The Lighthouse and Uncut Gems lead the nominations for the 2020 Film Independent Spirit Awards with 5 nominations each. The Lighthouse is nominated for Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Male Lead, and Best Supporting Male; and Uncut Gems is nominated for Best Director, Best Editing, Best Feature, Best Male Lead, and Best Screenplay. Other nominees for Best Feature included A Hidden Life, Clemency, The Farewell, and Marriage Story. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Santa Monica beach-adjacent award show.
The 26th Hamptons International Film Festival which will take place over the upcoming Columbus Day Weekend, October 4 to 8, 2018, unveiled the full slate of films. The festival also revealed the anticipated films, Yorgos Lanthimos’ 
The Kindergarten Teacher[/caption]
THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER (USA)
East Coast Premiere
Director: Sara Colangelo
Writer/director Sarah Colangelo (LITTLE ACCIDENTS, HIFF 2014 and Screenwriters Lab 2013) returns to the festival with her prize-winning sophomore feature. Based on Nadav Lapid’s 2014 Israeli drama, THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER follows Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a Staten Island teacher who accidentally discovers her young student’s prodigious gift for poetry. Desperately seeking her own creative recognition, Lisa’s fascination with the boy quickly unravels into an all-encompassing fixation. Anchored by Gyllenhaal’s fearless performance, THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER is a electrifyingly unpredictable morality tale about the precarious line between protection and obsession.
A PRIVATE WAR[/caption]
A PRIVATE WAR (USA)
East Coast Premiere
Director: Matthew Heineman In an industry defined by those willing to place themselves in the midst of tremendous danger, photojournalist Marie Colvin (Academy-Award® nominee Rosamund Pike) distinguished herself as one of the world’s most celebrated war correspondents. In his feature narrative debut, acclaimed documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman (CARTEL LAND, CITY OF GHOSTS) pays tribute to Colvin’s extraordinary life both on and off the battlefield. Portrayed with rebellious conviction by Pike, and aided by a supporting cast including Jamie Dornan and Stanley Tucci, A PRIVATE WAR is a thrilling look at one individual’s devotion to bringing a voice to the voiceless.
BEAUTIFUL BOY (USA)
East Coast Premiere
Director: Felix van Groeningen
Adapted from father and son David and Nic Sheff’s best-selling memoirs, HIFF alum Felix van Groeningen (THE MISFORTUNATES, HIFF 2009 and THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN, HIFF 2013) chronicles the struggle with drug addiction that threatened to tear their family apart in this emotionally charged drama. Passionately led by Academy Award®-nominees Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet (following up his breakthrough role in last year’s CALL ME BY YOUR NAME), BEAUTIFUL BOY portrays their story as a heartbreaking—and ultimately inspiring—story of a family struggling to stay on top of the waves of recovery and relapse as Nic moves in and out of his father’s life.
BEN IS BACK (USA)
U.S. Premiere
Director: Peter Hedges
On Christmas Eve, the Burns family is stunned by the unexpected arrival of their son Ben (Academy Award® nominee Lucas Hedges), returning home for the first time after entering rehab for opioid addiction. His mother, Holly (Academy Award® winner Julia Roberts), is quick to eagerly welcome her son in, while the rest of the family are more skeptical of the reasons for his surprise return. As Ben is torn between proving his sobriety and falling into his old ways, Roberts perfectly portrays a mother struggling with her own warring instincts in this affecting look at one family’s struggle with a national epidemic.
CAPERNAUM (Lebanon)
U.S. Premiere
Director: Nadine Labaki
Scraping by on the chaotic streets of Beirut, 12-year-old Zain (Zain al Rafeea) is one of many children born into an uncertain future in the city’s slum. Living a deeply troubled life on the streets and branded the sole caretaker of an abandoned toddler, Zain makes the desperate move of suing his negligent parents for giving him life and trapping him in a hostile world. Utilizing a cast of non-professional actors (including two revelatory performances from its child leads), Lebanese director Nadine Labaki’s Cannes Jury Prize-winner is a stirring slice of social-realist protest cinema, driven equally by righteous anger and enduring empathy, and sure to be one of the most talked about films of the year.
EVERYBODY KNOWS (France/Spain/Italy)
East Coast Premiere
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Transplanting his trademark psychological drama from his native Iran to the foothills of Spain, two-time Academy Award®-winning director Asghar Farhadi (THE PAST [HIFF 2014], THE SALESMAN [HIFF 2017]) returns with a story of secrets and intrigue in Spanish wine country. Returning to her childhood home to celebrate a family wedding, Laura (Penélope Cruz) finds long-simmering tensions coming to the surface when her daughter suddenly disappears amidst a power outage, with her distanced family and ex (Javier Bardem) the most likely suspects. Beautifully realized and constantly engrossing, Farhadi has crafted another masterful thriller with a deep ensemble cast of Spanish legends, led by Bardem, Cruz, and Bárbara Lennie.
GREEN BOOK (USA)
East Coast Premiere
Director: Peter Farrelly
It’s 1962 America, and impeccably stylish jazz musician Don Shirley (Academy Award® winner Mahershala Ali) needs to hire a bodyguard to get him safely from venue to venue on his upcoming Southern tour. Enter Tony “Lip” Valelonga (Viggo Mortensen): a loud-mouthed Italian-American bouncer who’s quicker to enter a situation fists first if it means coming out on top. Together, the unlikely pair set out on a road trip through the American South, using the Negro Motorist Green Book as a guide to find welcoming lodging; along the way, they forge a surprising camaraderie in this heartwarming and comedic true story.
ROMA (Mexico)
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Inspired by the early 1970’s Mexico City of his childhood, celebrated auteur Alfonso Cuarón (GRAVITY, CHILDREN OF MEN, Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN) returns with this semi-autobiographical look at a middle-class family making a life for itself within a time of political turbulence and patriarchal rule. Filmed on a giant canvas in 65mm and utilizing stunningly detailed black and white photography, ROMA recreates the world of his past with a cinematic grandeur and vibrancy. Acting as his own cinematographer and working with a remarkable cast of largely unknown actors, Cuarón places the viewer in the middle a world alive with the anxious energy of the period, while paying respect to the individuals that would help to shape his life.
THE HAPPY PRINCE (Germany/Belgium/Italy)
Director: Rupert Everett
In the final three years of his life (1897-1900), Oscar Wilde finds himself adrift. Coming off the heels of his trial for indecency and subsequent imprisonment, Wilde lives out his last days in exile, moving between a small group of enduring friends (Colin Firth, Edwin Thomas) under assumed names and torn between whether to go back to his ex-lover (Colin Morgan) or estranged wife (Emily Watson). Written, directed by, and starring Rupert Everett as the ailing Wilde, THE HAPPY PRINCE is at once a moving evocation of the literary genius’ final act and a stirring paean to the brilliant wit that endured to his last moments.
THE HATE U GIVE (USA)
Director: George Tillman Jr.
As a way to escape the limited options of the streets she grew up on, sixteen-year-old black teenager Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg) is torn between two lives: one at school amidst her predominantly rich, upper-class white classmates, and another within her working-class neighborhood. But Starr’s dual life is torn apart when a reunion with a childhood sweetheart ends in tragedy at the hands of a local police officer, forcing her to take a side amidst a swelling of protests in the local community. Adapting Angie Thomas’s award-winning novel to the big screen with the same sense of urgency that shot it to the top of the bestsellers list, THE HATE U GIVE is a stirring look at one teenager’s personal awakening.
THE PUBLIC (USA)
East Coast Premiere
Director: Emilio Estevez
As the day’s activities wind down and library workers Stuart (Emilio Estevez) and Myra (Jena Malone) prepare to close for the day, a group of homeless patrons decide to stage an act of rebellion when they refuse to leave the building to find somewhere to sleep in the wintry night. Soon the scene outside becomes a carnival of riot gearwearing officers and local news reporters, leading to a standoff between the city’s have’s and have-not’s. Aided by a deep supporting cast, including Jeffrey Wright, Michael K. Williams, and Alec Baldwin, writer, director, and star Emilio Estevez continues to showcase his skills as a gifted multi-hyphenate force with his latest ode to the struggles of the disenfranchised.
TO DUST (USA)
Director: Shawn Snyder
Shmuel (Geza Rohrig, last seen at HIFF with 2015’s SON OF SAUL), a Hasidic cantor living in upstate New York, is unable to cope with the untimely death of his wife. Struggling to find religious solace in the face of tremendous grief and plagued by nightmares about his wife’s decaying body, Shmuel looks to Albert (Matthew Broderick), a community college biology professor, to teach him more about the decomposition process facing her. In director Shawn Snyder’s darkly comic first feature, the two form an unlikely bond via clandestine biological experiments, despite the blasphemous consequences.
WIDOWS (UK/USA)
Director: Steve Mc Queen
From Academy Award®-winning director Steve Mc Queen (12 YEARS A SLAVE) and co-writer and bestselling author Gillian Flynn (GONE GIRL) comes a blistering, modernday thriller set against the backdrop of crime, passion and corruption. WIDOWS is the story of four women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands’ criminal activities. Set in contemporary Chicago, amid a time of turmoil, tensions build when Veronica (Oscar® winner Viola Davis), Linda (Michelle Rodriguez), Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) and Belle (Cynthia Erivo) take their fate into their own hands and conspire to forge a future on their own terms. WIDOWS also stars Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall, Daniel Kaluuya, Lukas Haas and Brian Tyree Henry.
WILDLIFE (USA)
Director: Paul Dano
In 1960s Montana, Jerry Brinson (Jake Gyllenhaal) finds his family at yet another crossroads when he loses his job at the local golf course. With a wildfire raging in the surrounding mountains, Jerry decides to join a group of firefighters and leaves his wife Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) and teenage son (Ed Oxenbould) on their own in their small town, where both begin to question the stability of the life they’ve known for so long. With this astonishingly well-realized directorial debut, Paul Dano reveals himself to be a director of considerable emotional depth in this melancholic look at the steady decline of the nuclear family, anchored by Mulligan’s towering central performance.
Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes[/caption]
DIVIDE AND CONQUER: THE STORY OF ROGER AILES (USA)
Director: Alexis Bloom
At the time of his death in May 2017, a mere four months after the inauguration of Donald Trump, Former Fox News head Roger Ailes left behind undoubtedly one of the largest legacies of any individual on the American political landscape. Looking at the legacy of the man who was both the leading strategist behind the election of numerous Republican presidents and one of the first larger-than-life figures to be taken out of power by accusations of sexual misconduct, filmmaker Alexis Bloom sheds light on the multitude of ways in which the story of Ailes’s rise to power reflects the story of the modern Republican party, as well as the disquieting history of abuse that followed it.
GHOST FLEET (USA)
East Coast Premiere
Director: Shannon Service, Jeffrey Waldron
Amidst the unsustainable expansion of Thailand’s fishing market, the global fishing industry has engaged in the illegal practice of holding workers against their will for years at sea, with little hope of returning to their families. Defying threats of torture and imprisonment to those who attempt to escape, many workers have jumped ship and found themselves taking refuge in local jungles. Following Thai human-rights activist Patima Tungpuchayakul and her team as they set off on a mission to rescue the prisoners who have successfully escaped to the southern islands of Indonesia, GHOST FLEET is an eye-opening expose of the ways in which slavery continues to exist in the modern world, and an inspiring look at those devoting their lives to ending it.
THE LAST RACE (USA)
East Coast Premiere
Director: Michael Dweck
Long Island is the birthplace of American stock car racing, but today, only one racetrack remains: Riverhead Raceway. Established in 1949 on an initially rural part of Long Island, the land has seen its value skyrocket in the subsequent years. With the track now worth over $10 million, the octogenarian owners Barbara and Jim Cromarty struggle to keep the bulldozers at bay. In his debut feature, acclaimed visual artist Michael Dweck explores the issues of class divide and corporate interest that have impacted both the racing industry and region as a whole in this beautiful, visceral, mesmerizing ode to a dying American tradition. *Also screening as part of View From Long Island section.
WALDEN (Switzerland/Austria)
New York Premiere
Director: Daniel Zimmermann
On a gentle day, deep in an Austrian forest, we hear the sudden sound of a chainsaw sending a fir tree to the ground, and thus begins Daniel Zimmerman’s formally fascinating and uncompromising experimental documentary. Entirely comprised of thirteen 360° panning shots, WALDEN follows the tree’s lumber from its harvest in the Austrian wilderness around the globe, as it slowly makes its way across towns, ports, and continents. Equal parts challenging and hypnotizing, Zimmerman’s film is a rhythmic rumination on the role nature plays in all of our lives, both as individuals and as those living in a world defined by globalization.
Monrovia, Indiana[/caption]
MONROVIA, INDIANA (USA)
Director: Frederick Wiseman
Turning his attention away from the large-scale city institutions that have defined his work for much of the past decade, legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman aims his camera towards the residents of Monrovia, Indiana: a small midwest town with a population of just over 1,000. Observing life in this middle-American community, Wiseman moves between a variety of locales, ranging from the churches and farms that have defined the region for centuries to the gun shop visits, school performances, and Freemason society meetings that showcase the town’s daily rituals. Through it all, Wiseman creates a remarkable space for contemplation of a type of community rarely depicted on screen, despite the undeniable role these towns play in contemporary American politics.
A MURDER IN MANSFIELD (USA)
Director: Barbara Kopple
Academy Award® winner Barbara Kopple’s latest documentary explores the ramifications of a horrific crime that shook the small town of Mansfield, Ohio. In 1990, 12-year-old Collier stepped onto the witness stand during the most explosive murder trial in the history of his hometown. Many locals still remember the boy’s dramatic testimony—blaming his father, a prominent doctor, for the murder of his mother Noreen. Twenty-six years later, Collier returns, seeking to heal the lingering trauma associated with the crime and confront his imprisoned father, who continues to withhold his admission of guilt in the events that changed so many lives.
THE PANAMA PAPERS (USA)
World Premiere
Director: Alex Winter
Leaked by an anonymous source to journalists in 2015, The Panama Papers were an explosive collection of 11.5 million documents, exposing the use of secretive offshore companies to enable widespread tax evasion and money laundering. Largely viewed as the largest data leak in history, the release of the Papers had wide-reaching implications, incriminating 12 current or former world leaders, 128 politicians or public officials, and various celebrities and public figures (among others). In his expansive documentary, director Alex Winter speaks to the journalists who worked to ensure the release, and examines how it reshaped our understanding of corruption amidst the highest forms of government, along with the ongoing effects on global inequality.
THE PROPOSAL (USA)
Director: Jill Magid
Hidden away in a vault in Switzerland lies the professional archive of Mexico’s most renowned architect Luis Barragán, now fiercely protected by its sole owner, who has almost completely restricted access to the public over the last 20 years. Determined to relocate the archive back to Mexico City, American conceptual artist, writer, and filmmaker Jill Magid initiates a dialogue with the owner, and in the process, begins to construct her own piece ruminating on the dangers of cutting off accessibility to an artist’s work from the outside world. With this provocative and haunting film, Magid challenges the perception of who truly controls an artist’s legacy and how the world should engage with their work.
ROLL RED ROLL (USA)
Director: Nancy Schwartzman
In 2012, the sleepy town of Steubenville, Ohio made international news when a whistleblowing blogger discovered a set of disturbing online evidence documenting the sexual assault of a teenage girl by star members of the high school football team. Examining the complicated motivations of the perpetrators, bystanders, and community leaders who actively denied and dismissed the event, documentarian Nancy Schwartzman attempts to unpack the harmful attitudes at the core of their unconscionably complicit behavior. Timely and undeniably affecting, ROLL RED ROLL goes behind the headlines to uncover the deeply entrenched, social media-fueled “boys will be boys” culture at the root of sexual assault in America.
SHIRKERS (USA)
Director: Sandi Tan
Spending her days seeking refuge in zines, bootlegs, and American independent cinema, teenager Sandi Tan found herself among the first generation of Singapore’s burgeoning counterculture movement when she began working on her DIY-labor of love film SHIRKERS in the early 90s. But Sandi and her co-conspirators’ dreams of beginning a new film movement were crushed when Georges, her mysterious American mentor, disappeared with the entirety of the footage without warning. Two decades later, Tan and her collaborators return to the footage they lost in order to grapple with the movement their optimism inspired—and the man who tore it away from them—in this singular look at one artist’s attempt to reckon with the past.
THEY’LL LOVE ME WHEN I’M DEAD (USA)
Director: Morgan Neville
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND was to be Orson Welles’s grand comeback, until years of financial, legal, and creative issues halted the completion of the CITIZEN KANE director’s final work. Now nearly 50 years later, Oscar®-winning documentary director Morgan Neville (20 FEET FROM STARDOM, WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR) looks back at the winding and nearly unbelievable story of the making of the film, created guerrilla-style by a director living in exile, and the decades of failure that came to define the project’s legacy. Aided by Peter Bogdanovich, Frank Marshall, Beatrice Welles, and other living collaborators, THEY’LL LOVE ME WHEN I’M DEAD is a lively tribute to one of cinema’s true giants.
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING (USA)
U.S. Premiere
Director: Tom Donahue
One year after the Harvey Weinstein allegations ignited the #MeToo movement, THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING offers a comprehensive look at the film industry’s role in reinforcing gender dynamics over the last century, and the resounding call for action pushing back. Speaking with a tremendous group of Hollywood’s biggest names, including Meryl Streep, Jessica Chastain, Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, Reese Witherspoon, and countless others, the film stands as a timely testament to the urgent need for change facing both the entertainment industry and society as a whole.
TIME FOR ILHAN (USA)
Director: Norah Shapiro
On November 8, 2016, Ilhan Omar—a young, hijab-wearing mother-of-three—made history as the first Somali Muslim woman to be elected to legislative office in the United States. With incredible access to Omar’s campaign, documentarian Norah Shapiro follows the candidate and her team on the trail as they attempt to unseat the 43-year incumbent in a hard-fought race to represent the country’s largest Somali community. At a time of tremendous political turmoil, TIME FOR ILHAN intimately chronicles the inspiring journey of one of the nation’s brightest rising political stars and offers a fresh perspective on the American Dream.
THE TRUTH ABOUT KILLER ROBOTS
New York Premiere
Director: Maxim Pozdorovkin
As defined by science fiction giant Isaac Asimov, the first law of robotics states, “A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” So what happens once we live in an era where the law has already been broken? Using three recent case studies of moments in which robots have caused the death of a human as a starting point, director Maxim Pozdorovkin creates an equally thought-provoking and wryly provocative survey of just how much we’ve allowed robots into our lives, and the extent to which our often unnoticed reliance on machines may have already defined our fate.
Birds of Passage[/caption]
BIRDS OF PASSAGE (Mexico, Colombia, Denmark)
New York Premiere
Director: Christina Gallego, Ciro Guerra
In the follow-up to his visually stunning foreign language Oscar®-nominated EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT (HIFF 2015), director Ciro Guerra depicts a single Colombian family who find themselves increasingly forced into the violence and capitalist pull of the country’s burgeoning drug trade. Co-directed alongside his longtime collaborator Cristina Gallego, BIRDS OF PASSAGE provides a visceral and multi-faceted look at the two-decade rise of the Colombian drug trade through the eyes of the indigenous communities who both helped to shape it and were subsequently devastated by it. Sprawling in scope and filled with a sense of surreal beauty, Guerra and Gallego deliver an unparalleled crime saga. Selected as Colombia’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar®.
BURNING (South Korea)
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Years after leaving his small northern hometown for Seoul, an aspiring writer (Yoo Ahin) unexpectedly runs into a childhood acquaintance (Jeon Jong-seo). Their chance encounter soon blossoms into a tentative relationship, until her return from an impromptu trip with a mysterious new companion (Steven Yeun, The Walking Dead) sets in motion an accidental love triangle that soon morphs into something much more sinister. Based on Haruki Murakami’s short story Barn Burning, director Lee Changdong’s masterful film became one of the most celebrated titles of the last decade upon its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival—an exhilarating thriller that is as precise as it is undefinable.
COLD WAR (Poland)
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
In the midst of tremendous political upheaval, two folk musicians meet in post-war Poland, where one attempts to escape a troubled past while the other increasingly questions the pair’s role in the country’s propaganda machine. Soon they fall in love and find fame in the smoke-lit bars of Eastern Europe, setting in motion a relationship that will span decades and cross borders. Sumptuously shot in beautiful black and white, Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski (in the follow-up to his Foreign Language Academy Award® winner IDA) returns to his home country with an achingly seductive tale of love and loss.
DEAD PIGS (USA/China)
Director: Cathy Yan
Against the backdrop of urban development, gentrification, and thousands of discarded pigs mysteriously floating down the Yangtze River, a brassy salon owner, lonely busboy, trust-fund princess, expat architect, and bumbling farmer find their lives unexpectedly converging in Cathy Yan’s sprawling directorial debut. Yan, a participant in the 2016 HIFF Screenwriters Lab and the recipient of support from the inaugural Melissa Mathison Fund, effortlessly weaves together the individual narratives of five Shanghai residents in her biting satire. Based on true events, DEAD PIGS is a wicked and whimsical examination of contemporary China’s ongoing clash between traditionalism and modernization.
THE GUILTY (Denmark)
Director: Gustav Möller
Following a suspension, police officer Asger Holm (a hypnotic Jakob Cedergren) is reassigned as an emergency dispatcher. During one seemingly typical night he receives a unusually distressing call, and slowly realizes that the woman on the other end of the line has been kidnapped. Confined to his desk with only his direct line of communication to aid him, Holm must act without delay in order to save her. Winner of audience awards at Sundance, Rotterdam, Montclair and more, first-time director Gustav Möller experiments with the boundaries of traditional narrative to create one of the year’s most suspenseful thrillers.
HAPPY AS LAZZARO (Italy)
Director: Alice Rohrwacher
Within an impoverished Italian countryside estate, a group of sharecroppers spend their days harvesting tobacco for their overbearing Marchesa, while the wide-eyed, innocent local Lazzaro (first-time actor Adriano Tradiolo) is at once beloved and taken advantage of by his fellow workers. This life continues on in the town, until Lazzaro’s involvement in a kidnapping scheme at the hands of the Marchesa’s entitled son sets in motion a string of events that will push him towards a place and time far from his rustic home. Blending the lines between Italy’s history of neo-realism and bucolic fables into a transfixing parable of the country’s modern day society, director Alice Rohrwacher’s (CORPO CELESTE, HIFF 2011) third feature is a stunning achievement of contemporary European cinema.
I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS BARBARIANS (Romania/Czech Republic/France/Bulgaria/Germany)
U.S. Premiere
Director: Radu Jude In the latest provocation from Romanian director Radu Jude, local theater director Mariana Marin (Ioana Iacob) prepares to stage a public recreation of the 1941 Odessa Massacre, an often-ignored ethnic cleansing in which tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were murdered at the hands of Romanian soldiers. As Mariana attempts to push back on both calls for censorship from a city representative looking for a more traditional display of nationalist pride and a burgeoning mutiny amongst her cast of local volunteers, Jude crafts a timely and constantly engaging examination of the ways in which barbarism is not only defined by its perpetrators, but by those insistent on pushing it to the sidelines of history as well.
LETO (Russia)
U.S. Premiere
Director: Kirill Serebrennikov
As the political repression of the USSR enters its final decade, Mike Naumenko (Roman Bilyk), frontman of the early 1980s Leningrad band Zoopark, welcomes a new singer that will soon break out far past the reach of their comparatively underground rock scene. Looking back at the music landscape of his youth, director Kirill Serebrennikov has crafted a sprawling portrait of a vibrant scene alive with the riotous, uncontrollable energy of the era. Filled with an electrifying soundtrack, LETO provides a nostalgic, yet un-romanticized look at a period that seemed to exist almost entirely outside of both what had come before and was yet to come in its native country.
NON-FICTION (France)
Director: Olivier Assayas
Internationally acclaimed French auteur Olivier Assayas (CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA, HIFF 2014) returns to the festival with this charmingly playful comedy. Facing both a rapidly changing industry and the lingering feeling that his relationship with his wife (Juliette Binoche), a professional actress, is growing stale, publishing executive Alain (Guillaume Canet) struggles to find his place while dealing with an oafish author (Vincent Macaigne) and significantly younger new recruit (Nora Hamzawi). As his perfectly cast ensemble move between dinner parties and bedrooms, Assayas crafts a deliciously mischievous look at the difficulty of adapting to today’s new-media world.
PRIVATE LIFE (USA)
Director: Tamara Jenkins
Feeling the pressure of repeated failed attempts to have a child, middle-aged New York couple Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) and Richard (Paul Giamatti) seem to have run out of options when their step-niece Sadie (HIFF 2018 Breakthrough Artist Kayli Carter) arrives at their doorstep looking for a place to crash. When Sadie agrees to donate her eggs and become the last piece of their fertility puzzle, the three form an unconventional bond as they set about creating a family. With her first film in 10 years, director Tamara Jenkins (THE SAVAGES) and her wonderful cast craft a knowingly tender portrait of the pressures facing one middle-class family.
[caption id="attachment_29298" align="aligncenter" width="926"]
MANBIKI KAZOKU(Shoplifters) by KORE-EDA Hirokazu[/caption]
SHOPLIFTERS (Japan)
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
The winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, prolific Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda (LIKE FATHER LIKE SON, HIFF 2013) returns to the festival with a nuanced, heartbreaking look at a family of misfits living in the margins of contemporary Tokyo. Making a life for themselves by shoplifting from local grocery stores and finding food where they can, the film’s central family find their impoverished but tranquil life threatened when they take a young girl under their wing, and her abusive parents fight back for custody. An impassioned plea for those struggling to stay afloat, this is another must-see from one of international cinema’s greatest filmmakers. Selected as Japan’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar®.
STYX (Germany/Austria)
U.S. Premiere
Director: Wolfgang Fischer
Rike (Susanne Wolff), a forty-year-old woman working contentedly as a successful doctor in the city, finally fulfills a lifelong dream when she uses an annual holiday to set sail on a solo voyage from Gibraltar to Ascension, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Following an intense storm, Rike’s holiday is interrupted by the discovery of a badly damaged and overloaded refugee boat, with over one hundred passengers’ lives threatened and her calls for help unanswered. Director Wolfgang Fischer crafts a stunning story of survival, as well as a striking allegory for the sometimes impossible task of acting to save those imperiled by an impassive system.
WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY (USA)
Director: Madeleine Olnek
Literary icon Emily Dickinson (Molly Shannon) breaks free from her public persona as a famously prudish spinster and claims her status as a vibrant lesbian hero. Balancing raucous humor with tender romance, Shannon establishes Dickinson as a spirited artist who drew inspiration from her passionate, lifelong affair with her secret lover, Susan Dickinson (Susan Ziegler). In the delightfully irreverent WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY, writer/director Madeleine Olnek refreshingly upends the false narratives that have historically dominated the poet’s life and work, and examines the way we as a society choose to write and remember our powerful women.
WOMAN AT WAR (France/Iceland/Ukraine)
U.S. Premiere
Director: Benedikt Erlingsson
Fifty-year-old choir teacher Halla (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir) has, on the surface, an uneventful life in her Icelandic countryside home. By day a pillar of the local community, Halla leads a secret life as an eco-terrorist, devoting herself to a campaign against the aluminum industry by sabotaging local electric pylons and spearheading factory sieges. When the balance of her dual life is threatened by the approval of a longstanding adoption request, she is forced to decide whether to sacrifice the cause for the desire to settle down. Examining the nuanced relationship between the personal and the political with an unexpectedly offbeat, comic tone, WOMEN AT WAR is a stirring tale from emerging Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson.
BLACK MOTHER (USA)
Director: Khalik Allah
Filmmaker, photographer, and Long Island resident Khalik Allah’s second feature is, much like his debut film FIELD N*****, a mesmerizing documentary portrait. Allah casts his lens on two dissonant worlds on the island of Jamaica, showcasing the sacred and profane alike. Switching among multiple formats, from the raw texture of super 8mm film, to videotape, to HD video, Allah skillfully creates another intimate and daring portrait of kaleidoscopic beauty, revealing Jamaica—the birthplace of his mother—as a blessed place, dreamlike, full of rhythm and seduction.
THE LAST RACE (USA)
East Coast Premiere
Director: Michael Dweck
Long Island is the birthplace of American stock car racing, but today, only one racetrack remains: Riverhead Raceway. Established in 1949 on an initially rural part of Long Island, the land has seen its value skyrocket in the subsequent years. Now worth over $10 million, the octogenarian track owners Barbara and Jim Cromarty struggle to keep the bulldozers at bay. In his debut feature, acclaimed visual artist Michael Dweck explores the issues of class divide and corporate interest that have impacted both the racing industry and region as a whole in this beautiful, visceral, mesmerizing ode to a dying American tradition. *Also screening as part of Documentary Competition Section.
ONLY THE WIND IS LISTENING (USA)
World Premiere
Director: Emily Anderson
Set against the backdrop of an unforgiving Montauk winter, the lives of a fisherman and a writer intertwine as they attempt to navigate off-season loneliness. *Also screening as part of the Shorts Playing Before Features.
STILL PLAYS WITH TRAINS (USA)
World Premiere
Director: Ross Kauffman
In the basement of his East Hampton home, John Scully reconstructs his idyllic 1950s childhood in the form of one of the world’s largest model train sets. *Also screening as part of the Shorts Playing Before Features.
Watergate[/caption]
WATERGATE (USA)
Director: Charles Ferguson
Few moments loom larger on the collective conscious of contemporary American history than the Watergate investigation, and the subsequent resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. Now over 40 years later, filmmaker Charles Ferguson utilizes new interviews with surviving subjects from all sides of the investigation—including reporters, prosecutors, senators, congressmen, and former members of the Nixon administration—to shine a new light on the landmark case. Following up his 2008 expose on the financial crisis INSIDE JOB, which landed him an Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature, Ferguson’s WATERGATE is a stunning, all-encompassing look at a scandal that, until recently, stood without parallel in US politics
TO DUST[/caption]
To Dust, written and directed by Shawn Snyder and United Skates, directed by Dyana Winkler and Tina Brown, were voted the winners of the two Audience Awards at the 17th annual Tribeca Film Festival. 
Smuggling Hendrix[/caption]
The 17th annual Tribeca Film Festival held its awards ceremony this evening, and top honors went to 
The Fourth Estate[/caption]
The 2018 Tribeca Film Festival revealed its feature film lineup championing the discovery of emerging voices and celebrating new work from established filmmaking talent. To close the Festival, Tribeca will World Premiere