Film Festival 2024

Best of Fest 2024


Fairyland

An audience favorite!

Based on Alysia Abbott’s memoir, a teenager (Emilia Jones) reflects on coming of age in San Francisco in the 1970s and ’80s while being raised by her widowed bisexual father, poet and activist Steve Abbott (Scoot McNairy). Read More

Running Time: 115


Four Daughters

FIPRESCI Prize for Best International Film.

In this highly inventive and moving documentary, professional actresses and real-life subjects collaborate to tell the true story of a Tunisian single mother of four whose two eldest daughters disappear after becoming radicalized by ISIS. Read More

Running Time: 107


Common Ground

An audience favorite!

This alarming yet hopeful documentary explores sustainable farming and the power of “Regenerative Agriculture,” following a politically and culturally diverse group of farmers, ranchers, scientists and advocates as they work toward harvesting a more harmonious relationship with the environment. Read More

Running Time: 105


Wonderland

Winner: Local Jury Award.

After his daughter moves to the United States for school, Loke befriends his neighbor Tan, who helps him translate letters to and from his only child. When bad news comes from overseas, Tan must decide how to tell his new friend. Read More

Running Time: 125


First We Bombed New Mexico

This shocking documentary follows activist and cancer survivor Tina Cordova as she fights for justice for the Trinity Bomb “downwinders,” the mostly Hispanic and Native victims whose suffering the government has ignored for generations. Read More

Running Time: 95


Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person

This charming, funny and stylish play on the traditional vampire tale tells the story of Sasha, a young vampire who can’t bring herself to kill. Facing starvation, she meets a young depressed man who could help solve both their problems. Read More

Running Time: 92


Io Capitano

An audience favorite!

Matteo Garrone cements his status as one of cinema’s finest craftspeople with this harrowing and wondrous epic following two Senegalese teenagers who leave home for Europe on an adventure full of magic, mystery and danger across the Sahara Desert. Read More

Running Time: 121


Green Border

Winner: MOZAIK Bridging the Borders Award and an audience favorite! This tough and timely cri de coeur shines a spotlight on the horrors facing refugees from the Middle East and Africa in the treacherous, swampy forests that comprise the exclusion zone between Poland and Belarus. Join us for a post-screening Q&A with Agnieszka... Read More

Running Time: 152


The Promised Land

FIPRESCI Best Actor Prize for Mads Mikkelsen and an audience favorite! This sweeping 18th-century epic follows Captain Ludvig (Mads Mikkelsen) who sets out to cultivate the harsh Danish heath. But he soon faces an even harsher adversary: the merciless Frederik de Schinkel, who believes the land belongs to him. Join us for a... Read More

Running Time: 127


The Animal Kingdom

Winner: New Voices New Visions.

In this surprising, expectation-defying and often humorous drama, a father (Romain Duris) and his teen son (Paul Kircher) contend with a cross-country move and an unexplained epidemic that causes people to mutate into animals. Read More

Running Time: 130


The Teacher's Lounge

FIPRESCI Best Actress Prize for Leonie Benesch. In this intense study of the power dynamics in contemporary German society, an idealistic middle-school teacher makes a bad decision while trying to do the right thing, and her every subsequent move mires her in an even bigger mess. Join us for a post-screening Q&A with Director... Read More

Running Time: 94


The Zone of Interest

FIPRESCI Prize, Best Screenplay.

In Jonathan Glazer’s haunting masterwork, an Auschwitz commandant and his wife maintain an idyllic domestic life with their family in a house and bucolic garden, an existence standing in stark contrast to the sounds coming from the nearby death camp. Read More

Running Time: 106


Goodbye Julia

Tensions between Northern and Southern Sudanese communities erupt into violence, forever changing two families in this moving story of an unlikely bond between two women as they confront issues of class, gender and race. Read More

Running Time: 120


The Monk and the Gun

An audience favorite! In this playful satire, the Bhutanese government holds a mock election to educate the locals about democracy after the king abdicates. Meanwhile, a monk is sent on a mysterious quest and crosses paths with an ensemble of colorful characters. Join us for post-screening Q&As with Director Pawo Choyning... Read More

Running Time: 107


Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive

An audience favorite!

Gloria Gaynor’s radiant spirit shines in this inspiring portrait of the great disco queen of the ’70s. Overcoming one hurdle after another – a crippling back injury, an abusive husband, a murdered sister – Gaynor roars back with her Grammy-winning gospel album. Read More

Running Time: 99


Joika

An audience favorite! Join us for post-screening Q&As with Joy Womack, Talia Ryder, Belindalee Hope and Andrew Clay on January 10, 11, 12 and 14. Based on the true story, teenager Joy Womack (Talia Ryder) becomes one of the first American women to be admitted to the prestigious but punishing Bolshoi Ballet School, where she is... Read More

Running Time: 110


Hidden Master; The Legacy of George Platt Lynes

An audience favorite!

A pioneer of homoerotic photography, the great early 20th-century fashion photographer George Platt Lynes was creating iconic images of the nude male body long before Robert Mapplethorpe. His glamorous, unconventional life was as rule-breaking as his art. Read More

Running Time: 96


Sumo Didi

An audience favorite!

Based on the incredible life of Hetal Dave, India’s first and only professional sumo wrestler, this rousing biopic follows Dave as she sets out for Japan to endure rigorous training and discover a potential she never knew she had. Read More

Running Time: 118


Amal

An audience favorite!

A Brussels literature instructor tries to inculcate a love of reading and freedom of expression as well as a sense of cohesion among her diverse class, but some of the students come from a fundamentalist background. Read More

Running Time: 107


Bad Faith

An audience favorite!

The forces tearing apart our democracy have never been more frightening or powerful, but who is actually behind them? Bad Faith exposes the sinister Christian Nationalism movement and shines a light on its unholy plan to upend the constitution and impose Biblical law on all Americans. Read More

Running Time: 89



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Film Festival 2024