Q&A with Joanna Arnow, Babak Tafti, and Scott Cohen on Oct. 5 & 7

In her unsparing, acerbically funny feature debut, Joanna Arnow stars as an emotionally detached young Brooklynite drifting through unremarkable days and nights. Neither her on-again-off-again BDSM relationship with a mildly disinterested older dom, nor her nondescript corporate job, appear to bring her any satisfaction, and her relationship with her unpleasable New Yorker parents only compounds the tiresome cycle of her routine. Arnow, who also wrote, directed, and edited this sharp and observant take on modern-day malaise, is known for her autobiographically tinged works of brutal honesty and deadpan self-deprecation. Here, she finds a core of poignant truth about the ways people search for those elusive, ever-shifting things like emotional happiness and sexual gratification, refusing to judge them while at the same time unafraid of presenting their flaws. A Magnolia Pictures release.

Preceded by:
Unhappy Hour
Ted Fendt, 2023, Germany, 10m
German with English subtitles
World Premiere
A chance encounter between two acquaintances leads to a friendly beer and warm commiseration about life’s little struggles: lost keys, bad roommates, awkward exes, and annoying grant deadlines. A minuet of hesitant intimacies, Ted Fendt’s Unhappy Hour casts a delicate but incisive gaze on the inconvenience of other people and the minor challenges of being in the world.

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