Wednesday, March 6, 2024
The Zone of Interest   Poland, United Kingdom
Location: SilverCity
Showtimes: 6:30 & 8:30 pm

Director: Jonathan Glazer
Cast: Sandra Huller, Christian Friedel
Running time: 106 minutes
Language: German, Polish; English subtitles

Awards: Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, International Film, Direction, Adapted Screenplay, Sound; Cannes: Grand Prize Winner, FIPRESCI Prize (Jonathan Glazer) 
Technician Prize, Soundtrack Composer (Mica Levi); Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Picture, Director, Actress, Music Score, National Society of Film Critics Awards: Best Director, Actress; Toronto Film Critics Association Awards: Best Picture, Director. 29 other wins, 159 nominations. 

“The Zone of Interest is possibly the least overtly traumatic film about the Holocaust ever made, yet it’s devastating in the quietest way.”—Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine

Master of portraiture Jonathan Glazer (“Under the Skin”) was awarded the Grand Prix at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival for “The Zone of Interest,” adapted from a 2014 novel of the same title by Martin Amis. 

The film centres on the domestic life of Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, “Anatomy of a Fall”) and Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), beneficiaries of lebensraum, whose family home — nestled between train tracks and gas chambers — is spitting distance from Auschwitz, the infamous German concentration camp located in occupied Poland, where Rudolf serves as commandant.

Towards the final days of the Holocaust, Hedwig is fixated on self-preservation, while Rudolf is increasingly burdened by his duties. We reside inside the family’s encampment, with background voices of ghost-like prisoners muffled by the perpetrator’s quotidian musings. 

At one point, Hedwig and her atrocious friends joke about their new luxury goods, received from Canada — the nickname of the storage facilities where such items, after being confiscated, were stored — at the demise of their former neighbours.

Shot on location, “The Zone of Interest” weds banal and overt acts of evil with unforgettable reminders of resistance (it was shot in monochrome by thermal-imaging cameras). 

And just as we can't take any more, the film gives a crushing nod to Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Act of Killing” (2012). Hauntingly scored by Mica Levi and shot by Łukasz Żal (“Cold War”), this film will stay with you for a lifetime, for better or for worse.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024
Monster    Japan
Location: SilverCity
Showtimes: 6:30 & 8:45 pm

Director: Kore-eda Hirokazu 
Principal Cast: Andô Sakura, Nagayama Eita, Soya Kurokawa
Run Time: 127 minutes
Language: Japanese with English subtitles

Awards: Cannes Film Festival: Queer Palm (Kore-eda Hirokazu), Best Screenplay Yûji Sakamoto; Chicago International Film Festival: Gold Q-Hugo Award Kore-eda Hirokazu;
Stockholm Film Festival: Best Film; Vancouver International Film Festival:  Audience Award; 12 other nominations

““Monster” is one of the finest films of the year, and its structure — like its circle of characters — carries secrets that can only be unraveled through patience and empathy.”             —Natalia Winkleman, New York Times

After a detour in France (“The Truth,” TIFF ’19) and South Korea (“Broker,” TIFF ’22), Kore-eda Hirokazu returns to his homeland to reconnect with the roots that nourished the deepest spirit of his cinema. His art thrives on subtle, delicate emotions, disregards the obvious, and explores the ordinariness and variables of the human experience. 

Quiet and reserved Minato (Soya Kurokawa) — no longer a kid, but not yet an adolescent — lost his father when he was a young child and lives with his mother (Sakura Ando). When he starts behaving strangely, obsessed with the idea his brain has been switched with a pig’s, his mother suspects his teacher Hori (Eita Nagayama) and calls a meeting with the school principal (Tanaka Yuko) only to face a wall of silence and stiff apologies. 

Someone must have put that idea in Minato’s head, but something doesn’t add up. Is Minato telling the truth or is his professor innocent? Looking at the story from various points of view, in a “Rashomon”-inspired structure, reality changes and the actual subject becomes the hidden friendship between Minato and one of his schoolmates, often bullied by other kids. 

A great storyteller of family dynamics, Kore-eda shows once again his unique ability to depict the inner world of children, unveiling uncomfortable realities with a natural and necessary tenderness. 

A milestone in his impressive body of work, “Monster” is marked by two major collaborations: one with co-screenwriter Sakamoto Yûji; and the other with the legendary musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died last March, “Monster” being his last soundtrack.

Wednesday, February 21, 2024
The Persian Version   USA
Location: SilverCity
Showtimes: 6:30 & 8:30 pm

Director: Maryam Keshavarz
Cast: Layla Mohammadi, Niousha Noo
Running time: 107 minutes
Language: English, Persian with English subtitles

Awards: National Board of Review: Top Ten Independent Films; Sundance 2023: Audience Award; Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award (Maryam Keshavarz); Calgary International Film Festival: Audience Award-Best International Feature. Six other nominations. 

“Braids comedy and tragedy, vibrant aplomb and thoughtful soberness...”—Lisa Kennedy, Variety

Writer-director Maryam Keshavarz, who previously won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival for her debut film, “Circumstance,” returns with this uproarious, genre-blurring crowd pleaser about identity, belonging, and secrets — those that tie families together and pull them apart, perhaps at the same time. 

Just as brash as she is introspective, Leila (Layla Mohammadi, “The Sex Lives of College Girls”) defies expectation at every turn: those of her parents, and in particular her mother, Shireen (Niousha Noor, “Kaleidoscope”), who disapproves of Leila’s disregard for tradition and cultural norms; and those of her romantic partners, who are perplexed by the fondness that Leila has for her family (and Iranian heritage) despite their differences, simmering just beneath the surface of her feigned nonchalance. 

But it becomes harder for Leila to keep her opposing lives separate when she discovers she is pregnant just as her family convenes in New York for her father’s heart transplant surgery.

It’s here that the film takes a beautiful and unexpected turn, as we are transported back in time to Shireen’s childhood in Iran through to her initial experiences in America, understanding the level of loss and personal sacrifice that has come to inform her rocky relationship with Leila. 

As past and present continue to collide, the film balances the somber weight of its generations-spanning ambition with a quirky dynamism in the form of “Fleabag-esque”, fourth-wall-breaking monologues and intricately choreographed dance sequences as Leila’s love for retro pop music bleeds onto the screen. 

“The Persian Version” is undeniably full of heart and with it, heartache — one that beats to its own drum and will bring audiences to their feet