Afternoon

Q&A with Angela Schanelec on February 8

Schanelec herself stars in her fifth feature, a characteristically sensuous and tense reworking of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. An estranged family of artists meets for a holiday rendezvous at a villa in Potsdam, including selfish theater actor Irene (Schanelec), her psychically fragile son (Jirka Zett), and her sickly older brother (Mark Waschke). Irene struggles to connect with these two fraught figures, and as old resentments and older wounds bubble up to the surface, the family must endure the emotional reckoning it has long deferred. In one of her most visually beautiful films, Schanelec paints the agony and the ecstasy of the familial bond with the soft, warm light of a summer afternoon. 35mm print courtesy of the Goethe Institut-New York.

Playing as part of our Angela Schanelec retrospective (Feb. 7-13), leading to the opening of I Was at Home, But… on Feb. 14. See 3+ films during the retrospective and save!