Detroit Film Theatre

From the first astonishing image to the last, everything in this monumental film from Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz carries surprising historical heft, thanks to the unique dimension that only cinema can provide. Actor Gael García Bernal (Amores Perros) reconceives his star power through Diaz’s discerning camera, disappearing into the role of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who in the 16th century navigated a crew to Southeast Asia after convincing the Spanish crown to fund his journey.

Debunking conventional colonialist histories and myths of the Age of Discovery, Diaz mounts an absorbing and visually breathtaking story of conquest and obsession, depicting Magellan’s journey to the Malayan Archipelago as an epic and relevant portrait of human vulnerability in the eternal struggle against oppression. In Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog, and French with English subtitles.

“A hypnotizing and spiritual epic.” —Josh Slater-Williams, IndieWire

In the aftermath of protests against racial injustice that erupted in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1965, an independent Black cinema movement, known as the L.A. Rebellion, emerged from an inclusive new film studies program at UCLA. One of the many important filmmakers who were part of the L.A. Rebellion was Charles Burnett, whose brilliant debut feature, Killer of Sheep, was filmed on a minuscule budget of just $10,000. Set in Watts, it tells the story of a sensitive dreamer (Henry Gayle Sanders) who begins to grow numb from the daily toll that his job and lack of money are taking on him and his family.

Killer of Sheep faced distribution challenges for years. Elected to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 1990, granting the film the status of a national treasure, it has nevertheless taken until now for Killer of Sheep to receive the director-supervised full restoration it has long deserved. 

“A monumental work. Charles Burnett’s contribution to cinema has for too long gone understated.”—Barry Jenkins, director, Moonlight

The 1984 debut feature by Billy Woodberry, one of the founders of the L.A. Rebellion film movement, is a sensitive, powerful drama chronicling the devastating effects of underemployment on an African American family in the L.A. neighborhood depicted in Charles Burnett’s 1977 Killer of Sheep.

Featuring stunning performances by Nate Hardman and Kaycee Moore as a couple whose everyday life is rocked by events beyond their control, Bless Their Little Hearts is enriched immeasurably by collaborator Charles Burnett’s cinematography and screenplay; the film attained national treasure status when it was named to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2013, assuring that it will be preserved and protected for future generations.

Newly restored in 2K high definition by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Admission is free in celebration of Black History Month.

“One of the greatest independent films of the twentieth century.” –Richard Brody, The New Yorker

This phantasmagoric dream from visionary Chinese director Bi Gan is an audacious, monumental love letter to a century of cinema. 

Presented in five chapters filmed in a dazzling array of styles, Resurrection’s mind-blowing imagery is united by a single science fiction premise: in a world where people have surrendered their dreams in exchange for the hope of prolonging life, rogue “fantasmers” continue to tug at their imaginations.

The continually morphing protagonist (Jackson Yee) roams through a wonderland of cinematic genres, from Méliès-style fantasy to buddy picture to millennial vampire romance—the latter filmed in an astonishing single take. 

By reimagining everything we’ve come to believe cinema can do, Bi Gan has created a work of staggering imagination on every level, designed for the most adventurous moviegoers. In Chinese with English subtitles.

“A cinephile’s delight... Electric, fantastic, deliriously inventive.” —Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

It’s awards night at the Detroit Film Theatre! Walk the red carpet into the Scarab Club for pre-film hors d'oeuvres and drinks ahead of the first screening of the Oscar-nominated Live Action and Animated Short Films.

Purchase includes:

• Ticket for the 7 p.m. screening of the Oscar-nominated Live Action and Animated Short Films at the DFT
• Red carpet event at the Scarab Club from 5 to 7 p.m. before the screening, featuring pre-film hors d'oeuvres and drinks 
  • beer, wine, and non-alcoholic options
• Reserved seating section at the DFT

The DFT’s most popular annual program brings together all of this year’s nominees in both the short animation and short live-action categories into one spectacularly entertaining event. Experiencing the Oscar® Shorts on the big screen is an astonishing reminder of how cinema can tell boldly imagined stories through the unbridled creativity of emerging filmmakers. Advance ticket purchase guarantees admission. Remaining seats are available at the door beginning one hour before each performance.

The Oscar® Shorts program runs approximately three hours, including a brief intermission between the animation and live-action categories.

Experience the audience favorites from the latest edition of the New York International Children’s Film Festival! These amazing short films from around the world are sure to inspire curiosity and conversation for viewers big and small. Celebrating Black Stories spotlights narratives that transcend national boundaries, culture, and language. With roots in history and tradition, these films share the joy and complexity of being young while underscoring the vibrancy of Black storytelling.

Featuring animation, live action, and documentary shorts, NYICFF’s programs offer a chance to explore new frontiers both around the world and close to home.  

For ages 8 and up, in English or with English subtitles. 

All five of this year’s Academy Award®-nominated shorts in the documentary category will be presented in this special program. While feature-length documentaries continue to enjoy a high profile in theaters and online, short documentaries can be just as powerful and surprising as their longer counterparts. 

The short format allows for a wide range of subjects and moods and can provide a uniquely personal take on non-fiction topics. Seeing all the nominees together on the big screen offers a bracing, eye-opening cinematic experience that feels fresh and different each year. 

Advance ticket purchase is recommended. Remaining seats are available at the door one hour before each performance. The program typically runs around three hours, including one intermission.

“We gotta protect it… die for it, if we have to.” — Eldred Corbine, Bad River Tribal Elder

This documentary sheds light on the Wisconsin-based Bad River Band’s ongoing legal battle against Canadian oil giant Enbridge Energy.

Placed on the reservation without the tribe’s consent in 1953, Line 5 has for decades posed an imminent threat to the Bad River Reservation, the Great Lakes ecosystem, and surrounding wildlife and communities.

The film chronicles the tribe’s legacy of resilience in protecting their lands, while also examining centuries of broken treaties, land seizure, and the abuses of Indian boarding schools.

Narrated by Quannah ChasingHorse and Academy Award–nominee Edward Norton.

Anna, an artist, and Magnús, a fisherman, live with their three children and their remarkably charismatic sheepdog in the majestic Icelandic countryside. As fractures in their marriage surface, Anna and Magnús struggle to hold onto the precious moments of their life together, hoping to find a path that makes sense of their deep and enduring devotion.

By observing life’s unexpected changes with empathy, wisdom, and occasional whimsy, the immensely gifted filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason (Godland) brings surprising humor and true emotional weight to this gorgeous, intimate, and brilliantly expansive portrait of a marriage—one that redefines itself against the equally powerful backdrop of the changing seasons. 

Iceland’s submission to the 2026 Academy Awards®. In Icelandic, English, Swedish, and French with English subtitles. 

“A striking marital drama… exquisitely tender, morbidly funny, wise, and lyrical.” —Guy Lodge, Variety

Bring the whole family to the DIA for a delicious dinner, then enjoy a special screening of Matilda (1996). Make it an evening of great food, fun, and film, and create lasting memories with your loved ones at the museum.

When young brothers Remi and Akin unexpectedly decide to accompany their often-absent father to the city to collect his overdue salary, what unfolds is an eye-opening journey through memory, the nature of masculinity, and a country on the cusp of a crucial transformation. Drawn from the experiences of first-time Nigerian director Akinola Davies Jr. and co-written with his brother Wale, this extraordinary debut is a personal family story—intimate and epic—set against the turbulence of 1993 Lagos during a national election promising a shift from military rule to democracy.

Featuring riveting performances by real-life brothers Godwin Chiemerie Egbo and Chibuike Marvelous Egbo, My Father’s Shadow depicts the wonder of seeing someone clearly for the first time—and finding something wholly unexpected. In Nigerian Pidgin, Yoruba, and English, with English subtitles.

“One of the most stirring debuts in recent years. An alluring miracle of a movie.” —Carlos Aguilar, The Playlist

The Italian Film Festival USA returns to the DFT with a selection of contemporary Italian films. Discover new filmmakers and the variety of films they create for Italian audiences. Films are in Italian with English subtitles. Screenings are free—visit italianfilmfests.org in March for the complete schedule.

With his most striking and eloquent documentary yet, Italian master Gianfranco Rosi has crafted a modern masterpiece—a visionary portrait of a region in Naples living under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius near the volcanic caldera, which today experiences frequent tremors. 

In his visually extraordinary, wide-ranging look at the area, Rosi observes archaeologists reckoning with ancient artifacts and the wreckage of plunderers, modern diggers descending into abandoned tunnels, children happily attending a storefront school, and phone banks fielding late-night calls from anxious locals still mindful of the eruption that buried Pompeii in 79 A.D.

Elegantly linking modern and ancient life, Below the Clouds connects to our contemporary moment—a contemplation of the unimaginable tucked inside our daily lives. 

Special Jury Prize, Venice Film Festival. In Italian, Arabic-Syrian, Japanese, Neapolitan Dialect, and English with English subtitles.

“Superb and brilliantly composed. An utterly distinctive, luminous cinematic mosaic.” —Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“I bought my painting; little did I know—the spiderweb was around me.” – Kevin Hearn

Norval Morrisseau (Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation) took the art world by storm in the 1960s with his vivid and expressive paintings. Lauded as the “Picasso of the North,” founder of the Woodlands school of art, and grandfather of contemporary Indigenous art, Morrisseau's popularity endures to this day.

After rock star Kevin Hearn purchases an alleged Morrisseau painting and begins to doubt its authenticity, he launches a lawsuit against the gallery that sold it to him. Tracing the painting’s origin uncovers a lucrative art forgery ring in Thunder Bay, but the investigation reveals an even darker web of crime.

Following the film's release, eight arrests were made and 1,000 fake paintings were seized. Ontario police credited There Are No Fakes with inspiring the investigation.

This screening will be followed by a special discussion with Cory Dingle, CEO of the Estate of Norval Morrisseau, examining the legal battles and technological developments highlighted in the film.

Image source: Greg Kinch/Vancouver Sun

The universally beloved Yi Yi (A One and a Two…), directed by the brilliant Taiwanese writer-director Edward Yang, is a portrait of a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of a single year. Chronicling middle-aged father NJ’s tentative flirtations with an old flame along with his precocious eight-year-old son's attempts at capturing reality with his beloved camera.

Yang, one of cinema’s great rediscovered artists, deftly imbues every character and event with compassionate clarity and a rich, enveloping storytelling style.

Warm, emotionally generous, and visually breathtaking, this intimate epic is one of the essential masterworks of the century, especially when seen in this sparkling new 4K restoration. Winner, Best Director, Cannes Film Festival. In Mandarin with English subtitles.

“The work of a master. In exchange for your time, Yi Yi will give you more life.” —A.O. Scott, The New York Times

Among Satyajit Ray’s crowning achievements, Days and Nights in the Forest is a wise and fully dimensional portrait of a generation of young Indian men yearning for a break from the stresses of everyday life. Adapted from Sunil Gangopadhyay’s celebrated 1968 novel, Ray (The Apu Trilogy) follows four bachelor friends as they decamp for a forest holiday, aiming to cut loose, sow some wild oats, and break a few rules along the way. 

But as dynamics with the locals grow more complicated, so do rivalries among the men themselves. Filled with some of Ray’s most indelible characters and comic moments, the newly restored Days and Nights in the Forest explores masculine vulnerabilities with the witty complexity of a master storyteller; it’s the must-see revival of the year. In Bengali with English subtitles.

“A masterpiece by one of the great film artists. Overwhelmingly beautiful, inexhaustibly rich.” —Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

Now in its 58th year, this juried annual festival presents the best of Michigan’s K–12 student films in a celebratory awards program featuring short films, animation, and documentaries. For families with children ages 10 and up. Free with museum admission.

Narcissus blooms, tasty dim sum dishes, bowing to elders, and lucky red envelopes filled with money. These images reflect puppeteer Tom Lee’s childhood memories of celebrating Lunar New Year in Hawai’i. 

In The Great Zodiac Animal Race, Lee retells the classic Lunar New Year zodiac tale with shadow puppet animals inspired by Asian languages and pictograms in this charming, family-friendly performance honoring the Year of the Horse.

The film that single-handedly kindled a generation’s awareness of the limitless possibilities of nonfiction filmmaking was Barbara Kopple’s 1976 Oscar® winner Harlan County USA, an unflinching, brilliantly filmed portrait of a coal miners’ strike in a small Kentucky town. Through unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners’ struggles—sometimes procedural, often violent—with strikebreakers, local police, and armed company thugs. 

Featuring a stirring soundtrack with legendary country and bluegrass artists Hazel Dickens, Merle Travis, and Florence Reece, the restored Harlan County USA remains a thrilling portrait of a community fighting for its survival against all odds.

“A great American document. The film retains all of its power.”—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, 2006

Considered documentarian Barbara Kopple’s masterpiece, American Dream unflinchingly details the explosive 1985 labor strike against Hormel Foods in Austin, Minnesota, a city torn apart by turmoil. Fed up with dangerous plant conditions and drastic wage cuts, the local union walked off the job against the advice of the United Food and Commercial Workers International. 

Fifteen years after her landmark Harlan County USA, Kopple again focused on working-class America, poignantly capturing one of the most significant setbacks to organized labor of its era. 1991 Academy Award®, Best Documentary Feature. Newly restored for its 35th-anniversary screening at the Sundance Film Festival. 

“Devastating, stirring, forthright. Kopple’s work is as important as it is good.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times