2022 | directed by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch

Adapted from an award-winning novel by Italian writer Paolo Cognetti, this breathtaking, grand, intimate film follows the decades-long relationship between boyhood friends Pietro (Luca Marinelli) and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi), who meet when Pietro's well-off family vacations in Bruno's tiny Alpine village.

Over the years, their friendship waxes and wanes, but the two reconnect after the death of Pietro's father and decide to build, by hand, the remote Alpine cabin the father had dreamed of.

Winner of the Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival. In Italian, English, and Nepali with English subtitles. (147 minutes) 

“It climbs mountainous heights and rewards you with the opposite of vertigo: exaltation.” –Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian 

Pakistan/2022—directed by Saim Sadiq | 127 min.

A film of groundbreaking firsts, including the first Pakistani film to play at the Cannes Film Festival and to be shortlisted for the Best International Feature Oscar®. Initially banned in its home country for its LGBTQ+ themes, Joyland is a family drama set in the bustling megacity of Lahore.

Haider, a soft-spoken husband, is pressured by his domineering father to find a job. He finds work as a dancer in an erotic theater and is drawn to the show’s dazzling star, a trans woman (played by Alina Khan). This striking feature debut upends traditional gender roles and identities through an engaging story of complex and imperfect expressions of love.

Official selection, Toronto, London, Sundance and AFI Film Festivals. Jury Prize Winner and Queer Palm Award, Cannes Film Festival. In Urdu and Punjabi with English subtitles.

“Funny, forward, and bracingly political… Pakistani director Saim Sadiq’s sensuous film mounts an indictment of misogyny and transphobia without ever lecturing us.” — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

1953 | Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot | 147 min.

We’re celebrating this weekend’s Concours with what is likely the greatest film about driving ever made. And it’s not about speed – in fact, just the opposite. Four desperate men stuck in a desolate town in Central America, agree to earn $2,000 each to carefully drive two trucks filled with nitroglycerine over 300 miles of rocky, decrepit mountain roads to help extinguish a raging oil well fire.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's masterpiece is one of the great, existential movie thrillers – both darkly funny and utterly nerve-wracking. Clouzot (Diabolique) has staged sequences that are as agonizingly suspenseful as anything in movie history. That's no accident, since endurance, fate, and the human condition are what The Wages of Fear is about.

The restored original cut of this visionary work is thrilling in ways we always hope suspense films will be; we are reminded, almost perversely, to be careful what we wish for. Grand Prize, Cannes Film Festival. In French with English subtitles.

"The film is about their responses to the grueling test of driving the trucks. You sit there waiting for the theatre to explode." -Pauline Kael, The New Yorker 

2022 | directed by Marya Zarif and André Kadi  

This animated feature, based on the web series and graphic novel by artist and writer Marya Zarif (who co-directed this film), tells the story of Dounia, a joyful, spirited girl. She’s being raised by her grandparents in Aleppo.

Despite Dounia’s life circumstances (her mother died when she was young, her father is in jail, and the strife and violence of war are increasing), Dounia delights in her life: the marvelous Syrian dishes her grandmother cooks, the lively marketplace she visits, and her friendly neighbors.

When her family is forced to flee the war, Dounia takes only a handful of seeds and her unquenchable belief that she will connect with the magical spirit known as Princess of Aleppo to help guide them to safety.

For ages 6 and up. (72min.) 

USA/2021-directed by Megan Mylan | 97 mins

Megan Mylan’s new documentary feature takes a humble idea: telling intimate and humanizing stories of Syrian families affected by their home country’s civil war.

Filmed over five years in five separate countries, Simple as Water is anything but simple when it comes to its technical achievements, weaving together familiar immigrant narratives in ways that still manage to surprise and stun. 

“The level of access that Mylan and her team receive is remarkable on a personal front as well as a political one.” —Claire Shaffer, The New York Times

The Southeast Michigan Refugee Collaborative (SEMIRC) in partnership with the Detroit Film Theatre will present a free screening of Simple as Water as part of the inaugural year of Michigan's first Refugee Film Festival. SEMIRC is the state's largest refugee response collective with a broad range of members including refugee resettlement agencies, government partners and other organizations working to foster vibrant communities in the region.
 

South Korea/2003—directed by Park Chan-wook

In this influential, unclassifiable film from director Park Chan-wook (Lady Vengeance, Decision to Leave), the main character Oh Dae-Su is suddenly, inexplicably released after being kidnapped and held captive for 15 years.

Desperate to understand the reason for his ordeal, he sets out to track down his tormentors, only to find himself in a cat-and-mouse game that leaves him five days to retrace his past, track down his captors, and, above all, seek violent revenge.

The result is a thriller that’s been an inspiration to filmmakers (Spike Lee did a 2013 remake), and is now returning to the big screen to celebrate its 20th anniversary and stunning new restoration. (120 minutes) 

Directed by Mikko Niskanen / 1972

This long unsung landmark of Finnish cinema, inspired by an actual 1969 event, is the magnum opus of the virtually unknown (in the U.S.) writer-producer-director-actor Mikko Niskanen. He delivers a shattering performance as Pasi, a farmer who struggles to support his family through occasional odd jobs and who seeks aid and comfort in alcohol—making it, selling it, drinking it—which creates for his family, brings him into conflict with the law, and leads him on a gradual slide toward oblivion.

Presented here in its original four-chapter format as made for Finnish television in 1972, this monumental vision of human endurance is the rare, great epic woven from the fabric of ordinary life. Restored by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, with funding by the Lucas Family Foundation, it will be screened once only in its entirety.

In Finnish with English subtitles. (5 hours 16 minutes, plus intermission) Crystal Gallery Café will be open during intermission.

“The crowning achievement of Finnish filmmaking and one of the masterpieces of European cinema.” –Aki Kaurismäki

Directed by Manuela Martelli / 2022

In this much-awarded movie, all seems fine in the comfortable Chilean bourgeois world of Carmen (played by Aline Kuppenheim) and her family. She has a summer house she’s renovating, and performs charitable works through her church. But when the family priest asks her to take care of an injured young man he has been sheltering in secret, Carmen is unwittingly drawn into the world of Chilean politics—with potentially disastrous consequences for her family.

Building convincingly from quiet character study to gripping Hitchcockian thriller, Chile ’76 explores one woman’s precarious flirtation with political realities during the early days of the Pinochet dictatorship. In Spanish with English subtitles. (95 minutes)

“A period thriller of beguiling power, energized by its portrait of one woman’s heroism.” —Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

Directed by Federico Fellini, 1953 | 1 hour 44 minutes

Fellini's first international success, based on memories of his youth, focuses on five layabouts in a sleepy seaside town during the winter off-season. Skirt-chaser Franco Fabrizi is forced into marriage but has eyes for his boss’s wife; would-be poet Leopoldo Trieste (later Signor Roberto in The Godfather Part II) gets to read his poetry to the actor he idolizes, with an unwelcome result, and Fellini's brother Ricardo Fellini emcees at a seedy beauty pageant. Only the youngest, Shoeshine’s Franco Interlenghi, will get out.

Winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and recipient of a rare Academy Award® nomination for a foreign-language screenplay, I Vitelloni features the second and possibly greatest of composer Nino Rota’s 16 Fellini film scores. An inspiration in style and story for films from as George Lucas’s American Graffiti and Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, this Fellini masterwork is now available in a glorious 4K restoration. In Italian with English subtitles.

“Captures the bittersweet emotions of a moment that eventually comes for everyone: the moment you realize you can either grow up, or stay forever a child.” —Martin Scorsese

France/1939—directed by Jean Renoir |106 minutes

Considered one of the greatest movies ever made. The plot—a weekend gathering at a chateau where a group of guests come together ostensibly for a pleasant getaway—is a subtle, scathing portrayal of class and social hypocrisy, as well as a groundbreaking visual masterpiece. François Truffaut called The Rules of the Game “the film of films.” 

In French with English subtitles. 

“As fresh, funny and poignant as it ever was, and even more mysterious. How did Renoir do it?” –J. Hoberman, The New York Times