Narrative Feature | 127 minutes
2021 | Norwegian | Norway/France/Sweden/Denmark
Julie (Renate Reinsve) is restlessly cycling through career paths, relationships and the taxing realities of existence. As she goes hurtling into her 30s, she’s left wondering: when will life really begin, and what is her true purpose? Framed around Julie’s delightful indecisiveness, we follow four years of ups and downs, featuring two important relationships and a handful of what ifs. This darkly comedic journey from director Joachim Trier (LOUDER THAN BOMBS, HIFF 2015) is a biting take on romantic comedy in the modern age, and earned Reinsve the Best Actress Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
EAST COAST PREMIERE
Documentary Feature | 81 minutes
2021 | English | USA/Mexico
In her latest visionary work, which earned her the Best Documentary Director Award at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, filmmaker and MacArthur “Genius” grantee Natalia Almada takes us on a philosophical and cinematic journey, inviting us to reassess our complicated relationship to technology and to question whether technological progress will always lead to the betterment of society. Synchronously intimate in scope and epic in scale, and crafted with breathtaking imagery, USERS challenges the audience to consider the ways the machines we rely on every day may end up irrevocably altering our planet, and ultimately, the very fabric of our humanity.
Documentary Feature | 86 minutes
2021 | English | USA
Dark clouds hang over the cornfields of Storm Lake, Iowa, which has seen its share of change in the 40 years since Big Agriculture came to town. Farmers blow their life savings on new equipment they hope will keep their livelihoods intact. Migrant workers flock here—welcome and not—for their slice of the American Dream. Enter: 63-year-old Pulitzer-Prize winner Art Cullen and his family-run newspaper, The Storm Lake Times. Day-in and day-out, the Cullens deliver local news on a shoestring budget for their 3,000 readers. Come hell or pandemic, they’ll fight to preserve this town they call home.
• Followed by a Q&A moderated by The East Hampton Star editor David Rattray.
EAST COAST PREMIERE
Narrative Feature | 111 minutes
2021 | English | Germany/UK
SATURDAY CENTERPIECE
It’s Christmastime at Sandringham, and while three days of festivities at the Queen’s pastoral estate promise warmth and merriment, the marriage of Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) and Princess Diana (Kristen Stewart), nèe Diana Spencer, has long since grown cold. Suffocated by rumors of affairs, murmurings of divorce, and impossible expectations that have been thrust upon her, Diana is on the precipice of a monumental decision that would soon shock the world. In SPENCER, Academy Award®-nominated director Pablo Larraín (JACKIE) eschews the conventions of the traditional biopic, dialing up the melodrama and playing to our collective fascination with the woman known as The People’s Princess.
Documentary Feature | 114 minutes
2021 | English/Thai | USA/UK
In the summer of 2018, the world stood watch as 12 young soccer teammates were trapped in a cave in northern Thailand. Flooded passageways left rescue crews at a loss, until they sought help from cave experts and deep sea divers who offered both an expansive knowledge of the risks involved and the willpower to succeed when all hope seemed lost. Oscar®-winning directors Jimmy Chin and E. Chai Vasarhelyi (FREE SOLO) take on one of the most remarkable rescue missions in recent history with intricate detail; the powerful firsthand accounts in THE RESCUE will leave you in awe of human perseverance.
Narrative Feature | 127 minutes
2021 | English | Australia/New Zealand
Set in majestic rural Montana in the early 20th century, Jane Campion’s highly anticipated new film follows the successful cattle-ranching Burbank brothers—brutal and beguiling Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and quiet and polite George (Jesse Plemons)—as they storm into the life of widowed innkeeper Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and her dreamy, sensitive son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). When George falls in love with Rose, the full force of Phil’s charisma, cruelty, and internal torment is unleashed. With gorgeous visuals and brilliantly subversive performances, this incendiary examination of masculinity gone awry once again proves Campion to be one of the best filmmakers of our time.
Narrative Feature | 127 minutes
2021 | English | Australia/New Zealand
Set in majestic rural Montana in the early 20th century, Jane Campion’s highly anticipated new film follows the successful cattle-ranching Burbank brothers—brutal and beguiling Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and quiet and polite George (Jesse Plemons)—as they storm into the life of widowed innkeeper Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and her dreamy, sensitive son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). When George falls in love with Rose, the full force of Phil’s charisma, cruelty, and internal torment is unleashed. With gorgeous visuals and brilliantly subversive performances, this incendiary examination of masculinity gone awry once again proves Campion to be one of the best filmmakers of our time.
Narrative Feature | 70 minutes
2021 | French | France
After the passing of her grandmother, 8-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) returns with her parents to her mother’s childhood home to begin clearing out the house. While wandering the surrounding woods, Nelly discovers a secret that unlocks insights into her mother’s past. With PETITE MAMAN, Céline Sciamma (PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE, HIFF 2019) once again brings forth a magical quietude, this time through the exploration of the emotional bonds between mothers and daughters. Sciamma’s luscious, cinematic poetry takes pleasure in confronting the spirit of imagination and the power of memory through the eyes of a child.
Narrative Feature | 123 minutes
2021 | Spanish | Spain
The latest from Academy Award-winning auteur Pedro Almodóvar (PAIN AND GLORY, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER) is an arresting melodrama following the lives of successful, middle-aged photographer Janis (Penélope Cruz) and anxious adolescent Ana (Milena Smit), which intertwine when they meet in a maternity ward in Madrid and develop a brief, but intense bond. The encounter has a transformative effect that thrusts the two mothers into a life-changing odyssey, sending them down a rabbit hole of secrets that calls into question the fabric of family, legacy, and memory. PARALLEL MOTHERS is a masterful examination of motherhood and the ways in which history frames our experience.
US PREMIERE
Narrative Feature | 104 minutes
2021 | English | UK
SUNDAY CENTERPIECE
In this vibrant, lush romance, orphaned housemaid-turned-writer Jane (played by Odessa Young and the legendary Glenda Jackson, respectively) reflects back on a particular warm spring day she spent in post-WWI Britain. While her employers Mr. and Mrs. Niven (Academy Award® winners Colin Firth and Olivia Colman) are away for the day, she meets with her neighbor and long-term lover Paul (Josh O’Connor, The Crown) for a clandestine tryst. Scripted by Alice Birch (LADY MACBETH, Normal People) and sensually helmed by Eva Husson, MOTHERING SUNDAY explores one woman’s passion, vulnerability, and grief in the inter-war period.
