Films this week 6/26/2026 to 7/2/2026
by Gary Palmucci | 26th June 2026 | Gary's Corner
Last Saturday afternoon over a hundred patrons poured into our ‘summer residency’ at Columbus Circle’s Museum of Arts and Design for a screening of the ebullient new music doc, Peter Asher: Everywhere Man. It was the largest audience to grace a New Plaza Cinema screening since January 2020; we’re looking forward to many more of you discovering what we think is currently the ‘best-kept secret’ of upper west side moviegoing.
Everywhere Man will be back this Saturday, along with the riveting murder mystery Unidentified, from Saudi filmmaker Haifaa Al-Mansour. We’ll also be marking the third anniversary of our premiere screening of the downtown 1980’s NYC art scene doc Make Me Famous, which has played numerous packed NPC shows since its 2023 debut. Director Brian Vincent and producer Heather Spore – and perhaps a special guest or two – will join us afterward for a Q&A.
This weekend’s other film is very special – Silent Friend from Hungarian filmmaker Ildiko Enyedi, who over the past four decades has produced a small but remarkable body of work ; you might recall her 2017 Oscar nominee On Body and Soul, still a Netflix perennial.
Her latest film, set in a German university over three separate time periods spanning two centuries, weaves a unique narrative of a trio of characters conducting botany experiments that test the communicative powers of nature. One of them, a neuroscientist (played by the great Hong Kong actor Tony Leung of Wong kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love) unable to conduct his regular research during the COVID crisis, finds a possible ‘connective tissue’ with his predecessors in a centuries-old gingko tree near his laboratory.
Hollywood Reporter critic Jordan Mintzer calls Secret Friend “A rich and strange scientific drama…a movie that gradually washes over you like a warm natural fragrance…Enyedi is a master stylist, mixing visual poetry with deadpan humor, and big ideas with quotidian foibles, in a film that explores our mysterious relationship with both the green world and one another.”
Its eclectic cast includes French star Lea Seydoux, Sylvester Groth (Deutschland 83 et al.) and a luminous Swiss actress, Luna Wedler; the first-rate picture and sound in our summer cinema will provide the perfect vehicle for this journey…