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. This year’s awesome, mind-melting lineup covers the entire cinematic spectrum from genre movies to art-house whatsits to long-unseen revivals and includes new films by Bernardo Bertolucci, Hong Sang-soo, Lukas Moodysson, and Lasse Hallström, a special marathon screening of Jane Campion’s TV miniseries Top of the Lake, and vital new talents from Iran, Korea, Spain, and Australia. Our vintage offerings include a 1970s healthcare mayhem double feature starring George C. Scott and James Coburn, a rarely screened 1983 Raúl Ruiz masterpiece, a two-film focus on early works by Barbara director Christian Petzold, plus Jeremy Irons and Ben Kingsley in the 1983 film version of Pinter’s Betrayal.
Lineup
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.
Our Sunhi
A former film student awakens romantic longing in three men who cross her path in this acutely observed take on misread behavior, indecision, and awkward interchanges between the sexes from one of cinema’s undisputed masters of moral comedy.
Me and You
Free reception for ticket holders with food and wine courtesy of the Italian Wine Commission in the Furman Gallery starting at 7:00pm!
A teenager from a well-to-do-family tries to escape the outside world by shutting himself in his mother’s basement, but finds himself sharing the space with his heroin-addicted older half-sister in Bertolucci’s first Italian-language feature in 32 years.
Betrayal
Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley, and Patricia Hodge star in this rarely screened adaptation of one of Harold Pinter’s greatest plays, a semi-autobiographical portrait of an adulterous affair.
Blood Glacier
Scientists researching climate change at a research base in the German Alps discover a mysterious substance leaking from a glacier containing micro-organisms that can infect multiple hosts, and soon do, in this over-the-top creature feature for the Global Warming age.
Cannibal
The blunt title of this quietly disturbing, creepily atmospheric, and deeply perverse character study of a small-town tailor who forms a connection with his “masseuse” neighbor won’t prepare you for the slow and mesmerizingly deliberate experience in store for you.
Cherchez Hortense
Jean-Pierre Bacri and Kristin Scott Thomas are together at last in this old-school relationship movie by frequent Rivette and Ruiz screenplay collaborator and ex–Cahiers du cinéma critic Pascal Bonitzer, an underrated filmmaker in his own right.
City of Pirates
Funny, frightening, and enigmatic, this rarely screened film by the late Raúl Ruiz is like a cross between Peter Pan and Friday the 13th as told through a wildly baroque visual style that suggests a collaboration between Georges Méliès and Sergio Leone.
Enemy
In his second collaboration with Villeneuve, Jake Gyllenhaal gives his best performance to date as both Adam, a reserved and humorless history professor, and Anthony, an animated and cocksure bit-part actor who catches the academic’s eye due to their alarming resemblance.
Fat Shaker
In this singular and cryptic film from a subversive new voice in Iranian cinema, an obese con man uses his attractive deaf-mute son to extort money from predatory women looking for a boy-toy—until one of his marks makes herself at home, with unexpected consequences.
Felony
Moral dilemmas abound in this tense police drama starring Tom Wilkinson and Joel Edgerton, who also wrote the screenplay, another knockout from the Australian production collective behind Animal Kingdom.
Healthcare Mayhem: The Carey Treatment + The Hospital
Suspicion abounds in this month’s Film Comment Double Feature of two early-1970s medical gems: The Carey Treatment, an elaborately plotted mystery thriller starring James Coburn, and The Hospital, a blackly comic drama by Network writer Paddy Chayevsky.
Flesh of My Flesh
Director Denis Dercourt in person for Q&A!
An unsettling and strikingly oblique psychological horror film that gives new meaning to the term “motherly love,” Flesh of My Flesh takes us into the schizoid reality of a woman whose young child has a rare medical condition that requires a highly unusual diet.
Ghosts
The Hypnotist
Hallström returns to his native tongue for the first time in 25 years for this twisty, visually striking Nordic noir about a psychologist (the great Mikael Persbrandt) who’s lured back into hypnotism—a practice he’d sworn off—to help solve a horrific crime.
Intruders
Director Noh Young-seok in person on February 20!
This twisty, blackly comic suspense thriller from South Korea follows a screenwriter who rents a winter cabin in a remote country backwater to concentrate on his latest project, but finds himself surrounded by a colorful and noisy cast of characters.
Metro Manila
In this Sundance Audience Award winner, a family of poor rice-farmers travels from the desolate mountains to bustling Manila in the hopes of making some money, only to discover that the exploitation they faced at home is nothing compared to what greets them in the big city.
The Sacrament
Director Ti West in person for Q&A!
Indie horror specialist Ti West adopts a first-person found-footage approach, with his usual flair and assurance, for this story of a Jim Jones–type religious cult that will stick in your mind long after the credits roll.
Top of the Lake
Free Screening
Elisabeth Moss is a detective who investigates the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl in New Zealand in this thrilling, seven-episode television series, perhaps the toughest, wildest drama Campion has ever made.We Are the Best!
Best-friends Klara and Bobo defy the stifling conformity of their adolescence by joining forces with a Christian classmate to form a punk-rock band in early-1980s Stockholm.
The Weight
This exquisitely shot, one-of-a-kind tale centers on a sickly hunchbacked mortician who takes pride and pleasure in cleaning and dressing the dead and his burdensome younger stepbrother, who wants nothing more than to be a woman.
Wolfsburg
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Film Comment Selects 2018
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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