Greg Laemmle Archives – Laemmle Theatres

Andrius Blaževičius Bemusedly Wonders ‘How to Divorce During the War’

August 26, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Breaking up is hard to do, and it’s only made harder when Vladimir Putin gets involved. In Andrius Blaževičius’ satirical drama How to Divorce During the War, a failed marriage is complicated by the Ukraine invasion beginning the day after a wife decides to call it quits.

How to Divorce During the War opens Friday, Aug. 28^th, at Laemmle’s Royal, Glendale, and Town Center 5. Catch director Andrius Blaževičius on the latest episode of Inside the Arthouse with Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge.

How to Divorce During the War is Blaževičius’ third feature, and like the other two, stars Marius Repšys as a man named Vytas who finds his life going out of control. Returning from his second feature, Runner, is Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė as girlfriend Marija, now his wife. You don’t need to have seen the prior films, and it isn’t clear that they’re in any way connected narratively – in fact, the less you know about this incarnation of Vytus and Marija, the better, as the film slowly unfolds all the important details about who they are and why they might be having problems.

Vytas and Marija live in Lithuania – this film is the country’s official Oscar submission – which is a NATO country, and thus traditionally protected against Russian attack. Yet with the current U.S. administration’s casual attitude towards the alliance, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Lithuanians fear they’re next on the hit list if Ukraine falls. These anxieties move to the forefront once the war officially begins, but they don’t eliminate the practicalities of how to execute a divorce, especially with a child involved.

Marije simply says she doesn’t love Vytus any more. No particular reason is given, at least at first. It seems to be an accumulation of little things: the fading of youth, the vicissitudes of entertainment industry careers, the responsibilities of parenthood, or a same-sex crush in a coworker. Vytus is an old-school filmmaker and screenwriter, which means in practical terms that he’s broke and serves as a house-husband; Marije works in new media, producing viral shorts for the web, and makes enough money doing that to pay all the family bills, though it also surrounds her with young and single people.

TV commentary on the war, about how neither side can come to a compromise, doubles and even triples in meaning, as it could easily be referring to the couple, or to a former Soviet society that becomes violently divided in its sympathies. In their own ways, Vytas and Marije demonstrate performative support for Ukraine, only to backslide the moment their bold stances start to actually cost them anything. It is, as always, the children who suffer most: daughter Dovile acts out at school, and tries to mirror her parents in the best ways, inadvertently holding a mirror up to their behavior that they may be too stubborn to gaze into.

Blaževičius’ signature stylistic move is the slow camera push in towards a character or characters sitting in a car – it’s the one part of their environment they can control, or so they think. He also loves the dining room table as a source of drama: in one of the film’s standout scenes, Vytas subtly undermines Marije with the Ukrainian refugees she’s taken in, by speaking to them in Russian which she doesn’t understand, and pretending it’s all good.

The story begins and ends with the same, still cityscape, suggesting that life goes on regardless, and many of our gestures are futile. Yet so, the film suggests, is our selfishness – in the grand scheme of things, little of it matters, so why not consider the comfortable option? No easy answer is offered, but as everyone onscreen tries to figure it out, their foibles, however “foreign,” may start to look amusingly familiar. To cite but one more example, a scene where Vytus tries to remove his parents’ satellite TV so they won’t watch propaganda “news” channels should resonate just as strongly with American audiences.

“The results are sometimes dramatic but often dryly amusing, capturing the leads’ cushy lives and their often warped sense of altruism in a series of droll vignettes.” – Wilson Chapman, IndieWire.

“A drily witty, subtly searing comedy from writer-director Andrius Blaževičius, “How to Divorce During the War” is both empathetic and surgical as it examines both partners’ attempts to sublimate selfish angst into social activism.” – Guy Lodge, Variety.

Kent Jones’ ‘Late Fame’ Asks if Flattery Gets You Anywhere

August 4, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

For many viewers, it’s hard to recall a time when Willem Dafoe wasn’t beloved and famous. Yet in Kent Jones’ Late Fame, he’s able to embody the delight of a creative artist being recognized late in life, decades after giving up a poetry career for a practical job at the post office.

Late Fame opens Aug. 14th at Laemmle’s Royal, and then the 21^st at the Glendale, NoHo and Town Center. Director Kent Jones and screenwriter Samy Burch will participate in a Q&A following the 7:30 PM shows on August 14th and 15th at the Royal. Jones will also be a guest on Inside the Arthouse with Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge.

A former film critic, festival programmer and documentarian, the sixty-something Jones knows a bit about late blooming himself. Late Fame is only his second dramatic feature as director, following 2018’s Diane, which scored star Mary Kay Place a Best Actress award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics. His newest, like Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, is based on a novella by turn-of-the-20^th century Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler.

Jones’ approach, however, is very different – where Kubrick created artificial New York City blocks in London, and put Tom Cruise on a treadmill in front of a rear projection screen, Jones goes street-level in the real thing. There’s a liveliness and sense of space to it, from two-story coffee shops maximizing their vertical space to a surprisingly large single apartment that indicates hidden wealth on the part of its owner.

Dafoe’s Ed Saxberger has mostly accepted his blue-collar status, and is a bit bewildered when a young college student, Edmund Donovan’s dandy-ish Meyers, basically stalks him to his home to shower him with praise. Like Schnitzler himself, Meyers is part of a group of young, aspiring iconoclast writers who believe themselves well-positioned to shake things up. They use only surnames, speak formally, and theoretically eschew technology (to a point).

Gradually, Saxberger begins to enjoy the attention, particularly from showy, uninhibited would-be muse Gloria (Greta Lee). Finally flattered for his intellect, he starts to wonder if his working-class bar buddies are too unsophisticated. But even limited, newfound fame can be ultimately just as empty as the first time around – especially if you’re no longer the same person whose art earned it.

It would be easy to turn the scenario into caricature, with shallow rich kids misunderstanding an old man with real life experience. Jones, however, is more interested in fully developed characters and their nuances than in specific plot beats. These youngsters may be clueless but they genuinely want to be profound as well; Gloria’s performance art at one point is demonstrably so terrible that it stops the movie and the audience in its tracks, yet she can still deliver a meaningful poetry reading while completely high on something, and her life situation turns out to be way more complex than expected.

Ed’s post office career is designed to draw comparisons to author Charles Bukowksi, yet it also demonstrates their biggest point of contrast. Unlike Bukowski, Ed is several years sober, and enjoys his life with a steady government paycheck. He relishes the newfound attention for his work, and is bemused by the idea that he’s been “re-discovered,” but the reality is that a reasonably content, well-adjusted old man just isn’t in the same space as an angry, lovelorn young one breaking the rules of literature.

In real life, someone like Ed could take their cue from director Jones, maintaining an analytical lens throughout his careers that has proved endlessly adaptable, whether to film analysis, documentary, or fictional character study.

“…there’s a satisfying depth to it, and the movie abounds in exquisite grace notes.” – Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter.

“The classic theatricality of its characters juxtaposed with the modern world gives ‘Late Fame’ the feeling of a eulogy for an artistic world that young idealists desperately want to revive.” – Jourdain Searles, RogerEbert.com.

David Wain’s ‘Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass’ Is a Multi-Directional Spoof

July 7, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

As a director, David Wain has made mainstream comedies like Role Models and Wanderlust, but is perhaps better known for his spoofs of same, like Wet Hot American Summer (’80s camp comedies) and They Came Together (big city rom-coms). His latest, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, is more in the latter category…while also functioning as a very loose, unofficial remake of The Wizard of Oz.

Catch David Wain on a new episode of Inside the Arthouse with Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge. Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass opens July 10^th at Laemmle’s Glendale, NoHo, Town Center, Monica, and Newhall.

Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch), her very name an inversion of “Dorothy Gale,” doesn’t get spirited away to a magical land by accident – she goes there very deliberately, after fiancé Tom (Michael Cassidy) has sex with Jennifer Aniston, who’s in town to promote her generic cookbook. Tom pleads innocent – they had been discussing the concept of celebrity sex passes, which is to say the one celebrity a partner in a relationship can sleep with with no harm, no foul, if they get the chance. Gail, however, didn’t think he’d actually do it, so off she heads to her version of Oz, Los Angeles. She’s on a quest not so much to see a wizard, but rather her celebrity sex pass Jon Hamm, whom she intends to have revenge intercourse with.

Gail gets to L.A by tagging along with her hairdresser friend Otto (an anagram of Toto), played by Smile 2‘s Miles Gutierrez-Riley. As they look for ways to locate Jon Hamm, they accumulate more companions: none-too-bright agent wanna-be Caleb (Karate Kid: Legends star Ben Wang), not-especially smart paparazzo Vincent (Ken Marino), and Hamm’s now-cowardly former Mad Men costar John Slattery. Each has specific goals, but naturally, their real achievements will be attaining brains, heart, and courage.

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass isn’t just content to be an L. Frank Baum riff, nor a satire of Los Angeles and the more mundane, tedious aspects of show business. On top of all that, it’s also a parody of ’80s-style MacGuffin comedies like Innerspace, as Gail’s suitcase gets accidentally switched at the airport with a look-alike containing evil plans for destroying the world’s financial systems. This puts Gail in the crosshairs of Ludovica (The White Lotus‘ Sabrina Impacciatore), who fills the role of the story’s Wicked Witch.

Los Angeles residents are particularly likely to laugh at references to local landmarks and specific celebrity hangouts; star maps and CAA also serve as significant plot points. There’s enough here, however, to get laughs from most audiences, as the premise sticks to its absurdity, and its characters are mostly, but not always, oblivious. A former member of comedy troupe The State, Wain has many of his former teammates appear (Michael Showalter is notably absent) along with every celebrity favor he could seemingly call in, from Hamm and Aniston to Weird Al Yankovic and Henry Winkler. Fred Melamed, as Gail’s local mailman, narrates the movie…deliberately badly.

Deutch, who previously impressed as a sex-hungry comedic lead in Zombieland: Double Tap, continues to effortlessly balance sweetness and charm with determination. She’s the most ridiculously perfect, nice woman in her hometown, but absolutely, single-mindedly set on a revenge plan not because she really wants any enjoyment from it, but because it’ll even the score. It takes a lot to make sex with Jon Hamm feel like a relatable, realistic goal, but as the plot proceeds, audiences should feel like he might actually be the bigger beneficiary – any man should be so lucky as to have someone who can be simultaneously as naughty and as nice as Gail Daughtry.

This kind of comedic tonal balance, between sincere rom-com and utter mockery of same, without too much cynicism, is also a sweet spot for Wain. One could say that for him, there’s no place like home.

“25 years after Wet Hot American Summer premiered at Sundance, it’s a relief to know that Wain and Marino are still at the absolute top of their game.“ – Christian Zilko, IndieWire.

“…it satisfies in visceral, pleasurable ways that a more sophisticated comedy could not.” – Richard Lawson, The Hollywood Reporter.

‘Peter Asher’: The Man Behind the Music

June 17, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

For many music fans, Peter Asher is one of those names that seems to appear everywhere once you start paying attention. A member of the British Invasion duo Peter & Gordon, head of A&R for the Beatles’ Apple Records, producer of landmark albums from James Taylor to Linda Ronstadt, and a trusted collaborator to generations of artists, Asher has spent more than six decades helping shape popular music from both center stage and behind the scenes.

The new documentary Peter Asher: Everywhere Man traces that remarkable career, revealing how one seemingly modest figure repeatedly found himself at pivotal moments in music history. Helmed by Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller, the film combines archival footage, contemporary interviews, and performances from Asher’s acclaimed live storytelling show to create a portrait of a life that often feels stupefyingly interconnected.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear co-directors Goldfine and Geller discuss their fascinating new release with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or catch it in theaters beginning with a special Q&A on June 22nd at the Laemmle Royal.

Asher’s story begins in an unusually artistic household in London. His sister Jane Asher’s relationship with Paul McCartney brought the Beatles directly into the family orbit, with McCartney at one point living in the Ashers’ home. Numerous songs that would become part of popular music history were written there, and the documentary delights in recounting how Peter found himself witnessing events that would later seem legendary.

Yet Everywhere Man makes clear that Asher was never merely a bystander. As one half of Peter & Gordon, he scored international hits, including “A World Without Love,” a Lennon-McCartney composition that topped charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Later, as an executive at Apple Records, he signed a young James Taylor, beginning a partnership that would help define the singer-songwriter boom of the 1970s.

The documentary is particularly compelling when examining Asher’s influence as a producer and manager. Working with Taylor, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, and many others, he helped shape the polished California sound that dominated popular music throughout the decade. Along the way, he pushed for greater recognition of studio musicians, insisting that the talented players behind classic recordings receive proper credit on album sleeves—a practice that seems obvious today but was far from standard at the time.

What emerges is not simply a history of one career, but a tour through several eras of popular music, featuring everyone from the Beatles and Marianne Faithfull to Elton John, Diana Ross, and Randy Newman. The result is an entertaining and affectionate documentary about a man whose influence extends far beyond the spotlight. Even viewers who don’t immediately recognize Peter Asher’s name may discover that they already know much of the music—not to mention the stories—that he helped usher into the world.

“The pleasure of Everywhere Man is that every time you think you’ve seen the wildest piece of Peter Asher adjacency, the next chapter proves you wrong.” – Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter

“[The] film does an amazing job tracking the arc of a career of an artist who was really just about everywhere.” – Brad Auerbach, Entertainment Today

No Silence, No Sponsors: Amy Goodman and ‘Steal This Story, Please!’

April 15, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

At a moment when the boundaries of journalism feel increasingly unstable, Steal This Story, Please! makes a compelling case for returning to the fundamentals. The documentary follows Amy Goodman across decades of reporting, but it resists the familiar arc of a career retrospective. Instead, it focuses on the daily discipline of the work itself: the persistence required to ask difficult questions, to verify what others would rather obscure, and to keep attention fixed where it is most needed. Directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin frame their subject not as an outlier, but as a practitioner, someone committed to a method in a media landscape that often rewards speed over substance.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to catch Amy Goodman and co-directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin discuss their latest work with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or come see it live beginning April 15-17th at the Laemmle NoHo, Royal, and Glendale theaters, kicked off by a series of post-viewing Q&As.

What distinguishes the film is its emphasis on process. Rather than assembling a greatest-hits reel, it lingers on how reporting actually gets made: the calls, the research, the careful construction of segments piece by piece. This attention to labor grounds the film, turning “independent media” from an abstract label into something concrete and observable. Through archival footage and present-day scenes, the documentary collapses time, suggesting that the pressures journalists face—political, corporate, cultural, and more—are less cyclical than continuous.

The portrait that emerges is neither hagiographic nor detached. Goodman’s on-air clarity is paired with glimpses of the toll such work can take: the physical risks of field reporting, the emotional weight of bearing witness, the constant recalibration required to maintain focus in a shifting news environment. Yet the film also makes space for the little moments of humor, collaboration, and shared purpose that sustain such work over time. The newsroom is not presented as a platform for a single voice, but as a collective effort shaped by many hands.

Running beneath it all is a larger argument about what journalism is for. The film challenges the notion that neutrality requires distance, instead suggesting that rigor and empathy can (and perhaps must) coexist. By centering those most affected by policy and power, Goodman’s approach offers a different kind of orientation, one that prioritizes context over spectacle and accountability over access.

If the title carries a note of provocation, the film earns it. Steal This Story, Please! is less concerned with ownership than with circulation, an insistence that information only matters if it continues to move, to be tested, and (ideally) to ripple outward. In that sense, the documentary functions as both portrait and invitation: a reminder that the work of journalism is ongoing, collective, and, at its best, indispensable.

“A profile in courage, presenting Goodman as an unrelenting voice of the voiceless who is never afraid to get arrested or make an enemy in her pursuit of telling her truth.” – Christian Zilko, IndieWire

“Steal This Story, Please!… builds a convincing case for the ability of dogged, courageous reporting to mobilise pressure against injustice and effect change.” – Lee Marshall, Screen Daily

François Ozon’s Cool, Unsettling ‘The Stranger’

April 7, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

What does it mean to bring The Stranger—a novel defined by absence, detachment, and interiority—into a medium built on appearances? In his new adaptation of Albert Camus’s 1942 classic, François Ozon approaches that challenge not by radically reimagining the text, but by making its silences visible. The result is a film that feels at once faithful and interpretive, attuned to both the enduring power of Camus’s text and the historical context it left largely unspoken.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear Ozon discuss his latest film with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or catch it in theaters beginning April 10th at the Laemmle Royal, Glendale, and Town Center theaters.

Set in 1930s Algiers under French colonial rule, the film follows Meursault (Benjamin Voisin), a clerk whose emotional detachment shapes every aspect of his life. He receives news of his mother’s death with little visible reaction, carrying out the rituals of mourning with a kind of mechanical precision. In Ozon’s retelling, it’s as if Meursault has only just arrived in the world at that moment: unformed, unmoored, and curiously untouched by the social expectations that surround him.

That sense of dislocation extends into his relationships. He begins an affair with Marie (Rebecca Marder), responds to her questions with indifference, and drifts into the orbit of his volatile neighbor Raymond (Pierre Lottin). Meursault rarely initiates; he responds. Yet this passivity proves deceptive as he repeatedly declines to perform basic gestures that would mark him as a passable member of society while simultaneously slipping into patterns of behavior that align him with its ugliest assumptions.

Ozon captures this tension with remarkable precision. Shot in crisp black-and-white, the film emphasizes texture and physical sensation: sunlight on skin, the rhythm of breath, the weight of heat pressing down on bodies. These tactile details root us in Meursault’s immediate experience even as his inner life remains opaque. Voisin’s performance is key here: controlled, watchful, and withholding, he becomes a figure defined as much by what he doesn’t express as by what he does.

At the same time, Ozon subtly expands the frame of Camus’ story. Where the novel treats its colonial setting as a given, the film foregrounds it, allowing the social and political tensions of French Algeria to register more clearly. The people who exist at the margins of Meursault’s awareness take on a greater presence, not through overt revision but through subtle shifts in emphasis. The result is a quiet but meaningful rebalancing, one that reframes Meursault’s indifference as something shaped not only by temperament but by environment.

As perhaps the quintessential work of existentialist fiction, The Stranger endures not because it offers answers, but because it resists them. Ozon’s adaptation honors that resistance, even as it invites us to look more closely at the world surrounding it, and at what it means to move through that world without fully engaging with it.

“The Stranger, it turns out, is a story for our times, which makes this lovely new version doubly welcome.” – Bilge Ebiri, Vulture

“Ozon’s The Stranger keeps the spirit of its source material alive as a timeless warning in a modern world of stark polarization, ongoing colonialism, and plenty of Meursaults ignoring the suffering of others.” – Monica Castillo, The AV Club

Babysitting the Void: Stalled Adulthood in ‘Fantasy Life.’

March 31, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Matthew Shear’s Fantasy Life is the kind of modest, perceptive character piece that sneaks up on you: initially breezy, even familiar, before revealing a deeper ache beneath its carefully arranged surfaces. A lightly comic drama about stalled adulthood and second acts, Fantasy Life centers on Sam (Shear), an anxious, recently laid-off paralegal whose life has quietly collapsed. Through a combination of desperation and social proximity, Sam takes a babysitting job for a wealthy, creatively inclined couple, David and Dianne, and finds himself drawn into their fragile domestic ecosystem.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear Matthew Shear discuss his directorial debut with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or come see it at the Laemmle Royal, NoHo, Glendale, or Town Center theaters beginning April 3rd.

The premise has the makings of farce, but the film resists easy escalation. Instead, Shear builds a tone of low-key, accumulating discomfort, where every interaction feels slightly off-balance. Sam’s crippling anxiety isn’t played for charm; it’s awkward, limiting, and at times frighteningly disruptive. Yet it also becomes the unlikely bridge between him and Dianne, a former actress who now drifts through her own life with a kind of numbed disillusionment. Their connection—tentative, intimate, and ethically precarious—forms the film’s emotional core, less a conventional romance than a mutual recognition between two people who feel they’ve missed their moment.

It’s here that Amanda Peet delivers what many have called a career-best turn. As Dianne, she is at once brittle and luminous, exuding the residual magnetism of someone who once commanded attention while allowing the cracks in that persona to show. There’s no vanity in her performance: Peet leans entirely into Dianne’s dissatisfaction and flashes of need, and the result is both funny and devastating. In the context of Peet’s long absence from major film roles, the performance carries an added resonance; a meta-textual echo of the character’s own sidelined career. That poignancy deepens further given Peet’s recently disclosed breast cancer diagnosis, lending her return an added layer of vulnerability that subtly accentuates the film’s themes of resilience and reinvention.

Shear, pulling from a historied lineage of New York-based neurotic comedies, crafts dialogue that feels lived-in and unforced, with a sharp ear for the rhythms of privileged but emotionally adrift lives. The ensemble, anchored by Alessandro Nivola’s charmingly self-involved musician, creates a dense social web where everyone seems both deeply connected and fundamentally alone. The stakes are, on paper, relatively small, but Shear understands that for his characters, these life developments and emotional entanglements feel seismic. Ultimately, the film is less about dramatic transformation than about the stories we tell ourselves to get through the day, and the uneasy realization that those stories might be all we have.

In that sense, Fantasy Life more than lives up to its title. It’s about the gap between the lives we imagine and the ones we inhabit, and the strange, fleeting moments when those two begin, however imperfectly, to overlap.

“Shear eloquently portrays the ways that near-misses can still feel like cataclysmic life events.” – Christian Zilko, IndieWire

“The kind of quiet film about life’s little moments, insecurities, and challenges that we rarely see… Peet reminds us that she is a bona fide star.” – Phil Walsh, Geek Vibes Nation

From ‘Cutting Through Rocks’ to ‘Come See Me in the Good Light’: Two Oscar-Nominated Portraits of Courage and Willpower

February 24, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Two of this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature could hardly be more different in setting or scale—one unfolding in a remote Iranian village, the other in the intimate spaces of a Colorado home—yet both pulse with urgency, personality, and the stubborn insistence on living fully.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear directors Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Ryan White discuss their latest films with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or catch them in person when Cutting Through Rocks returns to the Laemmle Royal on February 26th, kicked off by a live Q&A with Eyni after the 7 p.m. showing, followed by Come See Me in the Good Light on February 28th, beginning with a pair of Q&As featuring Ryan White following the Saturday night and Sunday matinee showings at the Laemmle Noho.

Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni’s Cutting Through Rocks introduces us to Sara Shahverdi, a headscarf-clad former midwife in northwest Iran who opens the film wrestling a metal door back into place with a buzzsaw. It’s an image that doubles as a thesis, as Shahverdi has spent her life defying expectations: riding motorcycles, working construction, advocating for girls’ education, and pushing back against child marriage in a deeply conservative region. When she runs for village council, hoping to become its first elected councilwoman, the film embeds with her over several years, capturing both the grassroots thrill of her campaign and the backlash that follows.

Shahverdi is no abstract symbol; she’s charismatic, funny, impatient, and strategic. She rallies women in living rooms, challenges men in council chambers, and leverages her past as a midwife into political capital. The result is a rousing, clear-eyed portrait of incremental revolution, proving Shahverdi’s own personal mantra that, sometimes, one small step can make all the difference in the world.

If Cutting Through Rocks is about carving space within rigid systems, Come See Me in the Good Light turns inward, illuminating the interior landscape of love and mortality. Directed by Ryan White, the film follows celebrated spoken word poet Andrea Gibson and their longtime partner writer Megan Falley after Gibson is diagnosed with incurable ovarian cancer. Yet what might sound like familiar “cancer documentary” terrain quickly becomes something far more singular: funny, profane, luminous, and fiercely alive.

Gibson, once a touring poet who commanded stages like a rock star, meets their illness not with platitudes but with radical candor. The film moves between chemotherapy appointments and kitchen-table laughter, between whispered fears and bawdy jokes. The lovers measure life in three-week increments between blood tests, yet refuse to surrender their intrinsic biases toward joy. White interweaves archival performance footage with scenes of present-day intimacy, building toward a final public reading that lands with the emotional force of a championship game.

Taken together, these two nominees remind us not only of the documentary genre’s extraordinary range, but of the commonalities that unite us from across the world. Catch these Oscar-nominated documentaries back on the big screen at Laemmle Theatres and see for yourself why they’re among the year’s most celebrated nonfiction films.