Browse Movies : 2023 : NR (Page #5)

The slogan “Meet the Icons of Modern Art” needs to be scraped off the glass wall of the Stedelijk, Amsterdam’s Museum of Modern Art. Because precisely who these icons of modern art are is very much the question. Who gets to decide? And who loses out? In 2019, as director Sarah Vos started shooting her documentary, more than 90 percent of the art at the Stedelijk was made by white men. That must change, the museum’s director Rein Wolfs believes. But it’s easier said than done—as becomes clear when the film’s director Sarah Vos follows Wolfs and his team as they strive for greater diversity in the collection, as well as among their staff. This film is more than a look behind the scenes at a museum: it magnificently encapsulates the struggles that are engaging many historical and cultural institutions.

An immersive journey into the world of wild horses that illuminates the profound beauty and desperate plight they face in the Western United States. Filmmaker Ashley Avis and crew try to uncover the truth before wild horses disappear forever.

Poppy Valentine, a young circus performer who has grown up in her family's traveling circus, begins dreaming of what life would be like outside of its fences. Now in her mid-20s and with more unwelcomed responsibility weighing her down, she's desperate to figure out if this life is for her. As she slowly begins to take time for herself, finding independence and even love, she strains her relationship with those around her in the tight-knit circus community. Amidst her overprotective father, stressful circus expectations, and a blossoming curiosity for a life of her own, Poppy must decide if the risk is worth leaving everything she's ever known behind.

Clara (Penélope Cruz) and her emotionally distant husband Felice (Vincenzo Amato) relocate to Rome to raise a family. Even though the paint is fresh, and the appliances are new, the crushing expectations around marriage, desire, and gender in the early 1970s remain as traditional as ever. Their children Andrew (played by newcomer Luana Giuliani), Gino, and Diana are likewise poised at a precipice, on the verge of adolescence, with nothing but their imaginations to defuse family tensions. The eldest child, Andrew (nicknamed Adri by his parents), yearns for another life – an outsized, vibrantly-realized vision of a world where he gets to live as the boy he knows himself to be. Without an accepted vocabulary for talking about his transgender identity, Andrew tells adults that he’s an alien from another galaxy and makes a habit of running away to pursue a local Roma girl who accepts his boyhood at face value. As an outsider ostracized for her own eccentricities, Clara instinctively strives to protect her son despite not fully understanding him. An effortlessly moving film about growing up, fitting in, and breaking the mold, L’immensita is as freewheeling and creative as its central characters, mixing genres and staging musical numbers out of thin air.

Never Forget Tibet explores, with His Holiness 14th Dalai Lama, the details of his incredible escape into exile for the first time on film in his own words with the Indian political officer who led him to safety. Featuring the Tibetan community in exile and those with historic ties to Tibet, the film explores the Dalai Lama’s compassion for a world seemingly in crisis today and seeks to find what can be learnt from his inspirational life story, Tibetan culture and its ancient spirituality.

December 1969, Thelonious Monk arrives in Paris. Before his evening concert, he records a program for French television. The rushes that have been preserved show us a Thelonious Monk who is rare, close, and in the grip of the violent factory of stereotypes from which he tries to escape. The film becomes the crossing of this great artist, who would like to exist only for his music. And the portrait of a hollow media machine as ridiculous as it is revolting.

World War II. Darkness has fallen over Europe, and the boots of the Third Reich echo through the streets. But on a quiet city corner in the Netherlands, some choose to resist. Corrie Ten Boom and her family risk everything to hide Jewish refugees by the hundreds, and they ultimately face the consequences when they are discovered.

The Lost Weekend: A Love Story explores the 18-month relationship (1973-1975) that John Lennon spent with May Pang, his Chinese American assistant turned lover (on Yoko Ono’s insistence). With May’s help, Lennon reunited with his son Julian and had his most artistically and commercially productive period post-Beatles – with the albums “Mind Games”, “Walls and Bridges” which included his only #1 Hit Single “Whatever Gets You Through the Night”, “Rock and Roll” and collaborated with Elton John, David Bowie, Harry Nilsson, Mick Jagger, and Ringo to name a few. Pang chronicles it all revisiting her younger self, a naïve 22-year old experiencing her first, unforgettable love.

Solitary and skilled photographer Kai is afraid of women. When he encounters a beautiful model, Kyoko suffering from body dysmorphia, they begin a twisted romance. Kai is determined to save Kyoko from her anguishes, even if it means death to himself.

Alaa is an introverted young man who lives a healthy and organized life. His life turns upside down when his twin brother whom he never knew existed, Bahaa, Alaa’s complete opposite on all levels, barges into his life.

Facing the Laughter: Minnie Pearl is a full-length documentary about the life and work of Sarah Cannon, aka Minnie Pearl. Sarah was a serious, educated woman who had once dreamed of becoming a Shakespearean actress, but she found fame playing a simple country girl who often made herself the butt of her jokes. Instantly identifiable – even in silhouette – by her straw hat with a price tag dangling from its brim, Minnie Pearl became an icon of country music radio, stage and TV.

Little Richard: I Am Everything tells the story of the Black queer origins of rock n’ roll, exploding the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman. Through a wealth of archive and performance that brings us into Richard’s complicated inner world, the film unspools the icon’s life story with all its switchbacks and contradictions. In interviews with family, musicians, and cutting-edge Black and queer scholars, the film reveals how Richard created an art form for ultimate self-expression, yet what he gave to the world he was never able to give to himself. Throughout his life, Richard careened like a shiny cracked pinball between God, sex and rock n’ roll. The world tried to put him in a box, but Richard was an omni being who contained multitudes – he was unabashedly everything.

A young man and a young woman drive to a village to find out something.... There is a sense of familiarity, and of sharing the trauma of a horrible event. They both have a profound need to understand, but they couldn’t be more different. One moves with aggressiveness, the other moves with care, but they both need the same thing: to be in contact with the last people and spaces one of their loved ones was in contact with, to sink into his waters, to believe that a person’s presence remains beyond death. Skillfully doling out narrative information piece by piece and layer upon layer in scenes marked by elegant, sinister single takes, Bareiša has created a foreboding, yet ultimately hopeful portrait of people racked with trauma and unresolved anger.

The Confession tells the story of Amish Family in turmoil when their daughter, Katie Lapp, discovers she was adopted by an Englisher (not Amish) woman. Meanwhile, the woman, Laura Mayfield, heir to a vast fortune and on her death bed, is searching for her lost daughter to bequest her the estate. Standing between her is her gold-digging husband Dylan (played by John Schneider), who is plotting to claim the fortune for himself with the help of a hired imposter pretending to be the long-lost daughter.

Brash and opinionated, Christine Choy is a documentarian, cinematographer, professor, and quintessential New Yorker whose films and teaching have influenced a generation of artists. In 1989 she started to film the leaders of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests who escaped to political exile following the June 4th massacre. Though Choy never finished that project, she now travels with the old footage to Taiwan, Maryland, and Paris in order to share it with the dissidents who have never been able to return home.

The Holly goes deep inside a gentrifying community in Denver, where a shooting case involving an activist becomes a window into the political machinations of urban development and the city's gang activity.