Film Comment Selects 2013
The 13th edition of Film Comment magazine’s essential, eclectic festival brings you a lineup of the coming soon and the never-coming-back, the rare and the rediscovered, the unclassifiable and the underrated. Handpicked by the magazine’s editors on their travels around the festival circuit and following tips from trusty correspondents around the world, this annual feast of cinephilia of all stripes has something for everyone. Series programmed by Gavin Smith and the editors of Film Comment.
Lineup
The 13th edition of Film Comment magazine’s essential, eclectic festival brings you a lineup of the coming soon and the never-coming-back, the rare and the rediscovered, the unclassifiable and the underrated.
Simon Killer
Opening Night! New York Premiere!
Director Antonio Campos, actor Brady Corbet, and producers Josh Mond and Matt Palmieri in person!
A chilling death dance plays out in Paris between a troubled, possibly unhinged American graduate (Brady Corbet) and a French prostitute (Mati Diop). The screening will be followed by a reception in the Walter Reade Theater's Furman Gallery open to all ticketholders.
The We and the I
Closing Night! U.S. Premiere!
Cast members in person!
Michel Gondry’s delightful and wholly unexpected lo-fi experiment is a mobile kammerspiel set entirely on a crowded bus wending its way through the Bronx as it takes its high-school student passengers home on the last day of school.
A Borrowed Life
A deeply-felt, epic father-and-son drama chronicling the tumultuous life and times of a provincial mining-town family in the 1950s. One of New Taiwanese Cinema’s masterpieces.
Call Girl
Based on a true story, and subject of a major controversy in Sweden last year, this inevitably semi-lurid but never exploitative drama is about the corruption of a 14-year-old girl lured into a prostitution ring catering to the political establishment in the 1970s.
Dormant Beauty
A compelling drama in which four interrelated characters struggle with the moral impasses and compromises of modern life. With Isabelle Huppert and Toni Servillo.
Electra Glide in Blue
Record producer James William Guercio’s first and last film is a visually extravagant, behaviorally loopy story of an Arizona motorcycle cop named “Big” John Wintergreen (Robert Blake) who aspires to be a big-shot Los Angeles detective.
From the Life of the Marionettes
Bergman’s rarely-screened study investigates the underlying emotional and psychological causes that lead a middle class business executive to murder a prostitute. Never available on DVD in the U.S.
Gebo and the Shadow
U.S. Premiere!
An impoverished civil servant faces a desperate family crisis in this nighttime kammerspiel starring Michael Lonsdale, Claudia Cardinale Jeanne Moreau and Oliveira axiom Leonor Silveira.
Howard Zieff: Hearts of the West + Slither
A Film Comment Double Feature!
Howard Zieff’s underrated 1975 comedy about the early days of Hollywood western filmmaking Hearts of the West, starring Jeff Bridges and Alan Arkin, on a double bill with his 1973 caper comedy Slither, in which James Caan demonstrates his comedic chops.
Here Comes The Devil
Due to the expected arrival of Hurricane Sandy, both the Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center will be closed as of 6pm on Sunday, October 28 until the storm threat has passed.
New York Premiere!
Argentinian genre specialist Bogliano (Penumbra) spins a refreshingly low-fi, super-creepy tale of possession, revenge and reason-defying, steadily encroaching supernatural forces.
In the Fog
This quietly spellbinding and masterfully directed follow-up to My Joy is a gritty behind-enemy-lines drama in which an alleged Nazi collaborator faces execution by partisans.
Miss Lovely
A delirious tale of filmmaking, love, betrayal and crime set in the sleazy demi-monde of gangster-controlled Bollywood exploitation film production.
Motorway
In this kinetic, fuel-injected thriller, a secret high-speed-pursuit unit of the Hong Kong Police called the Stealth Riders battle with underworld getaway drivers through the city’s nocturnal maze of streets and highways.
Nights with Theodore
U.S. Premiere!
A romantic connection blossoms between two young Parisians over the course of a succession of dreamlike nocturnal visits to the singular, beguiling Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.
Penance
U.S. Premiere!
After a four-year hiatus, Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns with this five-part, made-for-television psychological drama/murder mystery that tests viewer endurance, and truly rewards it.
Sightseers
New York Premiere!
A country caravan tour spins horribly out of control when a very English couple embark on a romantic getaway that gradually escalates into all-out killing spree in this blackly funny new outing from rising indie star Ben Wheatley (Kill List, Down Terrace).
Stemple Pass
U.S. Premiere!
Images: four landscape shots containing a replica of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s cabin, one per season. Sound: the filmmaker’s readings from Kaczynski’s texts and diary.
3
A middle-aged dentist with a quietly unraveling life makes repeated and poignantly ineffectual efforts to renew his relationship with his ex-wife and adolescent daughter in this low-key and unexpected melancomédie from the co-director of Whisky.
Wish You Were Here
Kieran Darcy-Smith’s feature debut is a calmly devastating exploration of how one misjudged moment in life has the potential to cause everything to fall to pieces.
White Epilepsy
U.S. Premiere!
Philippe Grandrieux in person!
Grandrieux pushes the limits of the visible and sheds all vestiges of narrative to enter a state of total immersion that’s at once disembodied yet deeply physical, metaphysical yet grounded in the primordial reality of the body.
Film Comment Selects
Film Comment’s festival of movies returns in its 19th edition with a selection of titles curated by the magazine’s editors, offering strikingly bold visions, mixing New York premieres of new films and long-unseen older titles that deserve the big-screen treatment. Read More
Film Comment Selects 2018
Film Comment’s movie showcase returns in its 18th edition with a selection of titles curated by the magazine’s editors, offering strikingly bold visions, mixing New York premieres of new films and long-unseen older titles that deserve the big-screen treatment. Read More
Film Comment Selects 2017
Film Comment’s cinematic showcase returns in its 17th edition with a selection of titles curated by the magazine’s editors, an offering of strikingly bold visions and fresh voices, mixing exclusive New York premieres of vital new films and long-unseen older titles that deserve the big-screen treatment. Read More
Film Comment Selects 2016
The 16th edition of Film Comment magazine’s annual festival is back with its customarily unpredictable blend of sublime wonders and hard-hitting visions. The sublime is covered by our Opening and Closing Night selections—Terence Davies’s long-awaited Sunset Song and a revival of the late Chantal Akerman’s Golden Eighties—and among the hard-hitters is a pair of wrenching discoveries from Serbia and Iran and a harrowing yet serene vision of World War I. Also featuring new films by Benoît Jacquot, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Alexei German Jr., a spotlight on Charles Bronson, and a sidebar of works by the Polish master Andrzej Żuławski. Read More
Film Comment Selects 2015
The 15th edition of Film Comment magazine’s essential, eclectic festival brings you a lineup of the coming soon and the never-coming-back, the rare and the rediscovered, the unclassifiable and the underrated. Read More
Film Comment Selects 2014
The 14th edition of Film Comment magazine’s essential and eclectic feast of cinephilia presents 22 discoveries and rediscoveries, 17 of them New York premieres, and nine without U.S. distribution, handpicked by the magazine’s editors after scouring the international festival circuit in 2013. Read More
Film Comment Selects 2013
The 13th edition of Film Comment magazine’s essential, eclectic festival brings you a lineup of the coming soon and the never-coming-back, the rare and the rediscovered, the unclassifiable and the underrated. Read More
Film Comment Selects 2012
The 12th edition of Film Comment magazine’s crucial and eclectic festival brings you a handpicked lineup of the coming-soon and the never-coming-back, the rare and the rediscovered, the unclassifiable and the underrated, the sacred and the profane, the cute and the creepy, the tough and the tender, the naked and the dead—you get the idea. Read More
Film Comment Selects 2011
Program highlights include three works by Isild Le Besco including her latest Bas-Fonds; Viva Radio events with Warhol’s Velvet Underground films and Alex Cox’s Straight to Hell remix; three works by Shoah director Claude Lanzmann, and the extraordinary Wundkanal/Our Nazi… Read More
