Since 2000, Film Comment Selects has held sneak peeks of upcoming releases, showcased ecclectic international and avant-garde films, and given retrospectives to rare and overlooked directors.
Introduction by director Ulrich Seidl and star Margarethe Tiesel!
Inexperienced middle-aged sex tourist Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel) travels to a luxurious Kenyan holiday resort looking for carnal satisfaction, but soon discovers that her adventure in exotic sexual gratification comes at a price.
Cinematographer Ed Lachman in person for Q&A!
The daily routine of devout Catholic Anna Maria (Seidl regular Maria Hofstätter) is interrupted by the return of her estranged, wheelchair-bound husband, whose background puts a whole new spin on her religious devotion and launches a deadpan, tit for tat grudge match.
Ulrich Seidl in person for a post-screening conversation about his Paradise trilogy!
In this unsentimental and unconventional coming of age narrative, Seidl concludes his trilogy by circling back to the realm of sexuality with the story of Teresa’s overweight 13-year-old daughter Melanie (Melanie Lenz), who has been shipped off to a weight-loss camp in the countryside while her mother vacations in Kenya.
In a conversation moderated by Phillip Lopate, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke will discuss their new film as well as their nearly 20-year collaboration that now spans three features.
Villa Amalia (2009): Benoît Jacquot reteams with Isabelle Huppert for this beautifully realized story of a woman in free fall after discovering her husband is having an affair.
Deep in the Woods (2010): Isild Le Besco and Nahuel Perez Biscayart are extraordinary in this feverish tale of a grotesque 19th-century amour fou between a middle class village girl and a mesmerizing, feral vagabond.
BASEketball (David Zucker, 1998): Trey Parker and Matt Stone combine basketball and baseball to invent a new national sport: Baseketball. After achieving superstar status as pro-athletes, they must battle to prevent the ideals of the NLB from being undermined. Journey psyche-outs abound.
Ruthless People (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, 1986): In this black comedy, millionaire Danny DeVito plots to murder obnoxious wife Bette Midler, but embittered former associates Judge Reinhold and Helen Slater kidnap her first. Bill Pullman’s film debut.
U.S. Premiere!
Philippe Grandrieux in person!
Grandrieux pushes the limits of the visible and sheds all vestiges of narrative to enter a state of total immersion that’s at once disembodied yet deeply physical, metaphysical yet grounded in the primordial reality of the body.
Closing Night! U.S. Premiere!
Cast members in person!
Michel Gondry’s delightful and wholly unexpected lo-fi experiment is a mobile kammerspiel set entirely on a crowded bus wending its way through the Bronx as it takes its high-school student passengers home on the last day of school.
Opening Night! New York Premiere!
Director Antonio Campos, actor Brady Corbet, and producers Josh Mond and Matt Palmieri in person!
A chilling death dance plays out in Paris between a troubled, possibly unhinged American graduate (Brady Corbet) and a French prostitute (Mati Diop). The screening will be followed by a reception in the Walter Reade Theater's Furman Gallery open to all ticketholders.
U.S. Premiere!
Images: four landscape shots containing a replica of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s cabin, one per season. Sound: the filmmaker’s readings from Kaczynski’s texts and diary.
U.S. Premiere!
A romantic connection blossoms between two young Parisians over the course of a succession of dreamlike nocturnal visits to the singular, beguiling Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.
New York Premiere!
A country caravan tour spins horribly out of control when a very English couple embark on a romantic getaway that gradually escalates into all-out killing spree in this blackly funny new outing from rising indie star Ben Wheatley (Kill List, Down Terrace).
A middle-aged dentist with a quietly unraveling life makes repeated and poignantly ineffectual efforts to renew his relationship with his ex-wife and adolescent daughter in this low-key and unexpected melancomédie from the co-director of Whisky.
In this kinetic, fuel-injected thriller, a secret high-speed-pursuit unit of the Hong Kong Police called the Stealth Riders battle with underworld getaway drivers through the city’s nocturnal maze of streets and highways.
A delirious tale of filmmaking, love, betrayal and crime set in the sleazy demi-monde of gangster-controlled Bollywood exploitation film production.
U.S. Premiere!
After a four-year hiatus, Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns with this five-part, made-for-television psychological drama/murder mystery that tests viewer endurance, and truly rewards it.
This quietly spellbinding and masterfully directed follow-up to My Joy is a gritty behind-enemy-lines drama in which an alleged Nazi collaborator faces execution by partisans.
New York Premiere!
In this creepy low-fi indie, two children return to their parents after disappearing in the wilds, unharmed but not quite themselves. Once home, strange things start happening…
A Film Comment Double Feature!
Howard Zieff’s underrated 1975 comedy about the early days of Hollywood western filmmaking Hearts of the West, starring Jeff Bridges and Alan Arkin, on a double bill with his 1973 caper comedy Slither, in which James Caan demonstrates his comedic chops.
U.S. Premiere!
An impoverished civil servant faces a desperate family crisis in this nighttime kammerspiel starring Michael Lonsdale, Claudia Cardinale Jeanne Moreau and Oliveira axiom Leonor Silveira.
A compelling drama in which four interrelated characters struggle with the moral impasses and compromises of modern life. With Isabelle Huppert and Toni Servillo.
A deeply-felt, epic father-and-son drama chronicling the tumultuous life and times of a provincial mining-town family in the 1950s. One of New Taiwanese Cinema’s masterpieces.
Based on a true story, and subject of a major controversy in Sweden last year, this inevitably semi-lurid but never exploitative drama is about the corruption of a 14-year-old girl lured into a prostitution ring catering to the political establishment in the 1970s.
Bergman’s rarely-screened study investigates the underlying emotional and psychological causes that lead a middle class business executive to murder a prostitute. Never available on DVD in the U.S.
February 18 - February 28 | Film Comment Selects 2013
We are pleased to welcome Christopher Nolan for this special program about the making of the Dark Knight films and the many other facets of his remarkable career, featuring film clips and an extended conversation moderated by Film Comment contributing editor Scott Foundas.
Fahrenheit 451: Truffaut’s sole foray into English language filmmaking and science fiction is a cool, stylish adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic allegorical novel about a world where books are forbidden and firemen are tasked with starting fires not putting them out.
Something Wicked This Way Comes: An underappreciated adaptation of Bradbury’s 1962 novel about a sinister traveling carnival, from director Jack Clayton (The Innocents).
Director William Friedkin, writer Tracy Letts, and stars Matthew McConaughey and Gina Gershon in person!
Oscar-winning director William Friedkin (The French Connection) and Pulitzer- and Tony-winning playwright Tracy Letts (August: Osage County) reteam for this darkly comic adaptation of Letts’ off-Broadway play, in which a small-time drug dealer (Emile Hirsch) enlists a professional hitman (Matthew McConaughey) to bump off his shrewish stepmother for a $50,000 life insurance policy.
Sneak preview!
In this chilling old-dark-house movie by The Blair Witch Project co-director Eduardo Sánchez, a newlywed former addict (Gretchen Lodge) returns to her childhood home to begin a new life, whereupon strange disturbances erupt in the dead of night.
Guy Maddin in person!
In a bold departure, Guy Maddin’s latest is a dense and cryptic trance film in which a Forties-era gangster (Jason Patric) confronts spectral emanations from his own troubled psyche inside a labyrinthine house.
January 17 - | Film Comment Selects: Haywire
