France/1952—directed by René Clément | 87 min.

In occupied France in 1940, a 5-year-old Parisian girl, Paulette (Brigitte Fossey, in an indelible performance), finds herself orphaned and alone after fleeing the city, until a rural family takes her in.

Confused by the mysteries of war and desperate to make sense of the world, Paulette forms a friendship with the family’s 11-year-old son, Michel (Georges Poujouly). Together, they create a secret game in hopes of bringing order to the chaos around them.

The children cling tightly to their make-believe rituals until the moment the adult world inevitably intrudes. In French with English subtitles.

“Clément’s masterpiece is the exemplar of expressive narrative filmmaking.” –Alan Scherstuhl, The Village Voice

USA/1925 — directed by Buster Keaton | 88 min.

Filmed on location in the Arizona desert, Go West stars Keaton as a young Midwestern man named Friendless, who takes the advice of newspaper publisher Horace Greeley and hops a freight train bound for the West.

There he befriends a dairy cow named Brown Eyes, and together they look out for one another while evading wolves, train robbers, and a one-way trip to the stockyards.

The film’s iconic climax is a full-scale cattle stampede through the streets and upscale shops of Los Angeles—led by Keaton in a red devil suit. Released a century ago, Go West remains one of the most strikingly modern works of cinematic art you’ll see this year.

“Keaton's face ranked almost with Lincoln's as an American archetype: it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful, yet it was irreducibly funny.” — James Agee, Agee on Film

USA/1926 — directed by William Beaudine | 109 min.

By 1926, Canadian-born film actress Mary Pickford (1892–1979) had become the most powerful woman in Hollywood—celebrated onscreen for her “luminous tenderness and gutter ferocity” (Photoplay, 1916), and behind the camera as a shrewd businesswoman and co-founder of United Artists Studio.

Sparrows was her last great silent film, equal parts expressionistic thriller and epic melodrama. Set in an alligator-infested swamp on a “baby farm” where children are kept in rags and the keepers have a habit of “losing” babies, the film highlights Pickford’s flair for both suspense and heart. 

She personally oversaw every aspect of production, including the construction of a four-acre swamp set built from hundreds of trees, two boxcars of Spanish moss, and live alligators—all in service of her mission to deliver the orphans to safety.

“Sparrows is Pickford’s timeless work of art, anchored by her performance imbued with pathos, humor, and charm.” — Pordenone Silent Film Festival

Italy/2025 — directed by Paolo Sorrentino | 131 min.

The World Premiere of the extraordinary new love story from Oscar® winner Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) will take place as the Opening Night selection of the 2025 Venice Film Festival on August 27.

Audiences will see the film for the very first time that night, and because that date falls after this brochure’s press deadline, we must keep full details of La Grazia (Grace) under wraps until then. Visit dia.org in September to learn more about one of the year’s most anticipated films and to secure advance tickets for the Detroit premiere.

In Italian with English subtitles.

Chaplin starred in and directed A Night in the Show in 1915 at Majestic Studio in Los Angeles. The film was based on a turn-of-the-century English music hall play called Mumming Birds, which Chaplin often performed during his touring days with Fred Karno’s pantomime troupe.

In the film, Chaplin plays dual roles as Mr. Pest and Mr. Rowdy, audience members who demolish all theater etiquette and create a climax of chaos before the curtain drops.

Chaplin directed The Rink in 1916, drawing on another talent he developed during his stage career. A flamboyant and comic roller-skater, he could pirouette gracefully or perform spectacular pratfalls. 70 min.

Hong Kong/2000 — directed by Wong Kar Wai | 99 min.

In 1962 Hong Kong, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate, life-changing bond. Delicately mannered and visually astonishing, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments.

With its brilliantly evocative soundtrack and exquisite color cinematography, it was named one of the ten best films of the 21st century by The New York Times.

This 4K presentation was supervised by the director and will be shown alongside his rarely seen short film In the Mood for Love 2001. In Cantonese and Shanghainese with English subtitles.

“Shockingly beautiful. An ecstatic vision and an evanescent masterwork.” – Manohla Dargis, L.A. Weekly

In a quiet corner of Massachusetts in the turbulent early 1970s, JB Mooney (Josh O’Connor), an unemployed carpenter turned amateur art thief, plans his first heist at a local museum. 

Not surprisingly, things go haywire quickly and comically—yet it soon becomes clear that this acclaimed new film from director Kelly Reichardt is less about the mechanics of a bungled burglary than about the desperate delusions of its orchestrator and their inevitable effect on his wife and children.

Funny, touching, and deeply humane, The Mastermind recalls the spirit of a modern-day Chaplin. (110 min.)

“Kelly Reichardt steals the spirit of the ’70s with a gorgeously rumpled art-house art heist.” –Jessica Kiang, Variety

USA/Austria/2024 — directed by Jem Cohen | 121 min.

Visionary director Jem Cohen (Museum Hours) brings the same elegance and intellectual curiosity to his stargazing new feature. The film’s principal subject is Karl, an Austrian astronomer who, after turning 70, begins to re-evaluate both his work and his personal life. He travels to a mountaintop on a Greek island in search of the darkest possible sky against which to view the cosmos in its full grandeur.

Yet the true focus of Little, Big, and Far—whose title refers to the three concepts Karl and his physicist wife believe lie at the core of their work—is a profound reckoning with scientific truth at a moment of humanity’s existential crisis. In German and English with English subtitles.

“Critic’s Pick! An achingly beautiful film about astronomers and humanity and love and the stars… spiritually nourishing in a way few films can manage.” –Alissa Wilkinson, The New York Times

USA/Canada/2025 — directed by K.L. Dunn and Joel Martin

Barbara Greene Mann was a brilliant and prolific printmaker and watercolor painter who emerged from Detroit’s Cass Corridor arts community in the late 1960s. 

Greene Mann chronicled the people, places, and energy of a city in cultural upheaval, until she vanished from the scene in the early 1980s. Thirty years later, filmmaker Joel Martin found her living in Toronto, struggling with mental illness but still creating visionary images with relentless intensity, as if her life depended on it. 

Her final works reflected on the plight of an orphaned elephant named Lucy, who was being kept in solitary captivity at the Edmonton Zoo.

The Elephant (in my room) premieres alongside Wayne State University Press’s publication of Strange Beauty, an illustrated retrospective of Greene Mann’s prints, watercolors, and lithographs.

USA/1991 — directed by Eleanor Coppola, Fax Bahr, and George Hickenlooper | 96 min.

In the late 1970s, Francis Ford Coppola, accompanied by his family, cast, and crew, traveled to the Philippines to begin work on what would become Apocalypse Now. 

The shoot quickly became one of the most notorious in cinema history, spiraling into a hellish, life-threatening ordeal that tested the sanity of everyone involved.

Chronicling the drama was the late Eleanor Coppola, who captured extensive behind-the-scenes footage and recorded audio interviews with her husband and crew members as tensions mounted. 

In the early 1990s, Eleanor Coppola’s footage was interwoven with new interviews featuring Martin Sheen, Dennis Hopper, George Lucas, and others. For this new restoration, supervised by Francis Coppola and making its DFT debut, the original footage has been scanned in 4K, resulting in an immersive big-screen experience.

“The greatest ever making-of documentary. A magnificent achievement.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian