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STALAG 17 (1953) 70th Anniversary Screening August 21 with Guest Speaker Journalist Anne Taylor Fleming.

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STALAG 17 (1953)
70th Anniversary Screening
Monday, August 21, at 7 PM
Royal Theatre
Guest Speaker: Journalist Anne Taylor Fleming

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classic Series present a 70th anniversary screening of Billy Wilder’s Oscar-winning comedy-drama, ‘Stalag 17’ (described by Leonard Maltin as “the pinnacle of all WWII POW films”), followed by a conversation with prominent journalist Anne Taylor Fleming. Fleming is the daughter of the movie’s co-star, Don Taylor.

The Boston Globe hailed the film as “one of the great pictures of 1953,” and indeed, it was a remarkable year, with such other top films as Fred Zinnemann’s ‘From Here to Eternity,’ George Stevens’ ‘Shane,’ and William Wyler’s ‘Roman Holiday.’ Billy Wilder ranked with these directors as one of the towering American filmmakers of the era. He was arguably at the height of his success in the 1950s, with five Oscar nominations for best director (more than any other director during that decade) and several additional screenwriting nominations, culminating in his wins for best picture, best director, and best screenplay for 1960’s ‘The Apartment.’

William Holden in STALAG 17.

‘Stalag 17‘ was adapted from the successful Broadway play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, based on their experiences in a German POW camp during World War II. Wilder wrote the screenplay with Edwin Blum. William Holden (who won the Oscar for his performance) played the leading role of the cynical Sefton, an opportunist who finds a way of scoring extra rations by manipulating the system. The other actors include Don Taylor, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Richard Erdman, Peter Graves, Neville Brand, and Sig Ruman. Wilder persuaded director Otto Preminger (‘Laura,’ ‘Anatomy of a Murder’) to play the German commandant of the prison camp.

Much of the prisoners’ energies are devoted to trying to escape, and gradually they begin to fear that there is an informer in their ranks, alerting the Nazis and foiling their plans. Suspicion falls on Sefton, who seems to have the coziest relationship with their German captors, and he feels increasingly pressured to ferret out the real villain in order to survive.

Don Taylor & William Holden in STALAG 17.

The movie marked a turning point for Holden. Although he had starred in Wilder’s ‘Sunset Boulevard’ (after Montgomery Clift turned down the role), ‘Stalag 17’ brought him a whole new level of success. As critic Pauline Kael wrote, “William Holden’s hair-trigger performance as the crafty, cynical heel who turns into a hero won him a new popularity, as well as the Academy Award for Best Actor,” and she went on to compare his rousing performance to “the parts that catapulted Bogart to a new level of stardom in the early 40s.” Indeed, it was as a result of ‘Stalag 17’ that Holden went on to star in such enormous hits as ‘Sabrina’ (also directed by Wilder), ‘Picnic,’ ‘Love is a Many-Splendored Thing,’ ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai,’ ‘The Wild Bunch,’ and ‘Network’ over the next two decades.

Reviews at the time were outstanding. The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther called ‘Stalag 17’ “crackerjack movie entertainment.” The Washington Post agreed that it was “a taut, shrewdly observant melodrama several notches above its stage original.” Newsweek wrote, “A smash hit on Broadway, the play…comes to the screen as an even more successful blend of melodrama and rough, occupational comedy.” The Chicago Tribune praised Holden and added, “Don Taylor, Richard Erdman, and Harvey Lembeck perform with unselfconscious skill.”

Taylor co-starred in other Oscar-nominated films of the 1940s and 50s, including ‘The Naked City,’ ‘Battleground,’ and ‘I’ll Cry Tomorrow.’ He may be best remembered for playing Elizabeth Taylor’s husband in ‘Father of the Bride’ and its sequel, ‘Father’s Little Dividend.’ In the 1960s Taylor turned to directing, and he helmed such films as ‘Escape from the Planet of the Apes’ (praised as the best of the sequels to the 1968 sci-fi classic), a musical version of ‘Tom Sawyer,’ and ‘The Final Countdown,’ starring Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen. He also directed his ‘Stalag 17’ co-star William Holden in ‘Damien: Omen II,’ the successful sequel to the horror hit from 1976.

Taylor’s daughter, Anne Taylor Fleming, has had a distinguished career as a journalist, in print (writing for such publications as The New York Times, Newsweek, and Los Angeles Magazine), on the radio, and on television as a regular contributor to the NewsHour on PBS for two decades. She is also the author of several books, including ‘Motherhood Deferred: A Woman’s Journey.’

The intimate, moving documentary love story THE ETERNAL MEMORY, a Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, opens August 18 at the Royal and Town Center.

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The new Chilean documentary The Eternal Memory [La memoria infinita] follows Augusto and Paulina, who have been together and in love for 25 years. Eight years ago, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and his wife has since become his caretaker. As one of Chile’s most prominent cultural commentators and television presenters, Augusto is no stranger to building an archive of memory, having been responsible for that Herculean task following the Pinochet dictatorship and its systematic erasure of collective consciousness. Now he turns that work to his own life, trying to hold on to his identity with the help of his beloved. Day by day, the couple face this challenge head-on, adapting to the disruptions brought on by the taxing disease while relying on the tender affection and sense of humor shared between them that remains intact. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for international documentary at Sundance and the Panorama Audience Award for documentary film at the Berlin Film Festival, we open The Eternal Memory next Friday, August 18 at the Royal and Town Center.

“Get tissues ready to witness one of the most selfless and patient forms of love that graced our screens, shared and magnified through pockets of joy that Alberdi’s camera celebrates with a generous side of empathy and sense of humor.” ~ Tomris Laffly, Harper’s Bazaar

“A portrait that’s powerfully emotional and warmly romantic…Alberdi makes her directorial hand virtually invisible, observing her subjects from a discreet distance that allows them to be narrators of their own story while never speaking directly to the camera.” ~ David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

 

Virginie Efira on her role in the “twisted, slightly unhinged and emotionally taut psychological drama” MADELEINE COLLINS.

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We’ve been seeing a lot of the actress Virginia Efira in recent French imports, from Paul Verhoeven’s Elle (2016) and Benedetta (2021), Justine Triet’s Sibyl, Alice Wincour’s Revoir Paris (2022) and Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children. She brings utter authenticity and a certain je ne sais quoi that captures her characters’ inner mysteries in a captivating way. Her role in Madeleine Collins, as a woman leading a secret double life split between two households in two countries, demands these qualities of her. The Hollywood Reporter described the film as a “twisted, slightly unhinged and emotionally taut psychological drama.” In a recent interview, the director/co-writer Antoine Barraud said the title “character is so complex, and at times almost perverse, and we needed to create a character that we could be happy to follow for a long time, and go a long way, without ever stopping loving her. Virginie has this ability to remain constantly intriguing: she is very beautiful, but her beauty is neither distant nor threatening, it is positive and appealing. Very quickly, I could imagine no one else but her in this role.”

We open Madeleine Collins August 18 at the Royal and Town Center and August 25 in Glendale.

Efira recently sat for an interview about the film:

WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO THE MADELEINE COLLINS’ SCRIPT?

It’s quite rare to be sent such a brilliantly written script, which contains something so tailor-made to a genre type of cinema: in an almost mathematical way, each scene adds a new piece to a mysterious personality whose complex nature gradually builds up, but whose elements don’t necessarily seem to fit together. So, there was this thriller-like plot and then, on top of this, a line of questioning that runs all the way through the narrative: what is a person’s true self? Is it only made up of the story of your life? How does one be oneself, etc.? One of my favorite films of recent years is David Fincher’s Gone Girl: a thrilling plot, which reveals a broader and transgressive analysis of intimacy and the social representation of the couple. French cinema is sometimes cautious in its relationship with genre films, and this was perhaps the first script I received that tackled this head on.

DID YOU FIND THAT THE ROLE YOU WERE ASKED TO PLAY IN THIS FILM WAS A ROLE THAT YOU’D NEVER PLAYED BEFORE?

If something interests you, it’s usually because it allows you to experiment with something new, or because it seems intriguing. But I also feel that all the characters I’ve played could get along with each other: the heroine of Madeleine Collins‘ has something in common with Justine Triet’s Sibyl. It’s a subconscious though: you don’t really think about characters that you have or haven’t played before.

Saying that, with this character I identified a theme that interests me: a multiple identity from which outer layers are gradually peeled away, and a character emerges who no longer knows exactly what she has left to offer, in what is a progressive paring back.

Up until now, I’ve often played the opposite: women who break down, and then get back up and are stronger for it. Judith, however, starts off as a strong person and then gradually has the support she relies on taken away. She then has to find a new way of being Judith.

HOW DOES ONE PREPARE FOR A CHARACTER LIKE JUDITH?

I didn’t want Judith to appear to be different or mysterious right from the outset. There is a form of intoxication surrounding her. An aesthetic and emotional intoxication, linked to the story she tells about herself: she has succeeded in hiding a secret, she can be proud of that, it’s not what women do everyday. At the beginning, there is a certain nonchalance about her. She has a loving relationship on the one side, and a loving relationship on the other, and she doesn’t falter – yet. She takes the train, and works on the train, "Oh sorry, was I talking too loud?” And then as events unfold, a vulnerability emerges. I had to conjure this all out of nowhere.

In a role like this, you also have to accept to be a bit out of your depth, so as to be totally open to ideas on set. Certain pieces of music became my signature style: there was a track by Daft Punk – I’ve forgotten the name – which gave the character energy, and forward momentum, like someone who could smash through walls.

On a much grander scale, I remember listening to Bernard Hermann’s soundtrack for the film Vertigo. I didn’t listen to these pieces of music on set, I’m not the type of person to set myself apart when filming. I would arrive on set with all of this in my head: the pieces of music, memories of films, faces, emotions, forgotten thoughts. Then, it was just a case of trying to be open on set to whatever came my way, and open to my acting partners. You absorb something that you’re not entirely sure what it is, and which doesn’t come out exactly as you expected.

DID YOU TRY TO QUESTION WHAT WAS BEHIND JUDITH’S BEHAVIOR? AN EMOTIONAL DEFICIENCY? A FORM OF MADNESS?

We see the relationship she has with her mother. Her mother isn’t exactly very approving nor loving, she comes out with some quite nasty things when she speaks to Judith! Maybe Judith didn’t have a happy childhood. In the illicit and transgressive relationship that Judith has with Abdel, there is also this idea of something that is growing, a secret that gets bigger and bigger and which makes her unable to bear her mother any longer. She never makes a big leap,

but a series of small steps away, which lead to another and another, etc. They never speak about her relationship with Abdel being forbidden. They put it off until later, a very gradual shift gives a form of legitimacy to this relationship.

A psychiatrist would probably have things to say about Judith, and maybe even prescribe her treatment, but when I work on a character, I can’t just look at them clinically. What interests me is imagining the character beyond just the story: how you broaden the path of your daily existence, how you avoid being limited by the confines of your life, the life of someone who has probably always been the perfect wife. Can you only be one person with one name, and does that name have to conform to how people have always seen you?

DO YOU FEEL SORRY FOR JUDITH? DO YOU ADMIRE HER?

You can feel both at the same time, right? But when I was playing her, I was inside her, so the answer is neither! And without making her out to be some great Machiavellian villain, she’s someone who doesn’t do too badly in managing her affairs, and whose actions give her some sense of empowerment.

JUDITH IS ALWAYS ON THE GO. DID YOU BASE YOUR PERFORMANCE ON THIS ENERGY AND DRIVE?

Yes, she’s someone who is always in a hurry. She moves, there’s always somewhere else to be. So she’s pragmatic, she packs her suitcase, then she unpacks it when she arrives, she makes her sandwiches while she talks, and of course all this gives life to a scene. There is also a basic female element of always multitasking: someone who looks after a home – in fact two homes! – and who works at the same time; at one point, it’s not surprising that she can no longer translate her texts! Her hyperactivity is also a mask, she can’t face herself: the moment she sits still and is asked to look at herself, everything becomes blurry, like someone in a lake struggling to reach the shore.

WERE THERE SCENES THAT WERE MORE DIFFICULT THAN OTHERS TO ACT?

I had excellent acting partners who played my two spouses, as well as the young actor who plays Judith’s elder son, he was amazing. Working together, there was something different going on with each actor. Antoine Barraud left us very free with this, he’s a keen spectator and likes to wait and see what actors bring to a scene. He never outlines how he wants you to get from A to B. Some directors do. So, since there is no exact point B, even if you know what the scene is about, the way to get here was slightly different with each take. He allowed us the freedom of jumping into the unknown, and if your subconscious did things right or wrong, it didn’t matter. Sometimes you have to let go of the idea of doing the right thing. The most demanding time for me was in the scenes that required my anger and violence. I put so much into these scenes when I played them, as if my life depended on it. A bit like how a teenager would react, and my body suffered. I should probably calm down a bit.

JUDITH IS EXACTLY WHAT ABDEL AND MELVIL WANT HER TO BE. IS THE JOURNEY SHE TAKES A JOURNEY OF EMANCIPATION, LIBERATION?

Perhaps, but in Judith’s own creation of multiple personalities there’s already a notion of freedom. Responding to multiple expectations always comes down to the same basic belief: I give what is expected of me. Perhaps she is mistaken about what is expected of her. In any case, when I was working on the character, I saw in her a notion of devotion: even if Judith lies, she is always totally present in the moment, and is genuinely concerned about others, whether it be for her husbands or her children.

ANTOINE BARRAUD SUGGESTS THAT JUDITH IS LIKE AN ACTRESS AS ACTING IS A LIE…

That reminds me of something Cocteau once said: “The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.”

VIRGINIE EFIRA – FILMOGRAPHY

2022 OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN (d. Rebecca Zlotowski)

2022 REVOIR PARIS (d. Alice Winocour)

2021 WAITING FOR BOJANGLES (d. Régis Roinsard)

2021 MADELEINE COLLINS (d. Antoine Barraud)

2021 BENEDETTA (d. Paul Verhoeven)

2020 BYE BYE MORONS (d. Albert Dupontel)

2020 NIGHT SHIFT (d. Anne Fontaine)

2019 SIBYL (d. Justine Triet)

2018 KEEP GOING (d. Joachim Lafosse)

2018 AN IMPOSSIBLE LOVE (d. Catherine Corsini)

2018 SINK OR SWIM (d. Gilles Lellouche)

2017 NOT ON MY WATCH (d. Emmanuelle Cuau)

2016 ELLE (d. Paul Verhoeven)

2016 VICTORIA (d. Justine Triet)

2016 UP FOR LOVE (d. Laurent Tirad)

2015 THE SENSE OF WONDER (d. Éric Besnard)

2015 CAPRICE (d. Emmanuel Mouret)

2013 TURNING TIDE (d. Christophe Offenstein)

2013 COOKIE (d. Léa Fazer)

2013 IT BOY (d. David Moreau)

2012 DEAD MAN TALKING (d. Patrick Ridremont)

2011 MY WORST NIGHTMARE (d. Anne Fontaine)

2010 SECOND CHANCE (d. Nicolas Cuche)

2010 KILL ME PLEASE (d. Olias Barco)

2009 LES BARONS (d. Nabil Ben Yadir)

“Above all, these women taught me that even in the depths of misery, there is a need for friendship, for fooling around, and having fun.” Juliette Binoche on BETWEEN TWO WORLDS.

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A longtime passion project for star and Academy Award-winning Actress Juliette Binoche, the new film Between Two Worlds is adapted from Florence Aubenas’s bestselling nonfiction work Le Quai de Ouistreham (The Night Cleaner), and marks Emmanuel Carrère’s return to directing for the first time since The Moustache in 2008. Carrère has achieved world renown and acclaim as an author and has been described by Karl Ove Knausgaard as “the most exciting living writer.”

Binoche plays famed author Marianne Winckler as she goes undercover to investigate the exploitation of the working class in Northern France. She eventually lands a job as a cleaner on the cross-channel ferry and develops close connections with the other cleaning women, many of whom have extremely limited resources and income opportunities. As she learns more about the plight of these workers, Marianne struggles with her deception of them and tries to rationalize that it’s for the greater good.

Between Two Worlds had its world premiere as part of the Director’s Fortnight section at the Cannes Film Festival and earned Binoche César and Lumière Best Actress nominations and newcomer Hélène Lambert a Most Promising Actress Lumière nomination. We open the film August 11 at the Royal and and August 18 at the Town Center.

Stay tuned to our socials for a chance to win a limited edition Binoche mini-poster, seen here:

Binoche was interviewed about the film:

Q: When did you first read Florence Aubenas’s “The Night Cleaner?”

A: Probably in 2010 when it was published. It was Cédric Kahn who recommended that I read it, with the idea of making it into a film. I was obviously enthusiastic. But shortly thereafter, Cédric told me to forget about it. Florence Aubenas did not want to give up the adaptation rights, which she confirmed to me when I asked her directly. For her, it was a thing of the past, and she didn’t want to revisit it in a movie.

I’m quite stubborn when a project is close to my heart. So I asked Florence again, and she told me that the only way she would accept was on the condition that Emmanuel Carrère write the screenplay. But Emmanuel was not available at the time; he was working on his novel, “The Kingdom.” To sweeten the deal, I suggested that Emmanuel not only write the adaptation but direct the film. After several dinners with Emmanuel and Florence, she finally agreed. I met a producer who, by chance, was also working on an adaptation of “The Night Cleaner.” The project was starting to take shape but I didn’t want just to act in the film, I wanted to produce it, which for various reasons was refused to me. I experienced this rejection as unfair and humiliating. That being said, since the central theme of Between Two Worlds is the humiliation of women, in the end, it served me well.

  

Q: When your name is Juliette Binoche, a well-known and recognized actress, how do you get women who are non-professional actresses (and who play their own role as housekeepers) to accept you?

A: My father was dying. I arrived on the set broken and exhausted, which meant that immediately, I was in physical and mental tune with what I had to experience in the film. And the women who played alongside me in the film sensed it right away. I’ve always wanted to play a housekeeper, and basically step into a different universe. When my Polish grandmother came to France during World War II, she had to do odd jobs, like house cleaning, in order to survive. When my mother was a student, she also did some housekeeping jobs. And I too, as a student, did various odd jobs. So in a way, it’s been part of my family history for a long time and it’s still part of me – it’s all about being resourceful and getting by.

Q: Did you do specific research on these women who slave away on ferries?

A: When preparing to shoot Leos Carax’s The Lovers on the Bridge, I spent some time incognito on the street and at the night shelter in Nanterre, which welcomed homeless people in distress.  At the end of one of those nights, I returned by bus to Paris with a gentleman of Indian origin who had no idea I was an actress on a scouting mission. He took out a 500-franc note from his pocket and said to me, “If you want, we can spend it together.“ I was extremely touched, but that did not challenge my desire and my right to play the part of a girl who lives on the streets. 

The same goes for my role in Between Two Worlds. There is no guilt to be had; the goal here is to understand the life of these quasi-domestic slaves and, if possible, to change the awareness of their miserable living conditions. It’s exactly what happened with Florence’s book, which luckily was a great success, and which I think… I hope… has changed the condition of housekeepers. And made the invisible visible.

Q: Did you read the book again before filming?

A: Yes, of course, but above all the screenplay by Emmanuel Carrère and Hélène Devynck, which is a variation of the book, rather than a literal adaptation. The script stood by itself, like a new fruit grown on the tree that Florence had planted, with its stone, its flesh, its skin… While the film owes everything to the book, it has also grafted its own uniqueness to it.

Q: Most of the other parts in the film are not played by professional actresses but by women reenacting their daily lives…

A: I spent a lot of time talking with these women. Especially with Hélène Lambert, who undoubtedly had the most uncertain temperament in the group. She was building a very strong wall around herself, before deciding if she was going to like playing this role (which was not really a role) and especially, before deciding if she was going to accept me. It took the necessary time, and then suddenly, between two takes, she opened up, telling me about her life as a single mother raising three young children, her various hardships, her walks of several kilometers in the early morning to reach her work place, her family relations…Before taking on the part, my role was to talk to these women, reassure them and convince them that they were quite capable of taking on the happy responsibility of showing the hidden world of their professions, a bit like teaching someone to dance. They are all fantastic: Hélène Lambert, Léa Carne, Emily Madeleine, Evelyne Porée, etc.

Q: What did you learn from them?

A: I was there for them, and they were there for me. I know what work is like, but I hadn’t imagined what it feels like to work and earn so little –virtually nothing– with your hands in shit, literally. Same for the kilometers to cover each morning at dawn, or late in the evening, when most people are in the comfort of their homes. Above all, these women taught me that even in the depths of misery, there is a need for friendship, for fooling around, and having fun. We laughed a lot together.

Q: In this film that revolves around women, there are a few men, including a very endearing  character, who is quite flirtatious…

A: It’s Didier Pupin, and he plays this role with great warmth. At the time, he worked at Saint-Maclou [a chain of French stores specializing in floors, walls and windows.] He explained to me how to install carpet! There are also the two Black workers, who are beautiful, and not just physically. On the ferry, or during the break, they just gave in to the joy of living, of laughing and sometimes singing, despite everything.

Q: Between Two Worlds is also a story of betrayal and lies… [WARNING: SPOILER AHEAD]

A: This is a fundamental aspect of the film. My character, Marianne, is no longer a journalist, as in Florence Aubenas’s book, but a well-known writer who decides to experience misery in her little corner and tries to remain unnoticed. Obviously, there’s something in her that reminds us of a spy, or rather, a detective, but in the specific way an actress researches a character so that she can reach that crucial moment when feelings come true.

Marianne is in the middle of the others, she’s with them, with sincerity, but she’s also at a distance, since she takes notes in a notebook and transcribes them at night on her laptop. Where is the boundary between truth and lies? How far are we allowed to lie for the truth to be captured? During the scene where Christèle unmasks Marianne, how do you capture this mixture of stupefaction and disappointment?

Q: Whether or not they’ve read Florence Aubenas’s book, some audience members may be disappointed in the film – you know how it goes: “that’s not how I imagined it…”

A: It’s bound to happen, and they are free to think that way, but it would be good if those who are disappointed reflected on the nature of their disappointment. One of the film’s strengths is precisely that it’s not what people might expect it to be: a precise visual representation of the book, word for word. The film doesn’t petrify the universe of the book; quite the opposite: it extends it and takes it in new directions. I’m really happy and proud that I contributed to this amplification.

Interview conducted by Gérard Lefort

The “fresh-faced, funny” SHORTCOMINGS opens at the NoHo, Town Center and Monica Film Center August 4.

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For his directorial debut, actor Randall Park chose the screenplay Adrian Tomine based on his graphic novel of the same name, Shortcomings. It follows Ben, a struggling filmmaker who lives in Berkeley with his girlfriend, Miko, who works for a local Asian American film festival. When he’s not managing an arthouse movie theater as his day job, Ben spends his time obsessing over unavailable blonde women, watching Criterion Collection DVDs, and eating in diners with his best friend Alice, a queer grad student with a serial dating habit. When Miko moves to New York for an internship, Ben is left to his own devices, and begins to explore what he thinks he might want.
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“A fresh-faced, funny directorial debut from the ever-engaging Park.” ~ Jessica Kiang, Variety

“Shortcomings takes some bruising blows at cultural expectations… it’s also about growing up a little too late and having to reckon with your own rotten self. Oh, and it’s hilarious.” ~ Alissa Wilkinson, Vox
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The “gorgeous, quietly affecting” RETURN TO DUST opens July 28 at the Royal.

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A beautiful, allegorical gaze at changing rural China, Return to Dust follows a couple overcoming the challenges of their arranged marriage and the disdain of their families to survive, come together and make a home for themselves. We open the film Friday, July 28 at the Royal.

The writer-director Ruijun Li (River Road, Walking Past the Future) released the following statement upon the release of his film: “It is said that film is the art of time. In this sense, a movie director’s work is essentially the same to that of farmers. In movie making, we are constantly faced with issues dealing with time and life. Farmers trust land and time with their crops and livelihood, so shall we trust land and time with our movies. The words on paper, like seeds growing into harvest, are transformed by camera shots into what we remembered in our distant memories.”

“An unhurried but hypnotic portrait of two discards thrown together to scratch out a life as they weather the seasons.” ~ David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“It’s a gorgeous, quietly affecting film that finds an unassuming beauty in this simple life in rural China, but which doesn’t shy away from the extreme hardships faced by the very poorest.” ~ Wendy Ide, Guardian

“A thought-provoking [film] with beautifully-judged performances that radiate warmth and encourage empathy. It marks Li Ruijun as a significant cinematic talent.” ~ Anna Smith, Deadline Hollywood Daily

“It’s a film which is making the right people angry.” ~ David Jenkins, Little White Lies

“Return to Dust is many things — a vivid portrait of China’s hardscrabble rural north-west, an unexpected victim of state censorship — but it is first and last a love story.” ~ Danny Leigh, Financial Times

Christian Petzold’s AFIRE opens this weekend at the Royal with the filmmaker in person for a Q&A.

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Afire, German director Christian Petzold’s latest movie is, among other things, extremely funny. This comes as a delightful surprise, because his previous work — like Barbara (2012), Phoenix (2014), Transit (2018) and Undine (2020) — was, as Tim Grierson writes in his just-posted L.A. Times piece, noted for its “incisive character studies [with] drum-tight narratives, thematic complexity and investigations of identity,” but not overt humor. Afire is set at a vacation home by the Baltic Sea, where a pretentious novelist (a terrific Thomas Schubert) mixes awkwardly with a group of old and new friends. From the Times piece: “When we did the table read, there was just nonstop laughter,” actor Schubert says during a separate interview. “He was really surprised by that, because he didn’t necessarily see it that way. At the same time, he was relieved because we’d found the right tonality for the story.”

We open Afire this Friday at the Royal and July 21 at the Laemmle Glendale and Town Center in Encino. Petzold will participate in a Q&A after the 7:10 pm, July 15 screening at the Royal. The Los Angeles engagement is co-presented by the Goethe-Institut.

“Another masterwork about characters who are trapped by internal and external circumstances from which they find it intensely difficult to escape.” ~ Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

“In depicting a novice artist forced to unwrite everything to move forward, “Afire” also shows a veteran one open to self-editing, and vigorous self-renewal.” ~ Guy Lodge, Variety

“Deceptive simplicity makes way for illuminating depths.” ~ David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“[Adds] another compelling and precise layer of texture to Petzold’s multifaceted oeuvre.” ~ Marina Ashioti, Little White Lies

“You can’t beat life as far as the absurdness and the coincidences.” Director Vadim Perelman on PERSIAN LESSONS.

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Andrea Meyer recently posted this interview with Persian Lessons director Vadim Perelman on Frenchly. We open the film this Friday at the Royal and Town Center. The Guardian wrote that the film was “superbly acted…It floored me in the devastating final moments;” Screen Daily called the film “a big, widescreen cinematic ride which deftly mixes suspense, laughter and tears;” and the Daily Mail noted the film is “a hugely compelling, highly original Holocaust drama.”

Perelman will participate in a Q&A after the Saturday evening screening at the Royal. You can read Meyer’s full Frenchly piece here but here’s an excerpt:

It’s 1942 in occupied France. Gilles (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), a Belgian Jew, is crammed into the back of a truck with other Jews who have been rounded up by SS soldiers to be transported to a Nazi camp. When the man seated next to him offers to trade him a stolen book of Persian legends for his sandwich, he agrees. And when the guards inexplicably start shooting, Gilles saves himself from the firing squad by insisting that he’s not Jewish, but Persian, holding up the book as evidence. They don’t believe him. After all, who wouldn’t make up a story to save himself?

But with golden light setting over the wooded glade, a miracle occurs. One of the guards remembers that Koch, the officer who runs the kitchen at the Nazi transit camp where they work, is looking for a Persian to teach him Farsi. He’s even offering a stock of canned meat to whomever can locate one. Back at camp, everyone still suspects that Gilles is lying, but he is clever, creative, and desperate to save his own life, and he manages to convince the only person who matters that he indeed speaks Farsi. For months he teaches Koch (Lars Eidinger) words that he passes off as Farsi. In fact, he is inventing an entire nonsensical language, in which he and his student carry on conversations. Around them, Nazi soldiers bicker, flirt, and betray one another, while the Jewish prisoners are forced at gunpoint to do grueling work. Occasionally someone is shot for perceived misbehavior and every few months, the camp is cleared out, and the prisoners transported to other camps where they will be killed.

The film’s premise is implausible. The absurdity and humor of Gilles’ efforts and the Nazi shenanigans around them feels uncomfortable and misguided at times in the context of the Holocaust, yet it is never pushed into full-fledged satire, which might make it more palatable. And yet, playing Gilles, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart is so convincing, we cannot help but be pulled in by his outrageous scam and the horrifying risks he takes. This man, with his haunted, pleading eyes, faces sure death and yet continues to carry out his charade, even as he becomes increasingly aware of the fate of the other Jews around him.

Director Vadim Perelman, originally from Ukraine, began his career with the acclaimed 2003 drama House of Sand and Fog. In his new film, he treads a tricky line between comedy, satire, and tragic Holocaust tale. Many will dislike or dismiss the film. But no one can deny the power of its final moments, when our eyes are opened to the significance of the deeper work that Gilles has managed to accomplish.

Esteemed film curator Larry Kardish (former Senior Curator of Film at MoMA) was so taken by the film when he saw it at the Berlin Film Festival in 2020 that he created a retrospective around it, screening it from June 2-8 at the Quad Theater in New York. The series, Notes on Persian Lessons, will feature House of Sand and Fog, as well as several films starring its leading actors. (Including Pérez Biscayart playing a young AIDS activist in the French film Beats per Minute, and Eidinger in French director Olivier Assayas’ wonderful Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper.) Other films in the series feature the work of Persian Lessons’ composer, cinematographer, and producers. Persian Lessons opens on June 9, with a national rollout to follow.

I spoke with Perelman about his haunting story, the powerful performances of its actors, and why it makes sense to make implausible movies about the Holocaust.

What drew you to this story?

I always wanted to make a film about the Holocaust, because I have a personal connection to it. I’m originally from Kyiv, where Babi Yar happened during the war. My mother just barely escaped Kyiv with her mother, and the rest of the people who stayed perished. So for me it’s always been a personal thing. In the gamut of Holocaust films, which is its own genre now, there’s the rub-your-face-in-it kind of films like Son of Saul and Night and Fog, which just show you what happened. The other type is farce, like Jojo Rabbit, and, to a certain extent, Life is Beautiful, where you try to laugh through the tears. This one fit so perfectly in the middle of it, I think, and plus I loved the conceit of the story. I loved the language, though I probably wouldn’t have done it if the final scene weren’t there.

This is a story about surviving the Holocaust and also about creating a new language and finding a way to honor those lost. For you, what are the big themes? What is it about?

It’s about this: I took a great chance by humanizing the Nazi character, by giving him the ability to be human on the screen to a certain extent and that ability was given to him with that cockamamie language, that made-up language. For some reason, in that language he could be human and talk about his mother and his fears and his brother. Otherwise, he was just a Nazi, and humanizing him amplifies the horrors of what they did. It’s a morality tale. It’s not just oh, those guys are evil, and oh, those poor Jews. It’s more like, this could happen again, and it will probably never happen again with the Germans in that role, because they’ve been indoctrinated to never let that happen again. It might be the other way around. It might be us, the Jews. It might be the Russians.

For your country, it’s Russians right now.

For the whole world, it’s Russians right now.

Vadim Perelman

What was the reception like at the Berlin Film Festival?

It got a 15-minute standing ovation, until they had to kick everybody out of the theater. They wouldn’t stop clapping. It was Germans mostly, which was kind of interesting, and they laughed a lot, so I thought they were really enjoying it.

Most of the humor involved the Nazi characters, the secret lives of Nazis.

They laughed at that. It was like a reality show with the Nazis in the camp.

The story feels implausible, farfetched, unlikely. In real life this man never could have survived.

I think there are more implausible stories that happened during this time, not just about survival but falling in love at a camp just before death, or actually surviving the chambers and ending up living in Israel together after that. You can’t beat life as far as the absurdness and the coincidences. This is kind of a fable. I say this is inspired by true events, but it’s inspired by things that happened all the time, by the Holocaust itself, by the Nazis.