Cinematheque Film Schedule

South Korea | 2016 | Hong Sang-soo

The latest “soju dream” by South Korea’s prodigiously inventive Hong Sang-soo is a wry romance in which a painter breaks up with his girlfriend after hearing that she has been seen drinking with another man. She disappears from the artist’s life, but a mysterious woman who looks just like her starts turning up. “A wise and gently absurdist allegory about how best to approach relationships…Immensely satisfying.” –Variety. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 86 min. ...

United States | 2020 | Josephine Decker

Elisabeth Moss plays horror writer Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House) in the new film by the director of Madeline’s Madeline. It was one of the most acclaimed movies at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and has a 97% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Set in Vermont sometime after the 1948 publication of Jackson’s landmark short story The Lottery, the film explores the fraught home life of the troubled author and her philandering, college-professor...

Greece, Italy, United Kingdom, United States | 2019 | Abel Ferrara

Willem Dafoe stars in perhaps the most personal film ever made by longtime renegade moviemaker Abel Ferrara (Ms. 45, Bad Lieutenant). Dafoe plays a version of Ferrara himself. Tommaso (like Ferrara) is a 60-something American indie filmmaker living in Rome with a much younger European wife and their three-year-old daughter (played by Ferrara’s real-life spouse and child). Tommaso is also a recovering drug addict and has traded his former life of substance abuse and other...

Belgium, France, Germany | 2017 | Dimitri de Clercq

There are echoes of Kubrick, Antonioni, and Hitchcock in this visually sumptuous psychological thriller about an architect, living in the Sahara desert, who rescues a beautiful woman from a mysterious car crash. When he learns that she has lost her memory in the accident, he takes her to his remote home to recuperate. There he invents a new identity for her, as well as a “shared” history of married life for the two of them—something...

Germany, Kenya | 2018 | Likarion Wainaina

A nine-year-old Kenyan girl enamored with Jackie Chan and action movies wants to become a superhero. But she is suffering from terminal cancer. So when she returns from the hospital to her village, her friends and family help her realize her dream. This feature debut has been an audience favorite and award winner at many international film festivals. “A little film that might restore your faith in human decency…It will warm your heart in the...

United States | 2019 | Daniel Karslake

Audience Award winner at six different film festivals, this new documentary chronicles the struggles of four faith-based families with gay or transgender children as they deal with the real-world repercussions of entrenched and newly enflamed homophobia among religious and political conservatives. From the director of For the Bible Tells Me So. 100% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “An eloquent plea for tolerance…Has an emotional impact that not many docs can equal.” –Hollywood Reporter. Cleveland premiere....

South Korea | 2014 | Hong Sang-soo

Though now six years old, this Hong Sang-soo comedy, his only English-language feature and perhaps the “writer-director’s funniest work” (The A-V Club ), was never before released in the U.S. Hill of Freedom is an ingeniously structured film based on an accumulation of love letters penned by a Japanese man to his Korean girlfriend while she is away on a long, restorative vacation. When she returns and receives the packet, she accidentally drops and scatters...

United Kingdom | 2018 | Carl Hunter

Bill Nighy stars in this witty comic drama written by Frank Cottrell Boyce. He plays a semi-retired British tailor, widower, and Scrabble wiz who goes to live with his emotionally estranged grown son (Sam Riley) while continuing a years-long search for a second, older son who left home one day (after a Scrabble argument) and never returned. “A distinct, articulate pleasure.” –The Guardian (UK). Cleveland premiere. 91 min. Note: This movie should not be confused...

United States | 2020 | Ian Cheney, Sharon Shattuck

Gender bias, harassment, and discrimination in the sciences are the subjects of this groundbreaking new documentary that profiles three female researchers (a biologist, a chemist, and a geologist) who are helping to make STEM fields more diverse and equitable. "As alarming as it is enlightening." -Tribeca Film Festival. Cleveland premiere. 97 min. Picture a Scientist, a Cinematheque streaming exclusive, can be watched online from 6/12 thru 6/26 via the link below. (Doing so supports the Cinematheque.)...

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France, United States | 2020 | Boaz Yakin

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet is not the only film this summer whose title is a palindrome. Aviva is a bold and exciting new dance movie in which four young dancers (two men and two women) embody the masculine and feminine sides of a Parisian woman and an American man in a relationship in New York City. Employing movement to express the inevitable ups and downs of the couple’s romantic and sexual lives, the work becomes a...

United States | 1984 | Bill Duke

Damien Leake, Alfre Woodard, and Dennis Farina star in this acclaimed PBS American Playhouse production that recounts the little-known true story of the struggle to build an interracial labor union in the multi-ethnic Chicago Stockyards during the early 20th century. The Village Voice called the movie the most "clear-eyed account of union organizing on film." New digital restoration! Cleveland revival premiere. 118 min. The Killing Floor, a Cinematheque streaming exclusive, can be watched online from...

United Kingdom | 2019 | Chris Foggin

A cynical London music executive who finds himself in aa seaside village in Cornwall one weekend tries to sign an unorthodox "boy band" to his record label. It's a group of ten rugged fishermen who sing sea shanties—and who prize traditional values like friendship and community over fame and fortune. Inspired by a true story, this tuneful, crowd-pleasing comedy proved so popular in Britain that a sequel is already in the works. "A formulaic but...

Canada, United States | 2018 | Joseph Hillel

Four trailblazing female architects who have pondered and advanced the transformation of cities for over 70 years are profiled in this long overdue documentary. The film’s subjects— Phyllis Lambert, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, and Denise Scott Brown—have distinguished themselves as urban planners, preservationists, landscape designers, authors, teachers, and mentors. They also collaborated with such luminaries as Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Mies van der Rohe, and Robert Venturi while finding their own voices...

United States | 2018 | Rauzar Alexander

What do Viola Davis, Adam Driver, Jessica Chastain, and Patti LuPone have in common? They are but a few of the extraordinary performers who have studied under the renowned acting teacher Moni Yakim at Juilliard, America's greatest performing arts school, where Yakim is the last remaining founder of the legendary Drama Division. This new movie takes us inside drama classes where Moni and his wife Mina pour their love and passion into preparing the next...

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United Kingdom, United States | 2019 | Leslie Woodhead

After she won a 1934 talent contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) went on to a six-decade career as one of America’s greatest singers. Her music became a soundtrack for a tumultuous century. In this new documentary narrated by Sophie Okonedo, musicians like Smokey Robinson, Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, and Itzhak Perlman remember the jazz legend. “A study of a much loved but little understood musical icon…Touching but also very funny.” –The Guardian...

South Korea | 2018 | Bora Kim

This impressive directorial debut is a quiet, tender, low-key portrait of a lonely, insecure 14-year-old girl in fast-changing 1994 Seoul. We watch as this eighth-grader contends with her dysfunctional family, frequents karaoke clubs, and negotiates relationships with both sexes. "A warm, complex and hopeful slice of teen life." –Hollywood Reporter. Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 138 min. House of Hummingbird, a Cinematheque streaming exclusive, can be watched online from 6/26 thru 7/16 via the link below. (Doing...

United States | 2020 | Christopher Munch

Campbell Scott stars in the unclassifiable new film by the maverick American auteur behind the 1991 John Lennon/Brian Epstein drama The Hours and Times. The 11th Green is also a work of speculative fiction in which an investigative journalist and a Barack Obama-like U.S. President come up against the “E.T. industrial complex” while trying to discover what Dwight Eisenhower knew about UFOs during the 1950s. "A thoughtful and compelling what-if, starring a never-better Campbell Scott."...

France, Germany | 2019 | Ina Weisse

Nina Hoss (Barbara, Phoenix) is superb as a middle-aged violin teacher at a music-focused high school who convinces her dubious colleagues that a certain male student should be admitted to their program. Her dedication to this young violinist soon becomes all consuming, affecting her marriage, her career, and even her relationship with her own violinist son. “[This] tightly wound portrait of a music teacher on the verge of a nervous collapse serves up another note-perfect...

Australia | 2019 | Maya Newell

In this observational documentary that “could not be more timely” (The Washington Post), a 10-year-old Aboriginal boy in Alice Springs, Australia, tries to hold on to his cultural heritage and identity within the state-imposed educational system. This angry, powerful look at the legacy of Colonialism has a 100% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “A quietly masterful portrait of growing up Indigenous.” –The Guardian (UK). Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. 84 min. In My Blood It Runs, a...