Confirmed films and those under consideration for the upcoming festival include:
WILDCAT with Maya Hawke, Laura Linney, director Ethan Hawke.
An inventive cinematic biography of Flannery O’Connor, exploring the connections between reality, family, faith, illness and imagination. Hawke, Hawke and Linney are at the top of their games.
THE OLD OAK with Dave Turner, Ebla Mari, director Ken Loach.
After 60 years directing movies, and recent nominations for a BAFTA and the Cannes Palme d’Or, legendary filmmaker Ken Loach announced that this will be his last film. His fiercely humanistic spirit still shines brightly in the face of challenging social, economic and political forces.
LOUSY CARTER with David Krumholz, Olivia Thirlby, director Bob Byington
A terrific comedy ensemble proves once again that dying is easy, and comedy is hard, unless you can make it look easy. Deadpan, offbeat and twisted all at the same time, academia, healthcare, love and death are treated with equal irreverence.
ON THE ADAMANT director Nicolas Philibert.
Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, nonfiction master Philibert invites us to see the transformational power of art and community. With compassion, intelligence and empathy, the film witnesses disenfranchised adults with mental illnesses flower and produce original and moving works of art.
TAKING VENICE director Amei Wallach.
Can you fight Communism with culture? Did the U.S. State Department and a team of conspirators rig the biggest art competition in the world so their choice, Robert Rauschenberg could win the Grand Prize? What is gained and what is lost when art is used for propaganda, competition and market manipulation? These are just a few of the questions explored in Amei Wallach’s fascinating and thought-provoking film.
LIMBO with Simon Baker, Rob Collins, director Ivan Sen.
A jaded police detective travels to a remote town in the Australian Outback to investigate the cold case murder of a local Indigenous girl from twenty years earlier. Seamlessly combining film noir, chiaroscuro and Western tropes, director Ivan Sen grabs us to witness his characters grapple with injustice, pain and loss. This film just won Best Indie Film, Best Lead Actor (Simon Baker) and Best Supporting Actor (Rob Collins) at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards.
THE VOURDALAK with Kacey Mottet Klein, Ariane Labed, director Adrien Beau.
A genre film with real bite. A smartly enacted narrative that pre-dates the vampire movie, you could imagine this as an adaptation of a secret project developed by F.W. Murnau and Mel Brooks. Or you could just have fun with it, like Bela Lugosi did.
FLIPSIDE with Judd Apatow, David Milch, director Chris Wilcha.
Filmmaker Wilcha embraces a career of projects and a collection of disparate stories with Herman Leonard, Ira Glass, David Bowie, Uncle Floyd, David Milch and the New Jersey record store owner who gave him his first job. Weaving them all together creates a cinema of the possible, a flipside of disappointment and failure that reveals a life well lived.
