Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) announced the upcoming FLC Virtual Cinema lineup for the 2020 spring season. FLC’s new releases include Albert Serra’s provocative period piece Liberté, a NYFF57 selection; a new 2K restoration of Italian master Nanni Moretti’s beloved semi-autobiographical Caro Diario, winner of the Best Director award at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival; Hlynur Pálmason’s superb Nordic psychological thriller A White, White Day; and three standouts from this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema festival: Quentin Dupieux’s Deerskin, a rollicking, absurdist, and lightly surrealist take on the midlife crisis movie starring Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin (The Artist) and Adèle Haenel (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Christophe Honoré’s On a Magical Night, which earned Chiara Mastroianni Best Actress award in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section for her fierce performance, and Cédric Klapisch’s almost-romance Someone, Somewhere.
Holdover titles currently playing in Film at Lincoln Center’s Virtual Cinema include Béla Tarr’s seven-hour masterpiece Sátántangó; D.W. Young’s absorbing NYFF57 selection The Booksellers; Nanni Moretti’s timely documentary Santiago, Italia; Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s stylish genre fusion Bacurau; Pedro Costa’s gorgeously constructed Vitalina Varela; and Corneliu Porumboiu’s imaginative crime-thriller The Whistlers.
“While the cinema experience and physical screenings remain our long-term priority at Film at Lincoln Center, it is incredibly important for us to continue engaging with our audience during this closure,” said Film at Lincoln Center Director of Programming Dennis Lim. “In the coming weeks and months, we will be making available in our Virtual Cinema a wide-ranging mix of new releases, recent festival favorites, and repertory titles that movie lovers in New York and elsewhere will be able to enjoy from the safety and comfort of their own homes. Our programming exists to bring people and films together, and we hope to continue doing so with our Virtual Cinema initiatives.”
Film at Lincoln Center 2020 Virtual Cinema Films & Descriptions
Opens April 24 – First Week NYC Exclusive
Someone, Somewhere / Deux moi
Cédric Klapisch, France/Belgium, 2019, 110m
French with English subtitles
In this almost-romance from Cédric Klapisch (Paris, Rendez-Vous 2008), warehouse employee Rémy (François Civil) and research assistant Mélanie (Ana Girardot) have never met, but they live parallel lives: they reside in neighboring apartment buildings, ride the same subway route, and are troubled by bouts of insomnia and depression. Their days punctuated by unfulfilling jobs, they seek meaningful romantic and platonic connection. As they stumble through psychotherapy, dating apps, fainting spells, and family visits, the seemingly star-crossed duo orbit around each other but remain just out of reach. Klapisch spins a delicate “what-if” from their compartmentalization, exploring our increasingly hermetic modern urban life. A Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2020 selection. A Distrib Films release.
Opens April 24
A White, White Day / Hvítur, Hvítur Dagur
Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland/Denmark/Sweden, 2019, 109m
Icelandic with English subtitles
What begins as a richly textured portrait of loss gradually descends with dreamlike tenor into something more offbeat and shocking in Hlynur Pálmason’s follow-up to his award-winning debut Winter Brothers (a 2018 ND/NF selection). A bereft former police chief (Ingvar Sigurdsson), whose golden years are spent caring for his granddaughter and remodeling a house, begins to suspect a local man of having had an affair with his late wife. As past memories take on new meaning, his suspicion turns obsessive and imperils those around him. With breathtaking cinematography by Maria von Hausswolff, Pálmason finds seemingly boundless new ways to capture the volatile climate, the elemental delights and estrangement of Iceland’s east coast, and the unpredictable nature of grief. A Film Movement release.
Opens May 1 – First Week U.S. Exclusive
Liberté
Albert Serra, France/Portugal/Spain, 132m
For the bold of imagination, not the faint of heart, the latest work from Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra (The Death of Louis XIV) is easily his most provocative yet. In the 18th century, somewhere deep in a forest clearing, a group of bewigged libertines engage in a series of pansexual games of pain, torture, humiliation, and other dissolute, Sadean pleasures, attempting to reach some form of erotic nirvana, though rarely ever appearing to truly enjoy themselves. Serra’s truly radical film, set over the course of one night, is at once an aesthetic and sonic pleasure—every composition is a thing of eerily lit perfection, its soundtrack the chirps and rustles of the nighttime forest—and an unsparing depiction of the human drive for corporeal cruelty and sexual release. As its title suggests, Liberté is a film about the meaning of freedom, in both sex and in art. A 57th New York Film Festival selection. A Cinema Guild release.
Opens May 1
Deerskin / Le daim
Quentin Dupieux, France, 2019, 77m
French with English subtitles
Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin (The Artist) stars in this rollicking, absurdist, and lightly surrealist take on the midlife crisis movie, directed by Rendez-Vous mainstay Quentin Dupieux (Reality, Keep an Eye Out!). Georges (Dujardin) drops several thousand Euros on an Easy Rider–style, 100%-deerskin jacket, then absconds to a country inn in a sleepy town far away from his wife. There, he starts experimenting with a mini-DV camcorder, enlisting the help of an aspiring film editor (Portrait of a Lady on Fire’s Adèle Haenel) to assemble a most unusual docufiction—for which a certain garment comes to act as an unconventional muse. Dupieux’s romp—in which ATM withdrawal freezes, parka confiscations, and a repurposed ceiling fan all play unforgettable roles—opened last year’s Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. A Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2020 selection. A Greenwich Entertainment release.
Opens May 8 – First Week NYC Exclusive
On a Magical Night / Chambre 212
Christophe Honoré, France/Belgium/Luxembourg, 2019, 87m
French with English subtitles
Chiara Mastroianni won Best Actress in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section for her fierce performance in this playful, fantastical spin on a Rohmerian moral tale, the latest from Christophe Honoré (Sorry Angel, NYFF56). Mastroianni is law professor Maria, whose 25-year marriage to Richard (singer-songwriter Benjamin Biolay) is ruptured when he discovers texts from Maria’s younger lover on her phone. After checking into a hotel across the street, she doesn’t exactly find herself alone with her thoughts: over the course of a hallucinatory evening, she’s visited by a series of impossible guests, including Richard’s twenty-something self (Vincent Lacoste) and the embodiment of her own free will (Stéphane Roger). Honoré’s stylish and sensual aesthetic makes for a swooning reflection on love and memory that becomes even more heartrending thanks to the brilliant cast. A Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2020 selection. A Strand Releasing release.
Opens May 15 – First Week NYC Exclusive
New 2K Restoration!
Caro Diario
Nanni Moretti, Italy/France, 1993, 100m
Italian, English, and Mandarin with English subtitles
In Nanni Moretti’s international breakthrough, the filmmaker plays a thinly fictionalized version of himself going on three different journeys in Italy. First, he rides through Rome on a scooter, musing on cinema (specifically Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Pasolini), and has a chance encounter with actress Jennifer Beals. Next, he and his friend (Renato Carpentieri) tour various islands searching for a peaceful place to write a screenplay. And finally, Moretti goes from doctor to doctor looking for the right diagnosis for a nagging skin rash. Winner of the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival and ranked as the Best Film of 1994 by Cahiers du cinéma, this beloved, intimate, and hilarious semi-autobiographical triptych returns to Film at Lincoln Center in a new 2K restoration overseen by the film’s director of photography, Giuseppe Lanci. A NYFF32 selection. A Film Movement release.
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