Columbia Film Society

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder — and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, ruthless computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a series of grotesque murders from almost forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. Based on the trilogy of books by Stieg Larsson, who died suddenly in 2004 soon after delivering the manuscripts to his publisher.

In Swedish · 152 min

The Ghost Writer

Roman Polanski's political thriller is his best work in years. A young, broke, hard-drinking hack writer (Ewan McGregor) signs on to rewrite the memoirs of a retired, Tony Blair-like Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan). Holed up at a Martha's Vineyard estate, Lang is accused of having turned over captured terrorist suspects to the CIA for rendition and torture. All hell breaks loose, and the atmosphere inside the house turns barbed and dangerous. Polanski used the dour north coast of Germany as a substitute for the Vineyard in winter, and cinematographer Paweł Edelman turns the constant downpour and gloom into a beautiful, slate-colored curtain — a subdued but enveloping field of lies and secrecy, impenetrable to the Ghost, who is lost among power players far too clever for him. With the wonderful Olivia Williams as Lang's brilliant wife.

In English · 128 min

Still Walking

The three generations who gather together in Hirokazu Kore-eda's quiet, stirring film fit uneasily under the same roof. Set in a port city but largely played out in the tight, boxy confines of a single home, the film turns on a melancholic, at times seethingly angry 15th-anniversary reunion to mark the death of the eldest son. Grief has brought the scattered family members together and seems all that they have left in common. The story builds through an accretion of details — shared glances, gestures, and conversation. As with the disordered arc of many family gatherings, food is cooked and consumed amid a great deal of small talk, children laugh loudly and run free. Among other things, Still Walking is very much about what it means to return to a home that you helped create, animating it with spirit and love, and then left behind.

In Japanese · 114 min

The Secret in Their Eyes

A recently retired criminal court investigator, Benjamín, decides to write a novel based on a 25-year-old unresolved rape and murder case that still haunts him. Sharing his plans with Irene, the beautiful judge and former colleague he has secretly been in love with for years, Benjamín's initial involvement with the case is shown through flashbacks as he sets out to identify the murderer. But his search for the truth will put him at the center of a judicial nightmare, as the mystery of the heinous crime continues to unfold in the present, testing the limits of a man seeking justice and personal fulfillment at last. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

In Spanish · 127 min

An Education

Peter Sarsgaard gives his best performance yet as David Goldman, a London hustler of enormous charm who zips around town in a maroon sports car and slowly, patiently seduces a very bright 16-year-old girl — Jenny (Carey Mulligan), a student from suburban Twickenham hemmed in by her cautious parents and rather too easily dazzled by champagne, a few dinner clubs, and a weekend in Paris. Based on a short memoir by journalist Lynn Barber, the movie is set in 1962, when England was gradually emerging from postwar austerities. What makes the film unusual is the strange innocence of Sarsgaard's seducer: David is a liar and swindler, but he is as eager as Jenny for pleasures of every kind. The novelist Nick Hornby did the adaptation; director Lone Scherfig is alive to the social nuances of class and money in England. With Emma Thompson as a formidable, stupid, anti-Semitic schoolmistress.

In English · 100 min

Please Give

Writer-director Nicole Holofcener's radiant comedy of middle-class mores depends on observations so acute, and a touch so accurate, that the movie, even as it borders on satire, strikes us as intensely sympathetic to its characters. Holofcener is great at awkward social scenes in which conversation goes absurdly awry, but she's ambitious too, and her movie explores such large and grave matters as the ambivalent nature of benevolence and the exhausting but inescapable necessity of family loyalty. Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt play a married couple who run a Manhattan antique-furniture store; their anguished, pimply daughter has the relentlessly logical egocentricity of a smart, moody adolescent. Next door lives a grouchy old woman visited by her two granddaughters — a virtuous wallflower and a selfish, hard-nosed cosmetician. The movie feels loose and easy, but it has actually been designed with great rigor.

In English · 90 min

Munyurangabo

Lee Isaac Chung's debut feature opens with the taut threat of violence as the titular teenage character steals a machete from a street market — packing it away in his knapsack for an unstated purpose. What's remarkable about this much-lauded film is how it slowly steers its way from portent to poetry. Munyurangabo's quest is simple: grisly revenge against the soldier who murdered his father in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Yet the journey is filled with complicating factors, most resulting from his friendship with Sangwa, a young runaway returning home after a three-year absence. Sangwa's family drama provides humanizing insight into the Hutu community for which Munyurangabo, a Tutsi, harbors such enmity, while the fervent words of a poet bring necessary context to the genocide's lingering effects.

In Kinyarwanda · 97 min

Winter's Bone

Even before the real trouble starts — with suspicious lawmen on one side and a clan of violent drug dealers on the other — Ree Dolly faces more than the usual litany of adolescent worries. Her father, locally renowned for cooking methamphetamine, has vanished, and her emotionally hollowed-out mother has long since abandoned basic parental duties, leaving Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) to run the household and care for her two younger siblings. The family lives in southwestern Missouri, a stretch of the Ozarks that is both desolate and picturesque — words that might also suit Debra Granik's tender and flinty adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's novel. Warmly embraced at Sundance.

In English · 100 min

Me and Orson Welles

A vivid view of Orson Welles (Christian McKay) at twenty-two, as seen through the eyes of a cocky teenager (Zac Efron) from New Jersey who bluffs his way into Welles's Mercury Theatre group in 1937. The plot is conventional — the young man gets initiated into sex and the many other fascinating and complicated rites of the grown-up world, warmed up and then burned by people more experienced and ruthless than he is. But the details of the production that Welles stages (a modern-dress Julius Caesar) are fascinating, and at the center stands the seductive and bombastic young genius. McKay has the necessary stature and vaunting authority, an easy way with a cigar, and a strong voice. The picture has great spirit and considerable charm — it's about the giddiness of promise, the awakening of young talents to a moment when anything seems possible.

In English · 114 min

Of Gods and Men

Loosely based on real events, this film is about a group of French monks in Algeria inhabiting a remote monastery in the Atlas Mountains, tending to the needs of local Muslim villagers — an ideal of charity which finds itself under threat. Islamic unrest creeps close, and the monks cannot agree whether to flee in the hope of safety, or to stay and serve. There are long debates and passages of chanted prayer, yet the film rarely stalls; we feel the gathering shadow of the characters' plight, and the darkness is finely leavened by Michael Lonsdale, who plays Brother Luc, the community's doctor and the fount of its tolerant humor. The climax is both misty and unforgettable: a sacrifice that looks like a ghost story.

In French & Arabic · 122 min

Poetry

The women and few men sitting at their desks in Poetry have open faces and smiles — good pupils, these older people who have come to a cultural center to learn. Perhaps because they have chosen to be there, they don't have the look of sullen resentment that glazes the faces of the high school students glimpsed now and again. Instead these latter-day bards gaze at the man who has come to say something to them about art and maybe life. He holds up an apple and talks about seeing — the importance of seeing the world deeply. This is at the heart of this quietly devastating, humanistic work from South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong.

In Korean · 139 min

Another Year

Class consciousness has frequently played a role in Mike Leigh's films, and not only because, as a storyteller whose native terrain is modern Britain, he can hardly hope to avoid it. Another Year is about the unequal distribution of happiness. Why do some people — like Tom and Gerri, the post-'60s 60-something couple at the center of this episodic story — seem to have an inexhaustible supply, while others seem unable to acquire even the smallest portion? Can happiness be borrowed, stolen, or inherited? Is it earned by meritorious works or granted by the obscure operations of grace? These may sound like abstract questions, but they could hardly be more serious or more relevant.

In English · 129 min

Incendies

Denis Villeneuve's Incendies, a film very much occupied with some of the grisly realities of recent history, nonetheless has the structure and atmosphere of an ancient folk tale. It is a quest narrative about children searching out the mysteries of their parentage, and also the story of a resourceful heroine — the mother of those children — surviving an almost unimaginable series of ordeals. These entwined plots unfurl in the recognizable modern world — in Quebec and an unnamed country closely resembling Lebanon — and at the same time in an allegorical universe governed by the tightly coiled logic of fate. The knotted destinies of its characters are like the family secrets in a Shakespearean comedy but turned to a darker purpose.

In French, Arabic & English · 130 min

Win Win

Recession-era blues and vagrant hopes in suburban New Jersey. Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), a lawyer who works with elderly clients and coaches high-school wrestling on the side, commits a small act of fraud to make some extra money for his family. He's not a bad guy, just a temporizing, overworked man hungry for a little success. He takes in an emotionally cut-off runaway kid who turns out to be a terrific wrestler, and has to figure out how to keep the kid's druggy mother out of the picture. Writer-director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor) is good at capturing the irregular rhythms of strangers barging into each other's lives and forming an impromptu new family. The movie is amiable and funny.

In English · 106 min

Beginners

Father and son Hal (Christopher Plummer) and Oliver (Ewan McGregor) are both newbies in Mike Mills's beautifully shaped autobiographical drama about the opportunity to remodel one's life, at any age, to make more room for happiness. After the death of his wife of 44 years, Hal comes out of the closet, flourishes in a loving relationship with a younger man, and faces a diagnosis of terminal cancer. When Oliver meets the free-spirited Anna (Mélanie Laurent) shortly after his father's death, he recognizes just how much of a beginner he himself is when it comes to long-lasting romantic love. Plummer creates an inspiring, fully rounded man in late bloom, and McGregor responds with a performance to match.

In English · 105 min

In a Better World

This year's Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film is a fine example of Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier's talent for weaving together accessible domestic melodrama and issues of ethical awareness. Swedish star Mikael Persbrandt plays a humanitarian doctor who devotes himself to medicine in an African refugee camp, a despairing witness to the ravages of brutal tribal revenge. He later returns home to Denmark to find that his sensitive son has fallen under the sway of a well-mannered school friend mourning the death of his mother by acting out his own darker impulses. Bier's film asks but doesn't answer: Is the male urge for violence innate? Is it passed from father to son? And if so, how can we teach our children well?

In Danish · 119 min

The Trip

A hilarious and touching road movie starring actor-comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as (slightly) exaggerated versions of their real selves — like a funnier, flakier, madcap British version of My Dinner with André. The conceit is that Coogan gets a magazine assignment to review a dozen outrageously pretentious country restaurants in the chilly north of England. The entire movie consists of the two driving, eating, and talking. They do their dueling impersonations of Michael Caine (the funniest scene of the year). They trade quips, insults, poems, and philosophies. They sing wistful snatches of ABBA and Kate Bush. The Trip looks like a lark — and is — yet there's a sneaky resonance to the way it celebrates what acting means to these two rogue cutups.

In English · 107 min

Midnight in Paris

The past seems so much more vivid, more substantial, than the present — and then it evaporates with the cold touch of reality. Woody Allen's charming film imagines what would happen if that wish came true. It is marvelously romantic, even though — or precisely because — it acknowledges the disappointment that shadows every genuine expression of romanticism. The film has the inspired silliness of some of Allen's classic comic sketches, spiked with the rueful fatalism that has characterized so much of his later work. Nothing here is exactly new, but why would you expect otherwise in a film so pointedly suspicious of novelty?

In English · 94 min

The Kid with a Bike

Thomas Doret belongs on the short list of non-professional kid actors who, aided by gifted directors, deliver truly astounding performances. It's impossible to tear one's eyes away from him in this typically naturalistic, unsentimental drama from the superb Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne — about a sad, furious 11-year-old boy, abandoned by his father and taken in by a hairdresser (Cécile de France), to her own surprise. No one charts the wilds of childhood more precisely than the Dardennes. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes.

In French · 87 min

Monsieur Lazhar

Philippe Falardeau's gentle, perceptive drama takes viewers by the hand, not the throat, leading them through volatile emotional territory with assurance, compassion, and lucid, steady-eyed calm. Deceptively simple and straightforward, the film resembles a clear, clean glass of water: transparent, utterly devoid of gratuitous flavorings, and all the more bracing for it. Fellag, a well-known actor in Algeria, plays the title character — a teacher in Montréal who signs on as a substitute at a middle school after the sudden departure of a beloved teacher. Falardeau has done an astonishing job finding child actors: Sophie Nélisse and Émilien Néron stand out as Alice and Simon. Like that glass of cool water, Monsieur Lazhar achieves its own sort of crystalline perfection in simply telling the truth.

In French · 94 min

A Separation

A compact and forbidding drama written and directed by Asghar Farhadi. We find ourselves in the crack that has opened up in an Iranian marriage: Nader wants things to remain as they are, while his wife Simin has plans to move abroad. Stuck between them is their daughter Termeh, the most perceptive presence in the film. This volatile state of affairs awaits detonation, and it arrives in the form of Razieh, a devout woman who comes to work for the feuding couple; a string of errors and accidents sets off a shock wave of class, gender, age, faith, and death. The movie, though packed with exasperated souls, is itself a model of equability. The cinematography by Mahmoud Kalari makes cunning use of space, insuring that the film's title reaches far beyond a question of law. Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

In Farsi · 123 min

I Wish

How does Hirokazu Kore-eda do it? His films are so casually infused with graceful realism, they make other movies feel painfully stilted and false. Our charming heroes are pre-teen brothers Koichi and Ryu (played by real-life siblings), who have been separated since their anxious mother walked out on their dreamer dad. When Koichi hears that a new bullet train is about to connect the two cities where they live, he enlists his friends in a plan he's convinced will reunite their family at last. Kore-eda does extraordinary work with his young cast, who deliver gentle, natural performances in a beautifully told story of heartbreak and hope. Deceptively modest and utterly lovely — one of the most magical films about childhood in recent memory.

In Japanese · 128 min

Footnote

An acidly entertaining comedy about scholarship and power. In Jerusalem, at the Hebrew University, Eliezer Shkolnik and his son Uriel are both students of the Talmud — Eliezer a sombre seeker of scientific certainty, Uriel a mover and opportunist, a man of the media. Their relationship comes to a crisis when the government makes a ridiculous mistake in bestowing the prestigious annual Israel Prize. Director Joseph Cedar takes a sardonic view of both men, who represent two kinds of vanity. The film comes to a climax with a ferocious argument in a tiny room, a scene that is half Marx Brothers, half Sophocles. That room, we realize, is Israel itself — a place in which everyone is wary and perhaps overprepared to fight.

In Hebrew · 103 min

Bernie

A quirky tragi-comedy starring Jack Black as a meticulous mortician, a faithful Methodist, a good neighbor, and an improbable murderer — a true-life Texas tale so perfectly told it seems more like eavesdropping than moviegoing. This is writer-director Richard Linklater at his wry, whimsical best. Always an articulate voice for closely observed stories of ordinary lives and random encounters, the filmmaker has truly come home in Bernie. His East Texas roots, where the movie unfolds, can be felt in every scene of this love letter to the ways and wiles of small-town gossips with a juicy story to spread about one of their own.

In English · 104 min

Beasts of the Southern Wild

In this extraordinary, strikingly original post-Katrina fable, acting novice Quvenzhané Wallis — all of 6 years old when she shot the movie — radiates an amazing gravity and poise as a little Louisiana girl called Hushpuppy. She lives with her ailing, drinking daddy in a dirt-poor but happy Delta community called the Bathtub, a dip of marshland outside New Orleans particularly vulnerable to flooding. The place is part real and part magical: the girl leads a believable, if dangerously unsupervised, existence; she's also unfazed by her visions of the prehistoric aurochs who, in a bit of environmental mythology, return to earth summoned by catastrophic weather. The whole movie resists categorization — a feat of homemade, collaborative filmmaking, it is a thing of beauty and originality.

In English · 91 min

Tomboy

The startling power of Tomboy, a beautiful, matter-of-fact French drama about a young girl who wants to be a boy — and for one singular summer around her 10th birthday passes as one — begins with the one-of-a-kind natural performance by Zoé Héran as Laure. Taking her family's move to a new neighborhood as a chance for reinvention, she introduces herself as Mickaël, happily playing sports with the guys and even attracting a romance-minded girl. Equally admirable in Céline Sciamma's hopeful drama: Laure's empathetic parents.

In French · 84 min

Le Havre

Named for the industrial port city in northern France where it takes place, Le Havre is a tale of lower-depths solidarity — a stylized and sentimental fairy tale about the way the world might be, grounded in a frank recognition of the way it is. About a young African refugee who comes under the protection of a French shoeshine man and his neighbors, the film could easily have become a grimly realistic exercise in guilt-inducing consciousness-raising. But Aki Kaurismäki, the prolific Finnish filmmaker, does not rub our faces in hardship. Figuring that we already know something about how harsh life can be, he reminds us of its modest charms and fleeting beauties, and of how easy it is, in the face of cruelty, to behave decently.

In French · 93 min

Amour

Cinema feeds on stories of love and death, but how often do filmmakers really offer new or challenging perspectives on either? Michael Haneke's Amour — Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film — is devastatingly original and unflinching in the way it examines the effect of love on death, and vice versa. It's a staggering, intensely moving look at old age and life's end, which at its heart offers two performances of incredible skill and wisdom from French veteran actors Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva. Among so many other things, this is a film about loyalty and being true to your word. A masterpiece.

In French · 127 min

Fill the Void

The story told by Rama Burshtein in her remarkable debut feature has an almost classical simplicity. Shira, a young woman living in an ultra-Orthodox enclave in Tel Aviv, faces a choice not unlike those faced by the heroines of Jane Austen novels. After a courtship conducted according to the rules of her community, Shira is engaged to a soft-spoken fellow. Her happiness is quickly overshadowed by the death of her beloved older sister, who leaves behind a newborn son and a husband, Yochay. The possibility begins to emerge that Yochay might marry Shira. Nobody suggests this is a perfect solution, but it offers practical and emotional advantages — especially to Shira's mother, who can't bear the thought that Yochay might leave Israel with her only grandchild. Burshtein emphasizes both the loneliness of her heroine's predicament and its implications for those closest to her.

In Hebrew · 90 min

No

On October 5, 1988, after 15 hard years under a dictatorship, the Chilean public voted No — as in, enough already — in a historic national plebiscite that removed General Augusto Pinochet from power. Pablo Larraín's superb, Oscar-nominated, fact-based drama explores the power of popular dissent, and the coordinated persuasions of media, marketing, and targeted advertising in shaping the word no to invigorate a populace pessimistically conditioned to think that nothing will ever change for the good. Gael García Bernal is typically soulful as a fictional adman who devises the effective and unexpectedly upbeat campaign, even while his agency boss works for Team Yes. The movie uses period detail, archival footage, and '80s-era technology to create an excellently authentic document of a great democratic accomplishment.

In Spanish · 118 min

A Hijacking

Danish director Tobias Lindholm spins an exacting drama out of a crisis in this deft, vérité-style account of Somali piracy in the Indian Ocean. Full credit to A Hijacking for resisting the siren call of Hollywood histrionics in favor of the nuts and bolts. The actual hijack passes almost unnoticed. Instead, Lindholm homes in on its grinding, grisly aftermath, showing us the tense chess game of hostage negotiation and the shifting loyalties within the stricken cargo ship. The little details all ring true — right down to the spluttering fury of the pirate's spokesman, mortally offended at being regarded as anything other than an impartial translator. Don't shoot him; he's just the messenger.

In Danish · 103 min

What Maisie Knew

Henry James's short novel was suggested by a friend's casual mention of "some luckless child of a divorced couple" caught in a custody fight. James's interest was, as always, less in the sensational aspects of the story than in the window it offered into the relational dynamics of human psychology. In our own time, divorce and its consequences seem more banal than scandalous, but James's tale of a young girl "rebounding from racket to racket like a tennis ball or a shuttlecock" as her parents pursue their own narcissistic ends still has the power to trouble and to shock. Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel set the story in 21st-century Manhattan, taking liberties with the plot while remaining true to James's original design.

In English · 99 min

Stories We Tell

In this inspired, genre-twisting film, Oscar-nominated writer-director Sarah Polley discovers that the truth depends on who's telling it. Polley is both filmmaker and detective as she investigates the secrets kept by a family of storytellers, playfully interviewing and interrogating a cast of characters of varying reliability, eliciting refreshingly candid yet mostly contradictory answers to the same questions. As each relates their version of the family mythology, present-day recollections shift into nostalgia-tinged glimpses of their mother, who departed too soon. Stories We Tell explores the elusive nature of truth and memory, but at its core is a deeply personal film about how our narratives shape and define us — always complicated, warmly messy, and fiercely loving.

In English · 108 min

Barbara

Winner of the Best Director prize at the Berlin Film Festival, Christian Petzold's latest film is a simmering, impeccably crafted Cold War thriller starring the gifted Nina Hoss — in her fifth lead role for the director — as a Berlin doctor banished to a rural East German hospital as punishment for applying for an exit visa. As her lover from the West carefully plots her escape, Barbara waits patiently and avoids friendships with her colleagues — except for André, the hospital's head physician, who is warmly attentive to her. But even as she finds herself falling for him, Barbara cannot be sure that André is not a spy. A film of glancing moments and dangerous secrets, painting a haunting picture of a woman being slowly crushed between the irreconcilable needs of desire and survival.

In German · 105 min

Mud

A first-rate adventure film about two teenage Arkansas boys — Ellis, who lives on a houseboat with his warring parents, and Neckbone, who is being raised carelessly in a trailer by his scapegrace uncle. They escape at dawn, hit the river, and discover a fugitive, Mud (Matthew McConaughey), living on an island in the Mississippi. Mud has long been in love with a white-trash goddess (Reese Witherspoon), and the two cast-adrift boys, stirred by his situation and by their own need to know that love can last, struggle to get them back together. Watching the boys in the wild, plotting and foraging on Mud's behalf, we can't help thinking of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. Writer-director Jeff Nichols brings a strong feeling for the tactility of natural elements — water, wood, terrain, weather.

In English · 130 min

Renoir

Set on the French Riviera in the summer of 1915, Gilles Bourdos's lushly atmospheric drama tells the story of celebrated Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, in declining health at age 74, and his middle son Jean, who returns home to convalesce after being wounded in World War I. The elder Renoir is filled with a new, wholly unexpected energy when a young woman miraculously enters his world — Andrée, blazing with life and radiantly beautiful, who becomes his last model and the wellspring of a remarkable rejuvenation. At the same time, Jean also falls under the spell of the free-spirited young Andrée. Their beautiful home and majestic countryside reverberate with familial intrigue, as both Renoirs, père et fils, become smitten with the enchanting and headstrong young muse.

In French · 111 min

The Lunchbox

Middle-class housewife Ila is trying to add some spice to her marriage through her cooking, hoping a special lunchbox will arouse some reaction from her neglectful husband. But it is mistakenly delivered to Saajan, a lonely man on the verge of retirement. A note in the following day's lunchbox begins a remarkable correspondence — their messages becoming small confessions about loneliness, memories, regrets, and joys, as two strangers find an unexpected anchor in the vast, crushing city of Mumbai.

In Hindi · 104 min

Ilo Ilo

Set in Singapore during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Ilo Ilo chronicles the day-to-day drama of the Lim family — troublesome grade-schooler Jiale and his overstressed parents — as they hire Teresa, a Filipino immigrant, as a live-in maid and nanny. An outsider in both the family and Singapore itself, Teresa initially struggles to manage Jiale's antics, but the two eventually form a unique bond, just as unforeseen circumstances in an uncertain economy challenge the new normal yet again.

In Mandarin · 99 min

The Great Beauty

Journalist Jep Gambardella (the dazzling Toni Servillo) has charmed and seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades. When his sixty-fifth birthday coincides with a shock from the past, he finds himself unexpectedly taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the extravagant parties and cafés to find Rome in all its glory. "If you know Fellini's La Dolce Vita, you'll be unable to watch The Great Beauty without thinking about it." Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 2014.

In Italian · 142 min · San Francisco Examiner

The Past

Following a four-year separation, Ahmad returns to Paris from Tehran at his estranged French wife Marie's request, to finalize their divorce so she can marry her new boyfriend Samir. During his tense brief stay, Ahmad discovers the conflicting nature of Marie's relationship with her teenage daughter — and efforts to improve things soon unveil a secret from the past. Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi "pursues his exploration of guilt, choice, and responsibility in a superbly written, directed, and acted drama that commands attention every step of the way."

In French & Farsi · 130 min · Village Voice

Short Term 12

Destin Daniel Cretton's drama of astonishing emotional purity is set in a group foster home, where deeply troubled teenagers try to patch a makeshift family from their community of fellow foster children. The situation has a built-in heartbreak, but Cretton doesn't milk it — instead letting each character strike a note of lived-in reality rarely found on screen. Brie Larson and John Gallagher Jr. "show you what emotionally naked acting is all about."

In English · 96 min · Entertainment Weekly

Wadjda

The first feature film from Saudi Arabia — where movie theatres are banned — tells the story of a spirited 10-year-old girl willing to do just about anything to buy her first bicycle. "With impressive agility, Wadjda finds room to maneuver between harsh realism and a more hopeful kind of storytelling. There is warmth as well as austerity in Wadjda's world, kindness as well as cruelty, and the possibility, modestly sketched and ardently desired, of change." Director Haifaa Al-Mansour, forbidden from mixing with the men in her crew, often directed via walkie-talkie from the back of a van.

In Arabic · 98 min · New York Times

Boyhood

Filmed over 12 years with the same cast, Richard Linklater's groundbreaking Boyhood tells the story of growing up as seen through the eyes of Mason (Ellar Coltrane), who literally grows up on screen before our eyes. Starring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as Mason's parents, the film charts the rocky terrain of childhood like no other. "Mr. Linklater both captures moments in time and relinquishes them as he moves from year to year — embracing time in all its glorious and agonizingly fleeting beauty." Screened at 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday.

In English · 165 min · New York Times

Still Mine

Based on true events and laced with wry humor, Still Mine tells the heartfelt tale of Craig Morrison (James Cromwell), who comes up against the system when he sets out to build a more suitable house for his ailing wife Irene (Geneviève Bujold). Blindsided by local building codes and bureaucratic officials, Craig races to finish the house amid stop-work orders — and is eventually hauled into court, facing jail. A truly inspirational story. Winner of the Audience Award at the 2013 Rehoboth Film Festival.

In English · 102 min

Mr. Turner

This film explores the last quarter century of the great if eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851). Profoundly affected by the death of his father, he travels, paints, stays with the country aristocracy, visits brothels, is a popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, and has himself strapped to the mast of a ship to paint a snowstorm. "What a glorious film this is, richly and immediately enjoyable. It's funny and visually immaculate; it combines domestic intimacy with an epic sweep and has a lyrical, mysterious quality that perfumes every scene, whether tragic or comic."

In English · 149 min · The Guardian

Ida

18-year-old Anna (stunning newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska), a sheltered orphan raised in a convent, is preparing to become a nun when the Mother Superior insists she first visit her sole living relative. Naïve, innocent Anna soon finds herself in the presence of her aunt Wanda, a worldly and cynical Communist Party insider, who shocks her with the declaration that her real name is Ida and her Jewish parents were murdered during the Nazi occupation. This revelation triggers a heart-wrenching journey into the countryside — to the family house and into the secrets of the repressed past — evoking the haunting legacy of the Holocaust and the realities of postwar Communism. Winner of the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

In Polish · 82 min

Leviathan

Andrey Zvyagintsev's new film stars Aleksey Serebryakov as Kolya, a man who dwells by the sea on Russia's Kola Peninsula. The climate is curiously temperate, but the land is spare, unforgiving, and wild — a good match for the roughness of our hero. He is a hard drinker, but no one here drinks softly: not the cops, not the visiting lawyer from Moscow, and least of all the local mayor, who tries to bully Kolya into giving up his home for redevelopment. In amassing these small parochial lives, Zvyagintsev hints at something rotten in the body politic — scaly with corruption, pickled in alcohol, and inflamed by the rhetoric of the Church. Yet the movie is neither spiteful nor disorderly; the camera stays unshakably calm. Winner of the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

In Russian · 142 min

Far from the Madding Crowd

Thomas Hardy's classic Victorian tale about one woman's dueling desires for feminist independence and fiery passion has been catnip for filmmakers dating back to 1915, the most famous adaptation being the 1967 incarnation starring Julie Christie. But Thomas Vinterberg's latest version is, hands down, the best yet. With a steely resilience burning beneath her delicate, creamy complexion, Carey Mulligan brings remarkable nuance and a rich inner life to the role of Bathsheba Everdene — a modest English country girl who inherits her late uncle's farm, leading to a wealth of choices most women at the time wouldn't dare to dream possible. Those include a trio of romantic suitors: the earthy shepherd (Matthias Schoenaerts), the rich and slightly bumbling landowner next door (Michael Sheen), and the rakish bad boy in uniform (Tom Sturridge).

In English · 119 min

Two Days, One Night

The latest gut-punch import from the Dardenne brothers may be set in Belgium, but it has a timeliness and urgency that feel right at home in America now. The peerless Marion Cotillard stars as Sandra, a mother, wife, and factory worker who learns she's been laid off after taking a leave of absence due to a nervous breakdown. Her co-workers were given the option of either letting her go or forfeiting their year-end bonuses, which in most cases are sorely needed. Desperate to hold on to her paycheck, she spends the weekend going door-to-door, hat in hand, campaigning for compassion with her husband by her side. With her wide, sad eyes and quiet air of embarrassment tinged with pride, Cotillard's Sandra asks a question not only of her colleagues but of the audience: Are we willing to put aside our own self-interest for the sake of empathy? Are we cowardly or brave?

In French · 95 min

Seymour: An Introduction

Meet Seymour Bernstein: a virtuoso pianist, veteran New Yorker, and true original who gave up a successful concert career to teach music. In this wonderfully warm, witty, and intimate tribute from his friend Ethan Hawke, Seymour shares unforgettable stories from his remarkable life and eye-opening words of wisdom, as well as insightful reflections on art, creativity, and the search for fulfillment. So effectively does the documentary close the distance between you and Mr. Bernstein that afterward you may find yourself scanning the streets, hoping to catch sight of him, as if for an old friend.

In English · 81 min

Tangerines

Set in 1992, during the growing conflict between Georgia and Abkhazian separatists in the wake of the Soviet Union's dissolution, this compassionate tale focuses on two Estonian immigrant farmers who decide to remain in Georgia long enough to harvest their tangerine crop. When the war comes to their doorsteps, Ivo takes in two wounded soldiers from opposite sides. The fighters vow to kill each other when they recover, but their extended period of recovery has a humanizing effect that might transcend ethnic divides. Set against a beautiful landscape defiled by war, this poetic film makes an eloquent statement for peace.

In Estonian & Russian · 87 min

About Elly

A terrific film written and directed by Asghar Farhadi prior to making the Academy Award-winning A Separation and The Past, now getting a well-deserved U.S. release. Like Farhadi's other films, it is full of subtle motivations and believable characters, building intense emotional involvement as the story unfolds. Sepideh arranges a weekend getaway to the seashore with three couples and includes Ahmad, the newly-divorced brother of one of them, home from Germany looking for a wife. She also invites — with considerable arm-twisting — Elly, the sweet but shy kindergarten teacher of her daughter. Everyone is having a good time until tragedy suddenly strikes, with a mysterious disappearance. Recriminations ensue, lie piles upon lie, and relationships are strained to breaking point.

In Persian · 119 min

I'll See You in My Dreams

In this vibrant, funny, and heartfelt film, a widow and former songstress discovers that life can begin anew at any age. After the death of her beloved dog, Carol (Blythe Danner) finds the everyday activities that have given her life structure — her regular bridge game, gardening, a glass of wine or two — have lost their luster. With the support of three loyal girlfriends, Carol decides to embrace the world, embarking on an unlikely friendship with her pool maintenance man (Martin Starr), pursuing a new love interest (Sam Elliott), and reconnecting with her daughter (Malin Åkerman). A beautiful and smart coming-of-old-age film.

In English · 92 min

Testament of Youth

At their best, war films humanize unfathomable losses in a way that history books never quite can. Alicia Vikander stars as real-life memoirist Vera Brittain, a privileged young Englishwoman whose idyllic world is shattered by the onset of World War I. A blossoming feminist with writerly ambitions, she abandons a hard-won spot at Oxford to follow her brother and his friends — including the aspiring poet Roland (Kit Harington) — into combat the only way she can: by becoming a battlefield nurse. The film is beautifully shot, but its best visual asset is Vikander herself. Not just because she's gorgeous but because she lets every nuance play across her endlessly expressive face: love, fear, anger, heartbreak. Lost youth is easy to idealize; her testament makes it feel true.

In English · 129 min

Mustang

Early summer in a village in northern Turkey: five free-spirited teenage sisters splash about on the beach with their male classmates. Though their games are merely innocent fun, a neighbor reports what she considers to be illicit behavior to the girls' family. The family overreacts, removing all "instruments of corruption" — cell phones and computers — and essentially imprisoning the girls, subjecting them to endless lessons in housework in preparation for them to become brides. As the eldest sisters are married off, the younger ones bond together to avoid the same fate. The fierce love between them empowers them to rebel and chase a future where they can determine their own lives. A powerful portrait of female empowerment, and a nominee for Best Foreign Film.

In Turkish · 97 min

45 Years

There is just one week until Kate Mercer's (Charlotte Rampling) 45th wedding anniversary and the planning for the party is going well. But then a letter arrives for her husband (Tom Courtenay). The body of his first love has been discovered, frozen and preserved in the icy glaciers of the Swiss Alps. By the time the party is upon them five days later, there may not be a marriage left to celebrate. The devastating truth of 45 Years, so beautifully wrought, is that even the most devoted couples are made up of two people who are essentially alone.

In English · 93 min

Diplomacy

As the Allies march toward Paris in the summer of 1944, Hitler gives orders that the French capital should not fall into enemy hands — or if it does, "only as a field of rubble." The person assigned to carry out this barbaric act is Wehrmacht commander of Greater Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, who already has mines planted on the Eiffel Tower, in the Louvre and Notre-Dame, and on the bridges over the Seine. Then, at dawn on August 25, Swedish Consul General Raoul Nordling steals into German headquarters through a secret underground tunnel and there starts a tension-filled game of cat and mouse as Nordling tries to persuade Choltitz to abandon his plan.

In French & German · 84 min

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

In Israel there is neither civil marriage nor civil divorce. Only rabbis can legitimate a marriage or its dissolution — but this dissolution is only possible with full consent from the husband, who in the end has more power than the judges. Viviane Amsalem has been applying for divorce for three years. But her husband Elisha will not agree. His cold intransigence, Viviane's determination to fight for her freedom, and the ambiguous role of the judges shape a procedure in which tragedy vies with absurdity. One of the best films of the year, Gett is bound to be compared to the Oscar-winning A Separation; but if anything, it is an even more artful evocation of a bureaucratic nightmare.

In Hebrew · 115 min

Love & Friendship

An adaptation of Jane Austen's novella Lady Susan — written when she was 19 and not published in her lifetime. Set in the opulent drawing rooms of 18th-century English society, the film focuses on the machinations of a beautiful widow, Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale), who, while waiting for social chatter about a personal indiscretion to pass, takes up temporary residence at her in-laws' estate. The intelligent, flirtatious, and amusingly egotistical Lady Vernon is determined to be a matchmaker for her daughter Frederica — and herself too, naturally. She enlists the assistance of her old friend Alicia (Chloë Sevigny), but two particularly handsome suitors complicate her orchestrations. This may be the best Jane Austen film adaptation ever made.

In English · 92 min

Fireworks Wednesday

Asghar Farhadi's third feature follows Rouhi, a betrothed woman who works for a local housekeeping agency. When she accepts an assignment cleaning the home of an affluent married couple about to leave on vacation, this newcomer is quickly sucked into a virulent nuptial conflict of deceit, treachery, and vitriol that challenges all of her presuppositions about the nature of married life. By cloaking the events of the household in ambiguity and constantly shifting the central perspective from one character to another, Farhadi adds depth and complexity to the work. Though the film's title refers in the metaphoric sense to the explosiveness of domestic strife, the events coincide with the firework-strewn Persian New Year, lending the title a literal significance as well.

In Persian · 102 min

Theeb

1916. While war rages in the Ottoman Empire, Hussein raises his younger brother Theeb ("Wolf") in a traditional Bedouin community isolated by the vast, unforgiving desert. The brothers' quiet existence is suddenly interrupted when a British Army officer asks Hussein to escort them to a water well along the old pilgrimage route to Mecca. So as not to dishonor his recently deceased father, Hussein agrees to lead them on the long and treacherous journey. The young, mischievous Theeb secretly chases after his brother, but the group soon find themselves trapped amidst threatening terrain riddled with Ottoman mercenaries, Arab revolutionaries, and outcast Bedouin raiders. A nominee for Best Foreign Film.

In Arabic · 100 min

The Dark Horse

Based on the true story of Genesis "Gen" Potini, a Māori speed-chess champion seeking redemption and a new purpose in life despite his struggles with bipolar disorder. A former chess prodigy, Gen is brilliant and charismatic, bringing unusual, potent energy to a game most often played with quiet reserve. Upon his release from an institution, he is remanded into the custody of his older brother Ariki, the leader of a rough street gang planning the initiation of Gen's reluctant teenage nephew Mana. When Gen volunteers to coach the ragtag young members of the Eastern Knights chess club, Mana is inspired by his uncle's determination to bring hope to the children of the club and turn his troubled life around.

In English · 124 min

Sing Street

Irish director John Carney builds on the musical journey he started in Once, with delightful results. Sing Street takes us back to 1980s Dublin seen through the eyes of a 14-year-old boy named Conor who is looking for a break from a home strained by his parents' relationship and money troubles. He finds a glimmer of hope in the mysterious, über-cool and beautiful Raphina, and with the aim of winning her heart he invites her to star in his band's music videos. There's only one problem: he's not part of a band — yet. She agrees, and now Conor must deliver what he's promised, forming a band with a few lads and immersing himself in the vibrant rock music trends of the decade. Sing Street is a film that is almost impossible to watch without a smile on your face.

In English · 106 min

The Salesman

Asghar Farhadi's second foreign-language Oscar. Emad and Rana, married theater actors co-starring in a Farsi production of Death of a Salesman, move into a new apartment — one where the previous occupant, a loose woman according to neighbors, has not cleared out all of her belongings. One night while Rana is home alone, she is attacked by an intruder. Marital problems ensue as Emad insists on tracking down the perpetrator. It is in the midst of this painful tale of crime and punishment that the spirit of Willy Loman makes its improbable, powerful, and surprisingly literal return. The Salesman is about trust and honor, about violence against women in a patriarchal society, about the woe that is in marriage — but it is also about death, a salesman, and the hidden brutality of class.

In Persian · 125 min

Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer

This compulsively watchable film features Richard Gere in one of his best performances ever, written and directed by the acclaimed Israeli filmmaker Joseph Cedar in his first English-language film. Gere plays Norman Oppenheimer, a well-dressed, well-spoken Manhattanite — a type known in Yiddish as a macher. Norman travels the circuits of money and influence, always just a few capillaries removed from the beating heart of power. His mental Rolodex swells with the names of the good and the great, every one of them "a very close friend." He'd be happy to introduce you. Norman is a nearly mythical figure, a creature sprung from the annals of Jewish literature and the films of Mel Brooks and the Coen brothers.

In English · 118 min

I, Daniel Blake

Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, the latest from legendary director Ken Loach is a gripping, human tale about the impact one man can make. Gruff but good-hearted, Daniel Blake is a man out of time: a widowed woodworker who's never owned a computer, he lives according to his own common-sense moral code. But after a heart attack leaves him unable to work and the state welfare system fails him, the stubbornly self-reliant Daniel must stand up and fight for his dignity, leading a one-man crusade for compassion that will transform the lives of a struggling single mother and her two children. A moving, much-needed reminder of the power of empathy from one of the world's greatest living filmmakers.

In English · 100 min

A War

Like his film A Hijacking, Danish writer-director Tobias Lindholm's drama — an Academy Award nominee — explores the theme of moral compromise with an uncomfortably astringent honesty. In the heat of combat, a commanding officer named Claus makes the sort of risky judgment call that war demands every day. When that choice claims civilian lives, Claus descends into guilt, unsure that he should even mount a defense for himself in the martial trial that follows. But nothing is ethically clear-cut in Lindholm's take on the high cost of conflict: "justice" is a slippery concept when a soldier might be able to do the most good by lying to exonerate himself from a war crime.

In Danish · 115 min

After the Storm

Hirokazu Kore-eda's After the Storm follows divorced dad Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), a failed novelist and gambling addict, looking to put his life back together. When we first meet him, he's raiding his mom's apartment, searching the possessions of his recently deceased father for anything he might be able to sell. Ryota wasn't a particularly attentive father or husband before his marriage fell apart, and only now, after the fall, does he realize the value of what he's lost. Renewing contact with his initially distrusting family, he struggles to take back control of his existence and to find a place in the life of his young son. After the Storm crosses cultural lines to offer timeless observations about parental responsibilities, personal bonds, and the capacity for forgiveness.

In Japanese · 117 min

The Innocents

Warsaw, December 1945: the Second World War is finally over and Mathilde is treating the last of the French survivors of the German camps. When a panicked Benedictine nun appears at the clinic one night begging Mathilde to follow her back to the convent, what she finds there is shocking: a holy sister about to give birth and several more in advanced stages of pregnancy. A non-believer, Mathilde enters the sisters' fiercely private world, dictated by the rituals of their order and the strict Reverend Mother. Played with restraint and individuality by a fine ensemble, this is a moving but provocative study of belief, duty, compassion, and acceptance — an emotionally involving film, with scenes as beautiful as oil paintings.

In French & Polish · 115 min

20th Century Women

Set in Santa Barbara, 20th Century Women follows Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening), a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son Jamie at a moment — 1979 — brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women in Jamie's upbringing: Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields' home, and Julie (Elle Fanning), a savvy and provocative teenage neighbor. A poignant love letter to the people who raise us and the times that form us, as this makeshift family forges fragile connections that will mystify and inspire them through their lives. While all the cast are sublime, this is Bening's film — a subtle tour de force as the crumbling heroine of a feminist epic.

In English · 118 min

Hell or High Water

An exciting neo-western with a surprisingly political undercurrent. Director David Mackenzie draws on the Old West mythos to tell this contemporary story of robbers driven to crime not by greed and status but by economic distress and desperation. While the film underscores the roots and effects of systemic poverty, these issues are mostly there as subtext; the film's plot is ingenious, its action beats tense and cleanly executed, and the characters are riveting. Ben Foster's trigger-happy thrill-seeker, Chris Pine's rational man with a purpose and a plan, and Jeff Bridges's wise old lawman are so well drawn and authentically acted that the dialogue scenes are as thrilling as the shootouts.

In English · 102 min

Maudie

Based on a true story, Maudie is an unlikely romance in which the reclusive Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke) hires a fragile yet determined woman named Maudie (Sally Hawkins) to be his housekeeper. Maudie — bright-eyed but hunched, with crippled hands — yearns to be independent and to live away from her protective family, and she yearns, passionately, to create art. Unexpectedly, Everett finds himself falling in love. The film charts Everett's efforts to protect himself from being hurt, Maudie's deep and abiding love for this difficult man, and her surprising rise to fame as a folk painter. Hawkins disappears into the performance, capturing Maudie's physical limitations but also the light in her eyes, the sly humor in her observations about life, and her gift for seeing the greatest beauty in the simplest things.

In English · 115 min

A Fantastic Woman

Winner of the 2018 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. There are few breakthrough performances for trans women in the history of cinema. This makes Daniela Vega's heartbreaking performance an essential piece of film history. Director Sebastián Lelio delivers a mesmerizing portrait of defiant femininity, with Vega as a transgender woman reeling from the death of her older male partner. While his family mostly rejects her, she maintains her independent spirit through a series of hardships while figuring out a way forward, single-handedly carrying the movie on her fierce gaze. The title does not lie: in A Fantastic Woman, Vega gives us just that in every scene.

In Spanish · 100 min

The Florida Project

Six-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) and her rebellious mother Halley (Bria Vinaite) live week to week at "The Magic Castle," a budget motel managed by Bobby (Willem Dafoe), whose stern exterior hides a deep reservoir of kindness and compassion. Despite her harsh surroundings, the precocious and ebullient Moonee has no trouble making each day a celebration of life, her endless afternoons overflowing with mischief and grand adventure as she and her ragtag playmates fearlessly explore the utterly unique world into which they've been thrown. Unbeknownst to Moonee, however, her delicate fantasy is supported by the toil and sacrifice of Halley, who is forced to explore increasingly dangerous possibilities in order to provide for her daughter.

In English · 111 min

The Rider

Based on a true story, The Rider stars breakout Brady Jandreau as a once rising star of the rodeo circuit who is warned that his competition days are over after a tragic riding accident. Back home, Brady finds himself wondering what he has to live for when he can no longer do what gives him a sense of purpose: to ride and compete. In an attempt to regain control of his fate, Brady undertakes a search for new identity and tries to redefine his idea of what it means to be a man in the heartland of America.

In English · 104 min

The Insult

In today's Beirut, a civilian dispute blown out of proportion finds Tony (Adel Karam), a Lebanese Christian, and Yasser (Kamel El Basha), a Palestinian refugee, facing off in court. As the media circus surrounding the case threatens a social explosion in divided Lebanon, Tony and Yasser reconsider their values and beliefs as revelations of trauma complicate their understanding of one another. The Insult uses its familiar courtroom drama framework to deliver a hard-hitting statement on modern Middle Eastern politics that is as gripping as it is thought-provoking.

In Arabic · 112 min

RBG

At the age of 84, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has developed a breathtaking legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. But without a definitive Ginsburg biography, the unique personal journey of this diminutive, quiet warrior's rise to the nation's highest court has been largely unknown, even to some of her biggest fans — until now.

In English · 98 min

The Death of Stalin

The one-liners fly as fast as political fortunes fall in this uproarious, wickedly irreverent satire from Armando Iannucci (Veep, In the Loop). Moscow, 1953: when tyrannical dictator Joseph Stalin drops dead, his parasitic cronies square off in a frantic power struggle to be the next Soviet leader. Among the contenders are the dweeby Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), the wily Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi), and the sadistic secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale). But as they bumble, brawl, and backstab their way to the top, just who is running the government? Combining palace intrigue with rapid-fire farce, this audacious comedy is a bitingly funny takedown of bureaucratic dysfunction performed to the hilt by a sparkling ensemble cast.

In English · 107 min

Green Book

When Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), a bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, is hired to drive Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a world-class Black pianist, on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South, they must rely on The Green Book to guide them to the few establishments then safe for African Americans. Confronted with racism, danger — as well as unexpected humanity and humor — they are forced to set aside differences to survive and thrive on the journey of a lifetime.

In English · 130 min

Sweet Country

Sam, a middle-aged Aboriginal man, works for a preacher in the outback of Australia's Northern Territory. When Harry, a bitter war veteran, moves into a neighboring outpost, the preacher sends Sam and his family to help Harry renovate his cattle yards. But Sam's relationship with the cruel and ill-tempered Harry quickly deteriorates, culminating in a violent shootout in which Sam kills Harry in self-defense. Sam becomes a wanted criminal for the murder of a white man and is forced to flee with his wife across the deadly outback, through glorious but harsh desert country. As the true details of the killing start to surface, the community begins to question whether justice is really being served.

In English · 113 min

Summer 1993

In the summer of 1993, following the death of her parents, six-year-old Frida moves from Barcelona to the Catalan countryside to live with her aunt and uncle, now her new legal guardians. The country life is a challenge — time passes differently in her new home, and the nature that surrounds her is mysterious and estranging. She now has a little sister for whom she has to care, and has to deal with new feelings such as jealousy. Often, Frida is naively convinced that running away would be the best solution to her problems. Yet the family does what it can to achieve a fragile new balance and bring normality to their life. Slowly, Frida realizes that she is there to stay and has to adapt to her new environment.

In Catalan · 97 min

Woman at War

With a masterful melding of the serious, the comic, the ridiculous, and the musical, Woman at War is joyful to experience though difficult to sum up. Halla is a 50-year-old independent woman who, behind the scenes of a quiet routine, leads a double life as a passionate environmental activist. In her non-activist life, Halla is a peace-loving choirmaster who has large pictures of Gandhi and Nelson Mandela on her living room walls and smiles at everyone she meets. While this film is dealing with elemental matters, the director is having too much fun to get all solemn about it. Woman at War is a beautiful hoot.

In Icelandic · 101 min

Shoplifters

In its quiet, achingly tenderhearted way, Shoplifters — winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes — is a heresy. It suggests that we're born into families of strangers (or worse) and that we find our true families, the people who genuinely care for us, among strangers we meet in the world. Shoplifters presents a clan of con artists as a force for love. It's in theory the worst family movie of 2018 — and in practice one of the year's best films. Another triumph for the great writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda.

In Japanese · 121 min

If Beale Street Could Talk

Making a follow-up to Moonlight was a virtually impossible task, and adapting James Baldwin for the big screen was arguably even more daunting. Yet Barry Jenkins accomplished both — delivering an intelligent, thoughtfully made love story that depicts society's grave injustices without letting go of its protagonists' fierce bond. In recreating 1970s Harlem, Jenkins paints the frame with luxurious and surprising color, and captures the humor, verve, and considerable complexity of Baldwin's prose. But none of it would come off without the work of Beale Street's magnificent cast, including Oscar winner Regina King.

In English · 119 min

Cold War

Paweł Pawlikowski's Cold War tells a vast story through a narrow lens. It plays almost as the shadow twin of Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg: two lovers, separated by geopolitical events, against a backdrop of music. In this case the lovers are Polish members of a musical troupe, buffeted by the upheavals of the Soviet empire in the 1950s and early 1960s. The movie packs more raw emotion into its slender 89-minute running time than many good and far lengthier films do. And its black-and-white evocations of Warsaw, Berlin, and especially Paris will take your breath away. "Time doesn't matter when you're in love," one character tells another. Cold War simultaneously proves and refutes this maxim.

In Polish, German & French · 89 min

Roma

Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Roma, set in the 1970s Mexico City of Alfonso Cuarón's youth, is the director's most personal movie to date and easily his best. From its opening frames to its closing ones, it is a masterpiece of cinematic technique — the story of a well-off family told through the eyes of its indigenous maid. For a while the film seems like it will be principally an exercise in visual storytelling (Cuarón handled the utterly stunning black-and-white cinematography himself). But before it runs its course, Roma will nail you to your seat. It will shock you. It will break your heart and then put it back together again. You will not see a better picture this year.

In Spanish · 135 min

Eighth Grade

Most movies about teenagers, even the good ones, can't quite capture the sheer emotional intensity of the adolescent experience. Eighth Grade is not most movies about teenagers. Star Elsie Fisher is essential to the film's resonance, playing painfully insecure, smartphone-obsessed eighth grader Kayla with a vulnerability that would be remarkable from an actor of any age, let alone one too young to drive. You want to hug her and snatch the phone from her hand at the same time. First-time director Bo Burnham and actress Fisher deftly manipulate the film into a warm, observant, endlessly relatable symphony of mortification.

In English · 93 min

Graduation

Acclaimed filmmaker Cristian Mungiu presents this searing human saga about a father driven to extremes in order to protect his daughter's future. Romeo Aldea is a seemingly honest doctor who regrets having settled in his native Romania, a country still teeming with corruption and back dealings. He channels his ambitions for a better life onto his teenage daughter Eliza, who is just one exam away from securing a scholarship to a prestigious British university. But when Eliza is attacked on the eve of her test, endangering her ability to pass, Romeo takes matters into his own hands. A masterful look at the complex moral choices and compromises some people make when desperation takes hold.

In Romanian · 128 min

Becoming Astrid

A gorgeous piece of heritage filmmaking that chronicles a character-forming period in the young life of Swedish writer Astrid Ericsson, who would go on to worldwide fame as Astrid Lindgren, one of the most beloved children's authors ever. Doing right by this national treasure in her most formative stage, Becoming Astrid proves that the eventual creator of Pippi Longstocking and Ronia the Robber's Daughter was as strong and determined as her characters. With a vibrant performance from fresh-faced Alba August as the lead, the film makes one eager for more episodes from Lindgren's astonishingly unconventional life.

In Danish & Swedish · 123 min

The Cakemaker

A beautiful film that explores love, loss, and religion. Thomas, a young and talented German baker, is having an affair with Oren, an Israeli married man who dies in a car crash. Thomas travels to Jerusalem seeking answers regarding Oren's death. Keeping his secret to himself, Thomas starts working for Anat, his lover's widow, who owns a small café. The film has been called "sad and sweet, and with a rare lyricism" that "believes in a love that neither nationality, sexual orientation, nor religious belief can deter."

In Hebrew & German · 113 min