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France

Director: Bruno Dumont
(2021 – 133 minutes – NR – $12)

In French with English Subtitles

Léa Seydoux brilliantly holds the center of Bruno Dumont’s unexpected, unsettling new film, which starts out as a satire of the contemporary news media before steadily spiraling out into something richer and darker. Never one to shy away from provoking his viewers, Dumont (The Life of Jesus, NYFF35) casts Seydoux as France de Meurs, a seemingly unflappable superstar TV journalist whose career, home life, and psychological stability are shaken after she carelessly drives into a young delivery man on a busy Paris street. This accident triggers a series of self-reckonings, as well as a strange romance that proves impossible to shake. A film that teases at redemption while refusing to grant absolution, France is tragicomic and deliciously ambivalent — a very 21st-century treatment of the difficulty of maintaining identity in a corrosive culture.

 

5 Day Rental

Hive

Director: Blerta Basholli
(2021 – 84 minutes – NR – $12)

In Albanian with English Subtitles

Sundance triple award winner Hive is a searing drama based on the true story of Fahrije, who, like many of the other women in her patriarchal village, has lived with fading hope and burgeoning grief since her husband went missing during the war in Kosovo. In order to provide for her struggling family, she pulls the other widows in her community together to launch a business selling a local food product. Together, they find healing and solace in considering a future without their husbands — but their will to begin living independently is met with hostility.

The men in the village condemn Fahrije’s efforts to empower herself and the women around her, starting a feud that threatens their newfound sovereignty — and the financial future of Fahrije’s family. Against the backdrop of Eastern Europe’s civil unrest and lingering misogyny, Fahrije and the women of her village join in a struggle to find hope in the face of an uncertain future.

Winner of the Audience Award, Directing Award, and World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, Hive is a pithy, devastating portrait of loss and our uphill journeys to freedom.

 

7 Day Rental

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
(2021 – 121 minutes – NR – $10)

In Japanese with English Subtitles

An unexpected love triangle, a failed seduction, and a chance encounter with the past. Propelled by coincidence and imagination, and guided by love’s gentle current, acclaimed director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi (Happy Hour, Asako I & II, Drive My Car) returns with an enchanting triptych that spins mundane encounters into a world of infinite possibilities.

In Episode 1: Magic (or Something Less Assuring), a young woman is startled when she realizes that her best friend’s new flame might just be her ex. In Episode 2: Door Wide Open, a disgruntled student plots to trick his college professor, using his friend-with-benefits as bait. And in Episode 3: Once Again, a girl’s college reunion leads to an unanticipated run-in with an old friend, and awakens feelings long since forgotten.

Playfully inspired by life’s tiny miracles, and bound together by memory, regret, deception, and fate, Hamaguchi leaves no stone unturned in his quest to chart the ever-deepening mysteries of the all-too-human heart.

 

7 Day Rental

Uppercase Print

Director: Radu Jude
(2021 – 128 minutes – NR – $12)

In 1981, chalk slogans written in uppercase letters started appearing in public spaces in the Romanian city of Botoşani. They demanded freedom, alluded to the democratic developments taking place in Romania’s socialist sister countries or simply called for improvements in the food supply. The culprit was Mugur Călinescu, a teenager who was still at school at the time and whose case is documented in the files of the Romanian secret police. Theatre director Gianina Cărbunariu created a documentary play based on this material.

Besides presenting the play, Radu Jude also uses archival footage from Romanian TV of the era. Cooking shows alternate with interrogations, transcripts of wiretapped phone calls with recommendations to exercise instead of taking sedatives. This dialectical montage creates an image of a dictatorial surveillance state, drawing on the authorized popular entertainment of the Ceaușescu regime in order to unmask it.

“It is a fierce and impassioned denunciation of evil, part of a continuing wave of Romanian filmmaking dealing with the Ceaușescu and post-Ceaușescu eras.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“The piercing earnestness, very soon snuffed out, that pours from Lazarovici as he addresses us, his face framed close, stands out all the more against the regime’s language of ruthless depersonalisation…”
– Carmen Gray, Sight & Sound

“This uncompromising but accessible and involving film should further boost the director’s profile on the international circuit.” – Jonathan Romney, Screen International

 

7 Day Rental

In Balanchine’s Classroom

Director: Connie Hochman
(2021 – 88 minutes – NR – $12)

In Balanchine’s Classroom takes us back to the glory years of Balanchine’s New York City Ballet through the remembrances of his former dancers and their quest to fulfill the vision of a genius. Opening the door to his studio, Balanchine’s private laboratory, they reveal new facets of the groundbreaking choreographer: taskmaster, mad scientist, and spiritual teacher. Today, as his former dancers teach a new generation, questions arise: what was the secret of his teaching? Can it be replicated?

Filled with never before seen archival footage of Balanchine at work during rehearsals, classes, and in preparation for his most seminal works, along with interviews with many of his adored and adoring dancers and those who try to carry on his legacy today, this is Balanchine as you have never seen him, and a film for anyone who loves ballet and the creative process.

5 Day Rental