Lists and Suggestions

Till is a profoundly emotional and cinematic film about the true story of Mamie Till Mobley's relentless pursuit of justice for her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, who, in 1955, was lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi. In Mamie's poignant journey of grief turned to action, we see the universal power of a mother's ability to change the world.

At a fading vacation resort, eleven-year-old Sophie treasures rare times with her loving and idealistic father, Calum. As the world of adolescence creeps into view, beyond her eye Calum struggles under the weight of life outside of fatherhood. Twenty years later, Sophie's tender recollections of their last holiday become a powerful and heartrending portrait of their relationship. She tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't, in Charlotte Wells' superb and searingly emotional debut film.

Alvin Ailey was a trailblazing pioneer who found salvation through dance. AILEY traces the full contours of this brilliant and enigmatic man whose search for the truth in movement resulted in enduring choreography that centers on the Black American experience with grace, strength, and unparalleled beauty. Told through Ailey's own words and featuring evocative archival footage and interviews with those who intimately knew him, director Jamila Wignot weaves together a resonant biography of an elusive visionary. --from the distributor's website.

Antoinette, a schoolteacher, is looking forward to her long planned summer holiday with her married lover Vladimir, the father of one of her pupils. When she learns that Vladimir has to cancel because his wife organized a surprise hiking vacation, Antoinette decides to follow their tracks, accompanied by a protective donkey named Patrick.

Everyone said Cassie was a promising young woman, until a mysterious event abruptly derailed her future. But nothing in Cassie's life is what it appears to be. She's wickedly smart, tantalizingly cunning, and she's living with a secret double life by night. Now, an unexpected encounter is about to give Cassie a chance to right the wrongs of the past in this thrilling and wildly entertaining story.

Middle-aged Magdalena has lost contact with her son after he took off with a friend from their town of Guanajuato to cross the border into the U.S., hopeful to find work. Desperate to find out what happened to him, and to know whether or not he's even alive, she embarks on an ever-expanding and increasingly dangerous journey to discover the truth. At the same time, a young man named Miguel has returned to Mexico after being deported from the U.S., and eventually, his path converges with Magdalena's. From this simple but urgent premise, director Fernanda Valadez has crafted a lyrical, suspenseful slow burn, equally constructed of moments of beauty and horror, and which leads to a startling, shattering conclusion.

Gillian is one of those many struggling filmmakers in L.A. who just can't seem to get the money for their first feature. Feeling like her friends and her partner are losing faith in her abilities, she decides to resurrect her abandoned documentary based on a 'compliment' she once received that she would make a good murderer. But while she documents what makes the perfect murder a hitherto unseen dark side of Gillian emerges and grows.

Twelve-year-old Beans is on the edge. Torn between innocent childhood and delinquent adolescence, she is forced to grow up fast to become the tough Mohawk warrior that she needs to be during the Indigenous uprising known as The Oka Crisis, which tore Quebec and Canada apart for 78 tense days in the summer of 1990.

By day, Mari and her friends broadcast their spiritual devotion through pastel pinks and catchy evangelical songs about purity and perfection. By night, they form a masked, vigilante girl gang, prowling the streets of Brazil in search of sinners who have deviated from the rightful path. After an attack goes wrong, Mari is forced to reflect on her actions and confront her paralyzing inner demons.

Jane Campion returns to the kind of mythic frontier landscape--pulsating with both freedom and menace--that she previously traversed in The Piano in order to plumb the masculine psyche in The Power of the Dog, set against the desolate plains of 1920s Montana and adapted by the filmmaker from Thomas Savage's novel. After a sensitive widow and her enigmatic, fiercely loving son move in with her gentle new husband, a tense battle of wills plays out between them and his brutish brother, whose frightening volatility conceals a secret torment, and whose capacity for tenderness, once reawakened, may offer him redemption or destruction. Campion, who won an Academy Award for her direction here, charts the repressed desire and psychic violence coursing among these characters with the mesmerizing control of a master at the height of her powers.

The film brings to life the legendary cookbook author and television superstar who changed the way Americans think about food, television, and even about women. Using never-before-seen archival footage, personal photos, first-person narratives, and cutting-edge, mouth-watering food cinematography, the film traces Julia Child's twelve year struggle to create and publish the revolutionary Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) which has sold more than 2.5 million copies to date, and her rapid ascent to become the country's most unlikely television star. It's the empowering story of a woman who found her purpose, and her fame, at 50, and took America along on the whole delicious journey.

France, 1760. Marianne is commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman who has just left the convent. Because she is a reluctant bride-to-be, Marianne arrives under the guise of companionship, observing Héloïse by day and secretly painting her by firelight at night. As the two women orbit one another, intimacy and attraction grow as they share Héloïse first moments of freedom. Héloïse portrait soon becomes a collaborative act of and a testament to their love.

US Army Staff Sergeant Will James, Sergeant J.T. Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge comprise the Bravo Company's bomb disposal unit stationed in Baghdad. James is the tech team leader. When he arrives on the scene, Bravo Company has thirty-nine days left on its current deployment, and it will be a long thirty-nine days for Sanborn and Eldridge whose styles do not mesh with their new leader. James' thrill of the dismantlement seems to be the ultimate goal regardless of the safety of his fellow team members, others on the scene or himself. On the other hand, Sanborn is by the books: he knows his place and duty and trusts others in the army to carry out theirs as well as he. Eldridge is an insecure soldier who is constantly worried that an error or misjudgment on his part will lead to the death of an innocent civilian or a military colleague. While the three members face their own internal issues, they have to be aware of any person at the bomb sites, some of who may be bombers themselves.

Diana, princess of the Amazons was trained to be an unconquerable warrior. Raised on a sheltered island paradise, when an American pilot crashes on their shores and tells of a massive conflict raging in the outside world, Diana leaves her home, convinced she can stop the threat. Fighting alongside man in a war to end all wars, Diana will discover her full powers, and her true destiny.

Will and his teenage daughter, Tom, have lived off the grid for years in the forests of Portland, Oregon. When their idyllic life is shattered, both are put into social services. After clashing with their new surroundings, Will and Tom set off on a harrowing journey back to their wild homeland.

It's the beginning of the summer. In a village in the north of Turkey, Lale and her four sisters come home from school, innocently playing with boys. The supposed debauchery of their games causes a scandal with unintended consequences. The family home slowly turns into a prison, classes on housework and cooking replace school, and marriages begin to be arranged.

Based on the vibrant true story of a young girl from the streets of rural Uganda whose world rapidly changes when she is introduced to the game of chess, and, as a result of the support she receives from her family and community, is instilled with the confidence and determination she needs to pursue her dream of becoming an international chess champion.

A hilarious look at marriage, divorce and everything in between. With a thriving Santa Barbara bakeshop, a new romance heating up, and her divorce finally behind her, Jane Adler has her life all figured out, until she finds herself trapped between the perfect new beau and her philandering ex-husband who's determined to win her back. When opposites attract all over again, will love be sweeter the second time around? It's...complicated!

Monte and his baby daughter are the last survivors of a damned and dangerous mission to deep space. The crew, death row inmates led by a doctor with sinister motives, has vanished. As the mystery of what happened onboard the ship is unraveled, father and daughter must rely on each other to survive as they hurtle toward the oblivion of a black hole.

After a tragic riding accident, young cowboy Brady, once a rising star of the rodeo circuit, is warned that his competition days are over. Back home, Brady finds himself wondering what he has to live for when he can no longer do what gives him a sense of purpose: to ride and compete. In an attempt to regain control of his fate, Brady undertakes a search for a new identity and tries to redefine his idea of what it means to be a man in the heartland of America.

A shy but ambitious film student begins to find her voice as an artist while navigating a turbulent courtship with a charismatic but untrustworthy man. She defies her protective mother and concerned friends as she slips deeper and deeper into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship that comes dangerously close to destroying her dreams.

A stirring look at three women striving to forge their own paths amidst the wide-open plains of the American Northwest: a lawyer who finds herself contending with both office sexism and a hostage situation; a wife and mother whose determination to build her dream home puts her at odds with the men in her life; and a young law student who forms an ambiguous bond with a lonely ranch hand. A portrait emerges of flawed, but strong-willed individuals in the process of defining themselves.

"Rogers and Clarke ... are two inept songwriters, down on their luck and desperate for money. Taking the advice of their shifty agent, the duo are whisked off on a tour of the mystical republic of Ishtar. On their arrival, our heroes are separately recruited into spying for opposing sides of a planned revolution, while simultaneously vying for the attention of a gorgeous female freedom fighter. ... But Clarke and Rogers make worse spies than they do songwriters, and soon they're left stranded in the desert with only a blind camel and several CIA assassins for company."--Container.