tHIS wEEK’S rYDER fILMS
Here’s what’s showing this week in our virtual theater. And if you have not seen the new issue of The Ryder magazine, here it is
from Argentina: The Weasel’s Tale
Schemers meet their match in The Weasel’s Tale, a comedic thriller by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Juan José Campanella (The Secret in Their Eyes). Four long-time, showbiz friends share a decaying mansion in the countryside outside of Buenos Aires. Their peaceful coexistence is menaced by a young couple who, feigning to be lost, slowly insinuate themselves into their lives. It’s Sunset Boulevard meets The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, with a Latin twist. Financial gain, seduction, betrayal, and memories run amok are the elements that create the recipe for this delightful game of cat…and weasel. Find out more »
from Romania: COLLECTIVE
ONE OF THE GREATEST MOVIES ABOUT JOURNALISM and the Dark Forces it Confronts…Alexander Nanau’s bracing, relentless documentary plays like a gripping real-time thriller, merging the reportorial intensity of Spotlight with the paranoid uncertainty of The Manchurian Candidate. When Nanau screened Collective to rave reviews at the Venice, Toronto and Sundance festivals, he had no idea that his exposé would prove to be all-too predictive of a world not prepared to cope with a rampaging virus pandemic. – Indiewire …Find out more »
DAMNATION
A loner tries to win back his estranged lover, a lounge singer in a bar named Titanik, in Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr’s otherworldly film noir. Some of you may have seen Tarr’s classic, 7-hour film Satantango when it was screened at the IU Cinema in 2019. Relax, Damnation is a mere 1 hour, 56 minutes. Find out more »
MAYOR
Filmmaker David Osit subtly – and with a keen eye for black humor – explores the absurdities of a worldly politician trying to turn his city into a Middle Eastern Amsterdam while in the midst of a geopolitical storm. His ultimate mission: to end the occupation of Palestine. Rich with detailed observation and a surprising amount of humor, Mayor offers a portrait of dignity amidst the madness and absurdity of endless occupation while posing a question: how do you run a city when you don’t have a country? Find out more »
FREE TIME
Free Time, is the latest film by one of our greatest documentarians, Manny Kirchheimer. A New York Film Festival selection, Free Time presents meticulously restored and poetically assembled 16mm black-and-white footage shot in New York between 1958 and 1960, set to the stirring music of Ravel, Bach, Eisler, and Count Basie. Manny Kirchheimer is one of the great masters of the American city symphony, as is clear from films like Stations…Find out more »
opens Jan 22: FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO
Over a period of 35 years between 1984 and 2019, filmmaker Lynne Sachs shot 8 and 16mm film, videotape and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant and pioneering businessman from Park City, Utah, the Utah skiing enclave where the Sundance Film Festival is held. Film About a Father Who is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings. Critics’ Pick! This brisk, prismatic and richly psychodramatic family portrait finds Sachs assessing her relationship with her father, Ira Sachs Sr., described at one point as the “Hugh Hefner of Park City.” ” –The New York Times
opens Jan 27, from France: The Salt of Tears
Veteran filmmaker Philippe Garrel once again fashions a pinpoint-precise and economical study of young love and its prevarications, which ever so gradually blossoms into an emotionally resonant moral tale. Photographed in black-and-white, The Salt of Tears shares much of the sensibility of François Truffaut’s early romantic adventures starring the insufferable (and insufferably adorable) Antoine Doinel.…Find out more »
opens Jan 29: ATLANTIS
A prize-winner at the Venice Film Festival and Ukraine’s official selection for the 2021 Academy Awards, Atlantis is a gorgeous and visionary sci-fi drama….Eastern Ukraine, 2025. A desert unsuitable for human habitation. Water is a dear commodity brought by trucks. A Wall is being build-up on the border. Sergiy, a former soldier, is having trouble adapting to his new reality. He meets Katya while on the Black Tulip mission dedicated to exhuming the past. Together, they try to return…Find out more »
opens Feb 5 M.C. Escher: Journey To Infinity
A staircase that leads back to itself; waterworks that move towards and away from the viewer at the same time; an impossible box: M.C. Escher’s artworks feature perspective impossibilities that are world famous. To the eyes, Escher is simply a genius artist. But for art theorists, Escher was never easy to classify. M.C. Escher: Journey To Infinity is the story of world famous Dutch graphic artist M.C Escher (1898-1972). Equal parts history, psychology, and psychedelia, Robin Lutz’s entertaining, eye-opening portrait…Find out more »