer Ferdinand Magellan, in what is less a traditional biopic than a chronicle of the ravages of conquest. This is evident in the film’s striking opening, where an Indigenous woman in historic Malacca encounters a white man. You may be forgiven for briefly thinking this is a horror movie. Bernal is no hero as Magellan, merely a man with an iron determination that feels more myopic with the passage of time.
It’s thrilling to see Diaz working in such a grand and relatively accessible format. The filmmaker is probably one of the most widely known directors whose work goes very little seen. This is a matter of duration: Diaz’s films often run past the four- or five- hour mark, hindering their ability to receive stateside distribution. (The last one I saw was 2013’s Norte, the End of History, a terrific riff on Crime & Punishment.) He is, nonetheless, one of the progenitors of what is called “slow cinema.” Magellan marks a significant leveling up of the resources he has at hand. Here, he works with the astonishingly talented cinematographer Artur Tort: a regular collaborator with Albert Serra, Tort’s last two films (Pacifiction and Afternoons of Solitude) are some of the most beautiful I’ve seen anytime recently. So is Magellan, a 4:3 wonder filled with unreal colors and a holy approach towards the natural world.
The Voice of Hind Rajab
The last film we screened by the Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, 2023’s Four Daughters, later became the recipient of a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. As I am writing this, her new film, The Voice of Hind Rajab, seems likely to follow the same trajectory into a Best International Feature nomination. (Update: It did!) Hind Rajab is an unusual film in form – I’d call it a docudrama based on real events, which utilizes both actors and the real voice of its title character and is paced to the beat of a thriller. Ben Hania’s film received what is said to be the longest film festival ovation ever upon its premiere at Venice last year. It follows the work of Red Crescent responders as they attempt to locate and send an ambulance to five-year-old Hind, whose family has come under attack while traveling by car in Gaza.
Arco
I am sitting here waiting to find out if Ugo Bienvenu’s lovely animated film, Arco, also received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature (update: TK). Regardless, it’s well worth your time, a very Hayao Miyazaki-adjacent fable about a 10-year-old boy from the distant future who disobeys his parents wishes and travels back in time to 2075. There, he finds a slightly more recognizable world and a new best friend, Iris. In classic children’s story fashion, Iris’s home is essentially absent of parents (they appear in hologram form), but she and her younger sibling are looked after by a really cool robot housekeeper, Mikki. Together, Mikki, Arco, and Iris face an environmental calamity they may be able to prevent. The film is rated PG for some peril, but on the whole it’s a lovely film, featuring the voices of Natalie Portman, Will Ferrell, Flea (!), and others.
“Makers at the Movies”: You’ve Got Mail (1998)
Last but certainly not least, we’re excited to try something new in our theater. “Makers at the Movies” is an opportunity for local crafters to come enjoy a film with their peers while working on a project. We’ll keep the lights partially dimmed to allow you to work on your lap crafts, be they knits, crochets, or drawings. (We just ask that you refrain from bringing glitter or wet materials such as ink, paint, or glue.) This screening is presented collaboration with Olde School Fiber & Craft and Handiwork, and we’re excited to see if this is something that you’ll be interested in attending on a more regular basis. We’ll kick this off with a familiar classic, Norah Ephron’s 1998 rom-com You’ve Got Mail, starring a grinchy Tom Hanks and a radiant Meg Ryan in a faraway time where Barnes & Noble was considered a corporate villain.
After a couple of sold-out screenings presented in partnership with Points North, we’re thrilled to offer some additional screenings of Alex Wolf Lewis and Kaitlyn Schwalje’s Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong, a great documentary about the employees of the Portland Water District, whose work keeps us safe in myriad ways. Tickets have been continuing to move steadily, so it seems likely we’ll give the film another screening in February.
“Reflections”: Memoria (2021)
One of the first films I programmed in my role here at PMA Films HQ (and still one of the best of our young decade), Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria continues our series “Reflections” this weekend. Tilda Swinton stars as Jessica, a visitor to Bogotá who is suddenly plagued by a mysterious sensory illness, a loud sound that only she can hear. Her journey to locate its source begins as a pragmatic exercise, but gradually takes on mysterious political and cosmic dimensions. Weerasethakul, a Thai filmmaker and artist, is one of the giants of so-called “slow cinema,” best known for this and his Palme d’Or-winning Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Each of his films find a unique tension between modern concerns and questions that are more eternal or existential, landing on occurrences that defy explanation and learning to make piece with them. All of his films are truly special, but to witness an actress like Swinton so effortlessly inhabit the unique climate he creates is really something.
Blue Moon
Richard Linklater’s film imagines an evening where legendary songwriter Lorenz Hart, a collaborator with composer Richard Rodgers, attends the opening night party for Rodgers’ first partnership with Oscar Hammerstein II, Oklahoma! Even if you’re scantly familiar with these players, you know how this story ends. The brilliance of Ethan Hawke’s performance here is that you sense that the diminuitive Hart knows a chapter in his life has ended, too. He simply can’t help but go down swinging, full of vinegar, pride, and desperation.
I caught Blue Moon a couple of months ago, in an otherwise empty theater on a weeknight, and found myself both massively entertained and quite emotional by the time it ended. Linklater accomplishes something pretty magical, orchestrating a tour through a very specific sliver of New York social life where time seems to expand and contract like an accordion. There are beautiful performances in the margins, particularly from Patrick Kennedy as E. B. White and Andrew Scott as Rodgers, but this is Hawke’s show: he is maddening, whip-smart, and utterly free of vanity.
Father Mother Sister Brother
The first film in six years from an icon of American independent cinema, Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother garnered the top prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival and is headlined by an amazing cast, including Tom Waits, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Charlotte Rampling, and Adam Driver. A triptych of three thematically connected shorts, the film explores a variety of family dynamics, namely the half-truths we tell one another and the quiet boundaries we must overcome to connect. The result is deceptively light, an engaging, Ozuesque comedy with twinges of melancholy and a keen sense of how the passage of time reveals the ways in which we all change, as well as the ways we remain exactly the same.
La Grazia
The Italian arthouse stalwart Paolo Sorrentino reunites with actor Toni Servillo (The Great Beauty) in La Grazia, a political drama so sane and centered it can’t help but feel refreshing. Servillo (who won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for this role) plays a widowed Italian president in his final months of office, simultaneously mulling over controversial euthanasia legislation and discovering revelations about his past. I should admit this is the first Sorrentino I’ve seen, and I’m glad it was. Servillo’s commanding performance of deliberation dictates the movie’s energy, but Sorrentino deftly sprinkles moments of surrealism throughout.
The Secret Agent
Quickly climbing into the Best Picture rankings of most Oscar pundits, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent arrives to the PMA on a wave of critical adulation, particularly for Wagner Moura’s exquisite lead performance as Armando, a former professor attempting to find a landing place in the midst of Brazil’s repressive military dictatorship of the 1970s. This is the most high-profile film yet from Mendonça Filho, who has been a fixture of arthouse circles for the past decade or so (see his Aquarius, Bacarau, or Neighboring Sounds, which range from really good to pretty great).
The Secret Agent is a tough film to describe: It’s a tale of espionage, a story about a group of dissidents who believe they’ve found a safe haven, sometimes even a gleefully poppy action film. Mostly, it is invigoratingly curious, unafraid to go on entertaining diversions from its central plot and get into the theatrical release of Jaws or other urban legends of the moment. You sense that Mendonça Filho is out to illustrate how the politics of the moment infected public life and culture: Suddenly the fears we faced in the movie theater felt much more worth confronting. I’m really excited to watch it again, and if you’ve got the time, I highly recommend checking out Mendonça Filho’s recent documentary, Pictures of Ghosts, ahead of time.
After a couple of sold-out screenings presented in partnership with Points North, we’re thrilled to offer some additional screenings of Alex Wolf Lewis and Kaitlyn Schwalje’s Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong, a great documentary about the employees of the Portland Water District, whose work keeps us safe in myriad ways. Tickets for these holiday screenings are selling briskly, so I’d recommend picking one up early if you plan to attend. I’ve added one additional showtime to our calendar in January, and we’ll make space for more in February if demand persists!
Safe (1995) (30th Anniversary 4K Restoration)
I’m hard-pressed to think of a more vital and prescient American film from the 1990s than Todd Haynes’s Safe, which we’ll be showing in a brand-new 4K restoration this weekend. (We are absolutely delighted that actor Xander Berkeley, a supporting character in the film, will be on hand to introduce it on Sunday, December 21 at noon.) The film stars Julianne Moore as Carol White, a wealthy Los Angeles housewife who is suddenly stricken with a mysterious “environmental illness.” Initially considered to be a metaphor for the AIDS crisis, Haynes’ film now seems to encompass everything from wellness and influencer culture to fears of an interconnected, globalized world. Whatever it means, Safe remains a masterpiece, a tragic character study infused with elements of horror filmmaking and a striking well of empathy. Haynes remains one of our most smartest filmmakers, and this is the film where his ideas and his emotional story are most perfectly in sync.
Die Hard (1988) (Free Screening)
I’m not here to litigate any “Is [x] a Christmas movie” debates, but one of my favorite holiday traditions as a one-time Bostonian was attending an annual screening of Die Hard at the great Brattle Theatre. John McTiernan’s 1988 film, which we’ll screen for free this Thursday, is a model of intelligent and efficient action filmmaking, mixing a dollop of Reagan-era schlock with one of the great “everyman” heroes in the genre’s history. (Bruce Willis was famously best known as the romantic lead of Moonlighting before becoming John McClain.) Despite the film’s outsized legacy, it’s the plain exhaustion and strife in Willis’s face and movements that make the film resonate.
Exhibition on Screen: Caravaggio
The popular “Exhibition on Screen” series returns with one of their most ambitious works, a study of the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio. Blending scholarship, interviews with experts, and dramatic recreation, the film unravels the story of one of history’s most brilliant, complex and controversial figures.
My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow
A novelistic and urgent work of longform documentary, Julia Loktev’s My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow begins in 2021, when the journalists of TV Rain – Moscow’s only independent news channel – have been labeled “foreign agents” by Vladimir Putin’s regime. Loktev’s singular documentary (which has won numerous awards and critics prizes dubbing it the year’s best documentary in recent weeks) embeds in the homes and workplaces of TV Rain’s journalists as the regime further tightens the screws on free expression. We’re offering two opportunities to view the film in whole: a marathon screening (with two intermissions) on Wednesday, and a viewing split over two days this Saturday and Sunday.
Loktev is a distinguished narrative filmmaker (check out her 2011 film, The Loneliest Planet) with roots in the documentary world, born in the Soviet Union but raised in America. The filmmaker had relationships with some of the TV Rain journalists in the film, and this intimacy comes through immediately. Along with being a potent illustration of authoritarian creep, this is a really powerful story about balancing professional passions and domestic concerns, the hustle of modern journalism, and any number of related issues. All of this comes to a head as Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine begins in earnest.
“Fall of ‘75”: India Song (1975)
The last film in our 1975 series (probably my other great first-time watch of the year) is a fascinating mirror of the film that opened our retrospective, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman… Marguerite Duras’s India Song also stars Delphine Seyrig and is defined by its deliberate pace and a sort of plumbing of an impenetrable psyche. Where Akerman’s film is direct, Duras’s is oblique and prismatic: Most of the dialogue comes from voices off screen, and Seyrig is frequently situated in a ballroom that becomes an endlessly dynamic hall of mirrors. (The mirrors, brilliantly deployed, create some frankly incredibly tableaux.) Seyrig plays the wife of a French ambassador in Lahore, and she’s most frequently paired with Michael Ironside, as a vice consul with a strong interest in her. Duras (who was a novelist, among other things, as well as the writer of Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour) creates a humid atmosphere, nestling a melodrama in a formalist conceit that is initially off-putting, until it suddenly becomes utterly mesmerizing. The result feels something like a cross between Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad and a Begman film, though in Duras’s hands it is very much its own singular object.
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Our annual holiday screening of my beloved The Muppet Christmas Carol is nigh, and this year we’ve got a bevy of activities surrounding the screening. While you’re here, grab a free sugar cookie decorating kit from the PMA Café to take home, and stick around for a Family Puppet-Making Workshop with Mayo Street Arts educator Josie Holt (more info on that is here). We’ll also have free gift wrapping available and plenty more happening in the PMA Store and environs.
We’re pleased to welcome Project Home (formerly Quality Housing Coalition) for the premiere of a new short documentary, Finding Home, which shines a necessary light on eviction prevention and housing navigation through the lens of two former foster youths. Following the film, State Senator Chip Curry, housing advocates, and individuals with lived experience will participate in a panel discussion about the systemic issues facing young people transitioning out of foster care.
Put Your Hand on Your Soul and Walk
Sepideh Farsi’s new documentary Put Your Hand on Your Soul and Walk consists of a series of interviews between the dissident Iranian filmmaker and Fatma Hassona, a photojournalist and poet in Gaza. It’s a film about the toll of the war in Gaza, but it’s also rather uniquely a film about creating a relationship over long distances, as Farsi interviews Hassona while traveling the world touring another film of hers.
“Fall of ‘75”: Manila in the Claws of Light (1975)
We are in the home stretch of our year-long celebration of the films of 1975, and we conclude with a couple of the great cinematic discoveries of my year. First up is Lino Brocka’s Manila in the Claws of Light, an astonishing melodrama that deftly fuses more than a couple of styles. Shot with a mix of verité realism and modernist flourishes, the film stars Bembol Roco as Julio, a fisherman who arrives in the city in search of his girlfriend, who was recruited to the city with a promise of money. For Julio, just scraping by is enough of a challenge, as life becomes contingent upon the welfare of friends or strangers with ulterior motives. It’s a tough but stunning movie, every bit the stylistic equal to some of the more iconic films we’ve been showing throughout the year.
AIDS Diva: The Legend of Connie Norman (2021) (Free screening with filmmaker Dante Alencastre and Frannie Peabody Center)
We’re happy to partner with Frannie Peabody Center, EQME, MaineTransNet, and Equality Community Center on a World AIDS Day screening of the 2021 documentary AIDS Diva: The Legend of Connie Norman, followed by a discussion with filmmaker Dante Alencastre. The film chronicles the life and work of Norman, a major figure in the ACT UP movement in Los Angeles, well known for her newspaper column and pioneering LGBTQ cable television talk show.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Intense and unflinching, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is just the second feature film from Mary Bronstein, but it’s one of the most formidable pieces of direction you’ll see this year, and it’s matched by a titanic performance by Rose Byrne, a brilliant comic actor who has long deserved such a showcase. Byrne is Linda, a therapist barely holding it together while her young daughter is in the midst of extensive medical treatment, her husband is away, and her home is falling apart. “What if Uncut Gems were about motherhood?” is the tenor here, as Byrne and Bronstein probe some dark thoughts and fears with unyielding honesty. It’s a stressful but tremendously alive film, with great supporting turns by actors as disparate as Conan O’Brien (as Linda’s therapist) and A$AP Rocky as an unlikely sympathetic ear.
Urchin
If Harris Dickinson is not yet a familiar name to you, it will be. So far, the extremely talented young actor has been the best part of films such as Triangle of Sadness, Babygirl, Beach Rats, and The Iron Claw, and he has been cast as John Lennon in Sam Mendes’s upcoming four-part biopic of The Beatles. In the thick of his rise to fame, he somehow found time to write and direct his debut film Urchin, which was met with overwhelming acclaim at Cannes this year. Dickinson’s film stars a galvanizing Frank Dillane as Mike, who we first meet unhoused and addicted to drugs on the streets of London. After an incident that gets him in trouble with the law, we observe Mike fitfully attempt to put his life back together. With Dillane as the unwavering center of his film, Dickinson is clearly making a work indebted to Mike Leigh’s Naked, though this is a much more empathetic and less abrasive piece of portraiture. It’s a strong and fully considered debut, realistic and tender.
It Was Just an Accident
The work and life of Iranian master Jafar Panahi have consistently been at odds with the interests of Iran’s government. His films have been almost routinely banned in his home country – despite winning top prizes at the world’s major film festivals – and Panahi himself has been detained in prison multiple times and put under house arrest. Every feature he has shot since 2011 has been made illegally, as he remains under a 20-year ban from filmmaking. Despite this, he has continued to produce work that has been escaped out of the country and released to international audiences. Panahi’s first films after this ban were made in his home and addressed his circumstances; since then, he has grown bolder, creating films out in the world, just outside of the eyes of authorities.
It Was Just an Accident, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year and is tipped as a likely Best Picture contender at the Oscars, feels like the culmination of this phase of Panahi’s career. It betrays no impression that it was made in stealth, and it’s certainly the most riveting and mainstream feature he’s made. A moral thriller Panahi says was inspired by stories he heard from fellow inmates, the film follows a man who believes he has encountered one of the officers that tortured him in prison. Lacking a certainty that may permit him to enact some revenge, he recruits other dissidents to help identify this man. What ensues is simultaneously, tense, comic, and of the utmost seriousness. Like his peer, the late Abbas Kiarostami, Panahi often combines neorealism and a certain meta quality, drawing your attention to the act and morality of filmmaking. In It Was Just an Accident, these qualities remain, but they’re beautifully threaded into a taut, impeccable yarn.
Peter Hujar’s Day
Filmmaker Ira Sachs has quietly built a remarkably impressive and varied career, first catching my attention with 2012’s queer addiction drama Keep the Lights On through more middlebrow indie hits like Love is Strange (2014) and Little Men (2016) and the recent and ravishing Passages, which we screened in 2023. Sachs’s films are defined by their unique perspectives on familiar stories, few more so than his excellent new Peter Hujar’s Day. Based on a rediscovered 1974 interview by Linda Rosenkrantz (credited as a writer here), the film transpires over a single day, where Rosenkrantz (superbly played by Rebecca Hall) asks fledgling photographer Hujar (Ben Whishaw, terrific) what he did the previous day. Their discussion opens a unique window onto the lifestyle of a working artist in 1970s New York City, as Hujar navigates gigs with more famous artists and haggles with the New York Times. It’s a revealing, exquisitely shot film, and we’re lucky to have our Curator of Photography, Anjuli Lebowitz, join us to provide some context on Hujar’s life and work before Friday’s 2 pm screening.
For many years now, Thanksgiving weekend in our neck of the woods has meant a multi-night showcase of remarkable Beatles tribute concerts by Spencer Albee and The Walrus. In conjunction with Beatles Night and Chris Brown, we’re delighted to present a couple of films from the Beatles universe this holiday weekend, with special guest introductions. We’ll begin off the beaten path with 1971’s The Point, an animated film drawn from the album by the great Harry Nilsson, narrated by Ringo Starr. (The film originally aired on television with narration by Dustin Hoffman, but Starr replaced him for subsequent releases.) This gem is set in the Land of Point, where everyone has sharp features except for circle-headed Oblio, who is exiled to the Pointless Forest. Dan Sonenberg, Professor and Director of Composition Studies at the University of Southern Maine, will introduce the film.
“Beatles on Film”: A Hard Day’s Night (1964) (Introduction by Pat Callaghan)
Dare I admit that I have never seen this classic, which effectively reinvented the movie musical and paved the way for many enduring film trends? Oops. Happy to make amends for that on November 29, where we’re grateful to have local legend and news icon Pat Callaghan introduce Richard Lester’s 1964 film, which captures the Fab Four at the early peak of their fame in a burst of feverish, irreverent energy.
“Fall of ‘75”: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Also on view over the holiday weekend is another anti-establishment classic, as part of our “Fall of ’75” series. Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of three films to have swept the five major categories at the Academy Awards, and it’s in many ways representative of the New Hollywood filmmaking of the time, mixing a rakish spirit with emphatic social messaging. I’m not sure if this is still one of the first movies from the ‘70s most young people see, but it remains an ideal gateway into the era. This was Forman’s second film made in America, and its legend is legion: The casting section of the movie’s Wikipedia is quite a read, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler was famously fired from the project despite having already shot the vast majority of it.
“Fall of ‘75”: Nashville (1975)
Finishing off this fortnight is simply one of the great American films, directed by a man who’s made more than a couple of them. Set over a long weekend in a city teeming with strivers of all different sorts, Nashville is the epitome of an Altman film: it’s rich with overlapping dialogue and a massive ensemble cast, simultaneously cohesive and unruly, difficult to pin down totally, and it leaves you in an awestruck daze. Rooted in the country music industry but filled with outsiders and fading talents, Nashville functions best as a political allegory, as a set of entrenched powers face new voices vying for attention and popularity. It’s no accident that the film builds to a rally for an insurgent political campaign, nor that its themes are just as relevant as they’ve always been. It’s a film that, in its particulars, no one seems to agree on. Is the music good? Is it intended to be? Does Altman approach his characters with cynicism or curiosity? I feel like my answers to these questions have changed a bit every time I’ve seen Nashville, and to me that’s a sign of an enduring piece of art.
“Fall of ‘75”: Three Days of the Condor (1975)
It has been a tremendous pleasure to be obligated to do image searches of the late Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor. The peacoat, the wire-frame glasses, that hair. The actor simply never looked better than he did in Sydney Pollack’s iconic paranoid thriller. Redford stars as Joe Tuner, a CIA analyst who (delightfully) works at a research center posing as the “American Literary Historical Society.” When he returns from a lunch break and encounters quite a mess, he is sucked into an elaborate international scheme, though he does have time to develop a rather odd relationship with Faye Dunaway’s Kathy Hale. (The sexual politics of this film are unfortunate enough that they were debated in a famous scene in Steven Soderbergh’s great Out of Sight.) Despite all this, Dunaway and Redford are excellent in Pollack’s compulsively watchable film, which is said to have inspired the KGB to expand the scope of their clandestine operations.
The Mastermind
I can barely move around here without crashing into a gorgeous, perceptive piece of writing about The Mastermind, the latest (and perhaps greatest?) film from American treasure Kelly Reichardt. We are so delighted to be the exclusive Portland home for this terrific film. Reichardt’s oeuvre has broadened in recent years, from a new strand of American neorealism (Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy) into period pieces (Meek’s Cutoff, First Cow) and something like a conventional comedy (Showing Up), but some things remain constant in the Reichardtverse: Life means work and work means money, but almost always not enough. The Mastermind is about a man who thinks he’s smart and talented enough to find a way out of this cycle, and it’s Reichardt’s most ingenious riff on her perennial concerns.
In a 1970 Massachusetts realized with stunning attention to detail (the movie was somehow filmed in Ohio), James Mooney (Josh O’Connor, in lovely, hangdog, La Chimera mode) lives a modest life he can’t afford. An art school dropout with a wife (Alana Haim) and two sons, Mooney decides that security at his local museum is lax enough that he can get away with stealing some art and selling it illicitly. Like most great American stories, this heist, and Mooney’s life, is a confidence game. The question is whether Mooney believes in himself, or if anyone else does either. A film full of process, replete with a propulsive jazz score, The Mastermind is fixated on detail but still leaves space to tell a broader story about a man increasingly unmoored from his family, his generation, and ultimately himself.
“Fall of ‘75”: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
Our jaunt through the cinema of 1975 in cinema continues with Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film, recently named the best of the 1970s by Indiewire. Just to be clear here: This is a notorious film, banned upon its release in many countries (it remains banned in some nations) for its depictions of depraved sexual and fetishistic content. Proceed with caution! Despite being 50 years old, it’s still quite a lot to take. All that said, Salò is also one of the most methodical and unsparing critiques of fascism and human cruelty ever put to film, and it’s frankly dizzying to consider how Pasolini’s abduction and murder (which is still unsolved) transpired before this film was even released.
This will be a really special event. I’m greatly looking forward to taking the stage with artist Denis Boudreau and filmmaker Heidi Burkey to discuss Final Frontier, a wonderful short documentary that recently screened at the Camden International Film Festival. Boudreau, an artist who also manages a family farm, has continued to work despite losing his vision. Burkey’s film evocatively illustrates his process, as well as his personal inspirations. What’s more: After our discussion, we’ll head over to our friends for a reception at Flatiron Coffee Bar (594 Congress St.), where Denis will be displaying his work for the month of November.
“Zombies: A Brief History”: 28 Years Later
The final installment of our speedrun through alt-zombie cinema is quite recent: Danny Boyle’s long-overdue reboot 28 Years Later. I have barely shut up about this movie for four months. A classic hero’s journey filtered through the mind of a mid/late career director who is still finding ways to innovate, this is the most singular and visually exhilarating studio tentpole since Mad Max: Fury Road. Essentially a clean reboot of a dormant franchise, Boyle’s near-future vision imagines a British populus who have largely isolated themselves (Brexit much?) from a plague that has ravaged the island (Covid much?). This is a film with much to say about the state of the world, though perhaps not in the ways you might expect. It’s a poignant vision that also happens to feature some of the most avant-garde filmmaking ideas recently smuggled into a mainstream film, and it’s also a simply wild ride, with a narrative that seems to reset genres every twenty minutes or so without losing a bit of coherence. I think it’s a pretty amazing film, and I assure you I’ve won every argument I’ve had to that effect.
“Zombies: A Brief History”: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
A brilliantly entertaining alien invasion-meets-zombie film steeped in post-Vietnam paranoia, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers comes to us in a snazzy 4K restoration. A remake of Don Siegel’s 1956, this one stars Donald Sutherland and a great ensemble cast as an ad hoc crew combating a stealth alien invasion which turns human beings into bodies lacking emotion and empathy. Needless to say, it still feels relevant almost 50 years later.
“Zombies: A Brief History”: I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
I’ve been negligent in organizing proper spooky season screenings here in recent years, but my atonement begins in earnest this weekend with a trio of very different and very excellent offbeat zombie films. “Zombies: A Brief History” begins with one of the best new-to-me films I’ve come across in recent years: Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie. A short film that is long on sumptuously eerie atmosphere, Zombie is set on a Caribbean sugar plantation, where an ailing wife is suffering from a mysterious condition and her nurse is suffering from an attraction to the patient’s husband. The vibes become increasingly surreal as the nurse looks towards the island’s Vodou culture for a potential cure for her patient. Not only a supreme example of Tourneur’s knack for mise en scene and sheer vibes, the film is a subtly sharp critique of colonialism. It’s also a masterpiece.
2025 Sundance Film Festival Indigenous Film Tour
We will be open with free admission all day this coming Monday, in honor of Indigenous Peoples Day. As part of a full day of events and activities, we’re offering two free screenings of the latest Sundance Film Festival Indigenous Shorts tour, a mix of both narrative and documentary shorts by Indigenous filmmakers from around the world. Both screenings will be presented with open captions.
“Fall of ‘75”: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
A film that transcends genre classifications, Peter Weir’s elusive and hypnotic Picnic at Hanging Rock continues our “Fall of ’75” series. I don’t have that many monoliths left on my to-watch list, but Weir’s film loomed large for me until I finally sat down with it last fall and discovered that it wasn’t what I thought it was. Often lumped in on “best horror films” lists, Weir’s film indeed centers around a horrifying event, but it’s one we don’t see and can’t explain: the (fictitious) disappearance of a group of school girls on a field trip to a dormant volcano. It’s less a mystery than a film about absence and independence. Picnic is one of those great films that seems to exist entirely on its own wavelength, skirting obvious genre conventions in search of answers to more abstract questions. You can tell that Sofia Coppola learned a lot from this one.
The Last Class (Encore Screening)
After drawing some great crowds last month, it’s time for an encore screening of The Last Class, Elliot Kirschner’s fleet and effective new documentary about the last year of Robert Reich’s career as an educator. We are offering discounted educator pricing for these screenings, which follow the diminutive former Secretary of Labor (under Bill Clinton) as he navigates a changed educational landscape and a political moment where his clarity and wisdom is perhaps needed more than ever. We’re happy to be showing this one at the beginning of the school year, as one of the most impressive things about the film is the way in which Reich manages to connect with a classroom of many hundreds of students in spite of his stature and wonkish approach to the curriculum.
Orwell: 2+2=5
Since the remarkable success of his 2016 documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck has continued to study the generational harms wreaked by racist and colonialist impulses, most notably in his bold HBO series Exterminate All the Brutes, already the sort of project it is difficult to see entering production today. Always ready to meet the moment and fill it with historical context, Peck’s new film brings the work and language of George Orwell into the 21st century by way of a stunning use of montage, overlaying contemporary tragedies and menace over the author’s words (narrated by actor Damian Lewis). It’s a heavy but undeniably urgent piece of work.
The Summer Book
A fine adaptation of the beloved book by Tove Jansson, Charlie McDowell’s The Summer Book stars both former Mainer Glenn Close and someone quite beloved by me. You’ll be seeing more of Anders Danielsen Lie this fall (he is reliably exquisite in the films of Joachim Trier, and has a part in the hotly anticipated new Sentimental Value), but it’s a treat to see him sporting beautiful fits here, in a leading role as a father grieving the loss of his wife. In an attempt at returning to normalcy, he brings daughter Sophie (Emily Matthews) and her grandmother (Close) to their summer residence on the Gulf of Finland. This is a lovely work of adaptation, tranquil but not somnambulant, sure of its tone and captured with an independent spirit.