May 22, 23, 24, 29, 30, 31 ♦ Abderrahmane Sissako's French-language drama about a town's 2012 takeover by Al Qaeda militants was one of this year's Academy Award nominees for Best Foreign Language Film. “Not just a timely movie, a great one...Timbuktu feels at once timely and permanent, immediate and essential.”
-The New York Times, A.O. Scott

May 29, 30, 31, June 5, 6 and 7 ♦ Wolfgang Beltracchi fooled the international art world and was responsible for the biggest art forgery scandal of the postwar era. An expert in art history, theory and painting techniques, he fooled renowned experts, curators and art dealers. The auctioneers Sotheby’s and Christie’s were hoodwinked, just like Hollywood star Steve Martin and other collectors throughout the world.

June 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20 ♦ Powered by the antics of a mischievous centenarian on the run, blockbuster comedy The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared abounds with irreverent charm. After a long and colorful life working in munitions and getting entangled in the Spanish Civil War, the Manhattan Project, and other definitive events of the 20th century, Allan Karlsson finds himself stuck in a nursing home. Determined to escape on his 100th birthday, he leaps out of a window and onto the nearest bus, kicking off an unexpected journey involving, among other surprises, a suitcase stuffed with cash, some wicked criminals, and an elephant named Sonya.

June 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 26, 27 ♦ Michel Houellebecq, possibly the most widely read living French writer, was believed kidnapped on September 16, 2011. But was he really? After a flurry of media reports of his abduction, the story goes cold and Houellebecq, famously reclusive, refuses to set the record straight. Now he goes one step further by starring as himself in a film that purports to tell the tale. With a nod to O. Henry's short story, The Ransom of Red Chief, the film explores the dramatic territory where the personae of criminal and victim are remade in unexpected and surprisingly amusing ways.

June 19, 20, 21, 26, 27, 28, July 10, 11 ♦ Scroll down for Times and locations

A disillusioned French architect travels to Italy searching for inspiration. La Sapienza is an inspiring love story set amid sun-drenched Italian vistas and soul-stirring architectural wonders. "Easily the most astonishing and important movie to emerge from France in quite some time." --Godfrey Cheshire, ROGEREBERT.COM

June 26, 27, July 3 and 5 ♦
The Wolfpack is the true story of 7 children (6 boys and one girl) who were locked away from society by their father in an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They were home schooled by their mother and allowed to watch movies nonstop. They watched approximately 5,000 films.

A young woman falls for a manipulative lawyer who wants control of the the casino owned by her mother. Catherine Deneuve stars in this French psychological drama based on the sensational real-life 1970s French Riviera Casino Wars.

July 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 31, Aug 1, 2Three Iranian couples and their assorted children and friends as they make their way from Tehran to the shores of the Caspian Sea for a long weekend in this film by Asghar Farhad (A Separation). When one of the vacationers goes missing, their idyllic weekend turns into a moral whodunit.

Aug 7, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 23 ♦ For the last 20 years, notorious activists/pranksters the Yes Men have staged outrageous and hilarious hoaxes to draw international attention to corporate crimes against humanity and the environment. Armed with nothing but thrift-store suits and a lack of shame, these iconoclastic revolutionaries lie their way into business events and government functions to expose the dangers of letting greed run our world.

July 31, Aug 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16
Benjamin is meant to be a great doctor, he’s certain of it. But his first experience as a junior doctor in the hospital ward where his father works doesn’t turn out the way he hoped it would. Hippocrates raked in seven 2015 César nominations, including Best Director and Best Film.

A pair of university students attempt to track down an unsung folk-rock hero. Gueros is ""A gorgeous slice of deadbeat Mexico City slacker poetry...a work of genius...witty, delicate and often magical. GUEROS is the foreign-language discovery of 2015 so far, and pretty close to the best film I've seen all year." - Andrew O'Hehir, Salon

Bring a blanket. Bring a snack. Bring the dog. Our summer series of free outdoor movies continues on August 28 in Butler Park with Groundhog Day.

Sept 11, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27 ♦ Life begins to imitate art in uncanny ways when earthy British beauty Gemma (Gemma Arterton) and her furniture restorer husband Charles Bovery (Jason Flemyng) move to the very same Norman village where Emma Bovery was written. Local baker and Flaubert fan Martin Joubert (Fabrice Luchini) falls for the lovely and charming newcomer and sets out to be her mentor. Whether you’ve read Flaubert or not, Gemma Bovery is an insightful, delightful comedy of manners.

Sept 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, Oct 2, 3
In the high-stakes pursuit of big-wall climbing, the Shark's Fin on Mount Meru may be the ultimate prize. Sitting 21,000 feet above the sacred Ganges River in Northern India, the mountain's perversely stacked obstacles make it both a nightmare and an irresistible calling for some of the world's toughest climbers.

Screening with the filmmakers! One Night Only! Friday, Sept 11 @ 8:30 in Woodburn Hall 101. Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, two ecosexuals in love, raise performance art hell in West Virginia to help save the region from mountaintop removal destruction. This film, chronicles their love, activism, and struggle to save their family home, climaxing with their wedding to the

The charismatic Dr. Mireles Valverde, our ostensible hero in this non-fiction film, is the founder and leader of Autodefensas, a ragtag people's army that has sprung up in the Mexican state of Michoácan to liberate villagers from drug cartel rule. When the real Mexican army demands Mireles hand over his guns, the citizens revolt.

Talk about low-budget - Tangerine was shot with an iPhone! This madcap, transgender buddy picture bursts off the screen with energy and style. “Tangerine encompasses dizzying multitudes, a fast, raucously funny comedy about love and other misadventures." --The NY Times

A teacher becomes at first enchanted, and then ultimately consumed by the poetic genius of one of her students, a five-year-old prodigy who paces the floor and spouts cryptic poetry whenever the inspiration takes him.

In the summer of 1968, television news changed forever. Dead last in the ratings, ABC hired two towering public intellectuals to debate each other during the Democratic and Republican national conventions. William F. Buckley Jr. was a leading light of the new conservative movement. A Democrat and cousin to Jackie Onassis, Gore Vidal was a leftist novelist and polemicist. Armed with deep-seated distrust and enmity, Vidal and Buckley believed each other’s political ideologies were dangerous for America.

Opens Oct 30-Nov 14 ♦ Scroll down for times and locations Truth can indeed be stranger than fiction. Shannon Whisnant has a nose for a bargain. So when he buys a used grill at a North Carolina yard sale and finds a severed human foot among its contents, he spies a golden opportunity to cash in on the gruesome discovery.

In his signature black turtleneck and blue jeans, shrouded in shadows below a milky apple, Steve Jobs’ image was ubiquitous. But who was the man on the stage? What accounted for the grief of so many across the world when he died? Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine is a critical examination of Jobs who was at once revered as an iconoclastic genius and a barbed-tongued tyrant.

Nov 6, 7, 13, 14, 20, 21, Dec 4, 5 ♦ Scroll down for times and locations

Having recently lost her sight, a young woman retreats to the safety of her home, a place where she can feel in control, alone with her husband and her thoughts. In an effort to maintain a connection to reality, she begins to write a series of sexually-charged stories, whose fictional characters begin to inhabit her everyday reality.

Nov 20, 21, 27, 28; Dec 4, 5, 11, 12, 13, 18, 19

The Great Man is perhaps best described as a fable—and it starts out as one told by a child. Hamilton and Markov are best friends about to finish five years of service in the French Foreign Legion. During their six-month posting in Afghanistan, they are caught in a crossfire while out on an impromptu and unauthorized mystical leopard hunt. As the child tells it, "They crossed the frontier of the human world and stepped into the unknown."

1916. While war rages in the Ottoman Empire, Hussein raises his younger brother Theeb in a traditional Bedouin community that is isolated by the vast, unforgiving desert. The brothers' quiet existence is suddenly interrupted when a British Army officer and his guide ask Hussein to escort them to a water well located 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

New York International Children’s Film Festival was founded in 1997 to promote intelligent, passionate, provocative cinematic works for ages 3-18 and to help define a more compelling film for kids. It's coming to Bloomington with screenings at IU Fine Arts on Sat and the Buskirk-Chumley on Sunday featuring two programs of short films from around the world for the young as well as the young at heart. Some films are animated, some are live-action. Program 1 is recommended for children 3-8 and a second for ages 8-80.
The screenings are co-presented by the Lotus Education and Arts Foundation.