Opening Night! World Premiere!

Director Paul Greengrass and star Tom Hanks in person!

In April 2009, four Somali teenage pirates in a stolen Taiwanese fishing vessel seized the Maersk Alabama, a cargo ship bound for Mombasa. When the crew resisted, the pirates left with the Captain, Richard Phillips, and tried to make it ashore in the ship’s high speed lifeboat. What followed was a tense stand-off that was closely watched by the entire planet. Paul Greengrass, one of the incontestable masters of reality-based fictional filmmaking, and writer Billy Ray have crafted a film (based on Phillips’ account of the incident) that is at once an edge-of-your-seat thriller and a careful accounting of a daring geopolitical chess game that is equally attentive to both sides. Tom Hanks in the title role shares most of his screentime with four first-time actors (Barkhad Abdi, Faysal Ahmed, Barkhad Abdirahman and Mahet M. Ali) as the pirates, and they are nothing short of electrifying. Captain Phillips is a genuine tour de force. A Sony Pictures release.

Don't miss our HBO Directors Dialogue with Paul Greengrass on September 28!