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

USA/France/2025 — directed by Raoul Peck | 119 min.

This daring and powerfully engaging portrait of the life and career of George Orwell propels us through the stages of the great author’s journey with urgency and passion.

Selections from Orwell’s essays and letters, narrated with rich humanity by actor Damian Lewis, provide the film’s biographical foundation. Yet the narrative never strays far from the shocking contemporary relevance of Orwell’s prescient masterwork, 1984.

Oscar®-nominated director Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) weaves together pivotal moments from screen and television adaptations of 1984, alongside contemporary documentary footage that sharpens Orwell’s blistering cautionary tale of authoritarianism into an all-too-vivid reality. Official Selection, 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

“Brilliant. The boldest documentary anyone could make right now.” – Stephanie Zacharek, Time

France/2024 — directed by Boris Lojkine | 93 min.

Racing through the streets of Paris on his bicycle making food deliveries, Guinean immigrant Souleymane (non-professional actor Abou Sangare) is struggling to stay afloat. With just two days before his asylum interview, he has only one chance to plead his case to an immigration officer who will determine his future in France.

As he rides, rehearsing his story in preparation, Souleymane wonders if he will be ready for the most important interview of his life.

Drawing spiritual inspiration from the humanist films of the Dardenne Brothers and Italian neorealists, Boris Lojkine’s propulsive new drama never leaves Souleymane’s side, offering a deeply affecting portrait of the daily trials faced by migrants around the world. In French, Fulah, and Malinka with English subtitles.

“Gripping, intelligent, extraordinary. First-time actor Abou Sangare is a revelation.” – Jessica Kiang, Variety

USA/Canada/2024 | Directed by Yvonne Drebert and Zach Melnick | 90 min.

All Too Clear uses cutting-edge underwater drones to explore how quadrillions of tiny invasive mussels, known as quaggas, are re-engineering the ecosystem of the Great Lakes at a scale not seen since the glaciers.

To capture this epic change, husband-and-wife filmmaking team Zach Melnick and Yvonne Drebert spent more than 150 days filming underwater, making it the most ambitious underwater film ever made about the Great Lakes.

Part scientific exploration and part natural history adventure, the film showcases freshwater wildlife and environments like never before.

Bridge Michigan presents the Detroit premiere of 'All Too Clear: Beneath the Surface of the Great Lakes,' a new documentary blending scientific exploration with natural history adventure to showcase Great Lakes wildlife and environments in unprecedented detail. The film is presented in partnership with Detroit PBS, the Friends of the Detroit Film Theatre, Great Lakes Now, and The Nature Conservancy.

USA/2025 — directed by Ira Sachs | 76 min.

In 1974, writer Linda Rosenkrantz embarked on an experimental journalism project in which an emerging artist would have a conversation with her—and her tape recorder—about the day-to-day reality of an artist’s life in New York. 

Photographer Peter Hujar agreed to participate, casually recounting the events of a single day in his life. Though the original 50-year-old tape no longer exists, a transcript survived and was published three years ago.

Now, in an elegantly modest style, director Ira Sachs has recreated the original conversation verbatim, using Rosenkrantz’s actual apartment as the setting. During the freewheeling exchange, Hujar shares details of his interactions with William Burroughs, Susan Sontag, Allen Ginsberg, and others. 

"The best film at Sundance is just two people talking. It is a masterpiece." – Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine

Iran/France/Luxembourg/2025 — directed by Jafar Panahi | 101 min.

Vahid, an unassuming mechanic, is suddenly reminded of his time in an Iranian prison when a random traffic accident leads to a chance encounter with a man he thinks he recognizes—one he suspects was once his sadistic jailhouse captor. 

Panicked and horrified yet not absolutely certain of the man’s identity, Vahid pauses taking revenge long enough to round up some fellow ex-prisoners to try to confirm his suspicions. 

Jafar Panahi has created a masterwork in the form of an honest and deeply felt thriller, where tension combines with humor and raises difficult questions about the morality of revenge.

In Persian with English subtitles.

"Panahi summons all the medium’s expressive powers to deliver a fierce denunciation of authoritarian regimes." – Justin Chang, The New Yorker

Italy/UK/2024—directed by Giovanni Tortorici | 109 min.

The highs and lows of a restless, intelligent teenager collide headlong into the concrete realities of adulthood when Leonardo (Manfredi Marini), a 19-yearold from Palermo, leaves home for the first time.

After a brief stint in London, Leonardo’s intense interest in studying literature lands him in the incomparably beautiful streets of Siena, where he immediately clashes with his instructor, his curriculum, and most chaotically, with himself.

Produced by acclaimed director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name), Diciannove (Nineteen), marks the assured feature filmmaking debut of writer/director Giovanni Tortorici, who brings a bold visual style and witty narrative design to this tale of the emotional turmoil and anticipatory joys that accompany the familiar moment we call coming-ofage.

Official Selection, Toronto, Venice and London Film Festivals. In Italian and English with English subtitles.

“Vivid, humane, exceptional… an auspicious arrival for both the filmmaker and his intense, mercurial young star.” –Guy Lodge, Variety

USA/Germany/France/2025—directed by Billy Shebar | 95 min.

Meredith Monk—composer, performer,and interdisciplinary artist—is one of the great artistic pioneers of our time, yet her profound cultural influence is largely unrecognized. With Monk’s music at its center, and interviews with David Byrne and Björk, Monk in Pieces is a mosaic that mirrors the structure of Monk’s work and illuminates her wildly original vocabulary of sound and imagery. As a female artist in the male-dominated arts scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s, Monk fought for recognition and resources.

Yet as her celebrated contemporary, Philip Glass, says, “she, among all of us, was—and still is—the uniquely gifted one.” In the final chapters, Monk, facing mortality, warily entrusts her masterpiece, Atlas, to director Yuval Sharon (now Artistic Director of Detroit Opera) for a production at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. For 60 years, Monk directed and performed in all of her own works; suddenly she must learn to let go.

“This spry, lively and appropriately offbeat biography of the artist celebrates the reverberations of a distinctive voice.” –Stephen Saito, The Moveable Fest