Ari Aster Selects
With his breakout feature, the wickedly macabre supernatural chamber piece Hereditary (2018), and its equally acclaimed follow-up, Sweden-set folk horror pressure-cooker Midsommar (2019), director Ari Aster demonstrated a well-honed talent for isolating the corrosive tensions and sinister contradictions that lurk just beneath the alluring comforts of family and community, yielding sensitive, profoundly unsettling studies of interpersonal angst and long-repressed emotional realities. In the intervening years, his unflaggingly ambitious filmmaking has helped to spark a spirited industry-wide discourse around the contours and capacities of genre. Aster has simultaneously engaged in full-throated dialogue with the forms and traditions of horror and exploded the limits of that category in new and unpredictable ways, balancing twisted psychological drama against the blackest irony as a means of probing humanity’s darker corners with assurance and laser-sharp precision. This April, on the occasion of the release of Beau Is Afraid, Film at Lincoln Center is excited to present a curated selection of films handpicked by Aster himself to complement the director’s highly anticipated new feature. This eclectic and unexpected collection of masterworks drawn from seven decades of film history across a range of genres and production contexts sheds light on the inspirations and influences behind one of the most compelling directorial voices in Hollywood today.
To view the films and schedule for this series, please click here.
Acknowledgements:
A24; American Genre Film Archive; Guy Maddin, John Gurdebeke, the Winnipeg Film Group; Karel Zeman Museum; Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute; Czech National Film Archive.
The Birds
Closely Watched Trains
Cowards Bend the Knee
Defending Your Life
Invention for Destruction
Johnny Guitar
A Matter of Life and Death
Playtime
The River
Wake in Fright
Directed by Ted Kotcheff (First Blood) and starring Donald Pleasence, Wake in Fright is a brutal, visceral overlooked gem of the Australian New Wave about a teacher (Gary Bond) who arrives in the rough outback mining town of Bundanyabba and ends up going on a days-long, self-destructive bender.
The Wolf House
When María, a young girl newly escaped from a community of German religious extremists in southern Chile, takes shelter in a mysterious house in the woods, she finds herself plunged into a rabbit hole of frighteningly mutable surfaces and substances in Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León’s nightmarish shapeshifter of a film.
Beau Is Afraid
Q&A with Ari Aster
This screening takes place at AMC Lincoln Square and is only available to select ticket holders. A paranoid man embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother in this bold and ingeniously depraved new film from writer/director Ari Aster.Tickets are now on sale! $17 for the General Public; $14 for Students, Seniors, and Persons with Disabilities; and $12 for FLC Members.
See more and save with a 3+ Film Package. Discount automatically applied in cart.
Limited $99 All-Access Passes and $59 Student All-Access Passes also available.
Complimentary tickets for FLC Members and Patrons are eligible for standard-priced screenings and events in this series. Learn more about becoming an FLC Member.