Glendale Archives – Laemmle Theatres

Josef Kubota Wladyka’s ‘Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!’ Blends Love, Dance, and Grief

September 23, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

If you want to see a tough guy’s sensitive side, ask him about his mother. Writer-director Josef Kubota Wladyka made his first movie, Manos Sucias, about drug trafficking, and his second, Catch the Fair One, about sex trafficking. For his third, Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, he has taken a drastically different path and created a musical fantasy based on his mom’s (still ongoing!) career as a dancer.

Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! opens Sept. 25^th at Laemmle’s Royal, Glendale, NoHo, Town Center 5, and Newhall. Listen to director Josef Kubota Wladyka in conversation with Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge on a new Inside the Arthouse.

Wladyka grew up in America with a Polish father and a Japanese mother, and Ha-Chan conveys that multicultural household feeling, with Haru (Rinku Kikuchi) and Luis (Alejandro Edda) living an interracial marriage in Japan; speaking Japanese, Spanish, and English while cooking their own fusion cuisine and competing in ballroom dance contests. After Luis very suddenly drops dead, Haru starts taking dance classes with a famous instructor, Fedir (Alberto Guerra). He and his wife are champion ballroom dancers – and also in an open relationship, one in which he has a pattern of looking for Japanese lovers on the side.

Like dance itself, Fedir is available and accessible to everyone, though certain tiers have rules that one has to be prepared for, be they personal or physical. Filtered through the film’s multiculturalism, the story also shows the ballet to be a universal language, emphasized by numbers that mash-up different cultures and national vocabularies in creative ways to make clear the meaning. Even if only a few words are familiar to any one specific tongue.

The director cites Shall We Dance?, A Man and a Woman, and Dirty Dancing as direct influences – directly cited onscreen, in some cases – but there’s also a clear Dennis Potter inspiration. Ha-Chan is a dance musical, but with most of the dance numbers occurring only in Haru’s mind, as her way of interpreting real-world conflicts, from a mugging to a lover’s quarrel. Luis may be dead, but he can return to ballet in her head, either as himself, or a giant, fuzzy-cute crow of death. Yes, that’s as absurd as it sounds, and wonderfully so.

At 81 years old, Wladyka’s Japanese mother is still a professional dancer – Haru may be younger and more modern, but as the writer-director notes, parts of Japan still feel stuck in the ’90s in terms of the American music and aesthetics they consume and present. Haru is depicted with a massive collection of vintage vinyl, and she takes Fedir to see a Japanese-language stage adaptation of Dirty Dancing that, well, gets creative. Kikuchi is by turns tragic, funny, and even briefly vengeful, acting in three languages across multiple waking dreams. It’s a role that engages her serious and comedic sides, more varied than the many that have tried to slot her into one mode.

You’ll have to mostly stay seated throughout the screening, but there’s a strong possibility that by the time the end credits roll, you too will want to shake some booty. It’s no cure-all for grief, as the movie showcases, but it can generally make everything a little better.

“Shimmering hues, clever dance moves and assists on grieving from a giant black crow add to the sensation of being swept away by wonderful madness.” – Peter Howell, Toronto Star.

“…a playful and whimsical confection, a deft blend of escapist kitsch and the real emotional heft that Kikuchi brings to the role.” – Wendy Ide, Screen International.

Alvaro Olmos Torrico’s ‘The Condor Daughter’ Contrasts Andean Tradition and Modernity

September 9, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

The Andes mountains stretch out as far as the eye – and the camera – can see in the land of the Quechua people. The view suggests infinite horizons and possibilities, yet the people live in small, thatched houses, sometimes with only one room. In Alvaro Olmos Torrico’s The Condor Daughter, these contrasts come to the fore.

The Condor Daughter opens at Laemmle’s Royal and Glendale Sept. 18^th. Director Alvaro Olmos Torrico will participate in Q&As following the 7:20 p.m. show on September 18 at the Glendale and after the 4:20 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. show on September 19 at the Royal.

The movie begins in the dark interior of one thatched house, warmly lit and cosily filmed through thin curtains. A woman is giving birth at home, with the aid of a traditional midwife – Ana, played by first-time actress María Magdalena Sanizo. Her daughter, Clara (also first-timer Marisol Vallejos Montaño) sings while she works, and indeed, seems to enjoy that part of the job most. In her village out of time, the radio is practically the only tie to modernity, and modern music in particular. Ana, at her age, says she now prefers silence.

The scene where the rebellious child leaves home is a trope of the coming of age film; here, Clara silently gets out of bad, packs her stuff, and makes it all the way to the door before her mother is revealed sitting up on the bed behind her, making intense eye contact. Nothing need be said, and nobody tries to stop anything – there’s an understanding that this is how it must go, and only later will Ana pursue her to the city.

We are told by the neighbors that condors don’t attack – they only eat things that are already killed. In many ways, Ana’s village seems to be the dead meat she was nourished on. It’s scarcely known to exist, its retrograde politics include forcible and extreme haircuts for young women who dare talk to men outside their families, and the midwife role is soon to be phased out by the closest hospital, which wants to ensure safer childbirths by law. As residents leave, and crops die, some suspect a curse, and one that has come about all due to Clara leaving.

In the city, houses are jammed together, yet interiors and rooftops are far more spacious – there’s visual room here for people to grow even if nature cannot. The rooms are lighter, as even the dark ones at night are drenched in neon. Both urban and rural worlds are imbued with their own beauty, as director of photography Nicolas Wong (La Llorona) shoots the country like a painting, and the city like a photo book.

Torrico’s previous feature, Wiñay, told the opposite story: two city girls headed for the country in search of silence. Here, Clara and her best friend Flora seek the noise, and the ability to make a living in a party setting. Montaño, though new to acting, has some experience with this scene as part of an all-girl group. That she makes this aspect look the most naturally awkward attests to her quick study as an actor, and Torrico’s skill at directing her.

The writer-director has points to make, but he sees the good in both close-knit rural tradition and open urban career frontiers, ultimately coming down on the side of personal choice. Become who you are because you want to, not because you were conditioned to. It’s a universal truism that undoubtedly helped this film to become Bolivia’s official entry for the Best International Feature Oscar.

“The Condor Daughter is, without a doubt, an experience that invites us to approach the Andean world with new eyes, not only to question its harmful patriarchy but also to revalue the contributions of its women” — Gustavo Herrera Taboada, Cinencuentro.

“The Condor Daughter is a story anyone can relate to, even if they’re not familiar with the setting or the language.” — Lissete Lanuza Sáenz, Fangirlish.

Orlando von Einsiedel’s ‘The Cycle of Love’ Takes Mettle to the Pedal

September 2, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

A prophecy of true love. A perilous journey most sane men would not attempt. These are classic fairy tale ingredients, but in 1977, for one young man in Delhi, they were very real. The Cycle of Love documents his incredible journey across continents to find the metaphorical princess.

The Cycle of Love opens Sept. 4^th at Laemmle’s Royal, and Sept. 11^th at the Glendale and Town Center 5. Real-life subjects Lotta and P.K. Mahanandia will participate in Q&As following the 7:25 p.m. shows on Friday, Sept. 4th and Saturday, Sept. 5^th, at the Royal

Director Orlando von Einsiedel has twice won Academy Awards for documentary shorts: in 2016 for “The White Helmets,” and in 2020, for “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if you’re a girl).” Both films took the British director across the Muslim world, from Turkey to Syria and Afghanistan. The subject of The Cycle of Love goes on a similar journey, retraced by von Einsiedel’s cameras. P.K. Mahanandia, narrating in the present and played by Chirag Benedict Lobo in reenactments, was drawing portraits for money on the streets when he met Swedish tourist Lotta Von Schedvin (also herself in present-day segments, and Mina Dale in flashbacks), and knew it was destiny.

At least, he thought he knew. A prediction carved into a leaf, made by an astrologer in P.K.’s infancy, said his true love would live far away, be a Taurus, be musical, and own a jungle. Lotta hit all four, much to P.K.’s delight, with the asterisk that her family owned forest land rather than a literal jungle. He brought her to meet his parents; she promised to return in August. When she did not do so, he vowed to go to her…yet all he could afford was a half-price woman’s bicycle. Perhaps not since David Lynch’s The Straight Story, which documented Alvin Straight’s 1994 journey on a riding mower to see his ailing brother, has cinema tackled such a real-life, slow-motion, underdog odyssey for love.

It was the ’70s, so people still hitchhiked, traveled the world in vans, and were generally hospitable to wandering nomads, even in countries we now consider hostile like Iran and Afghanistan (Pakistan proved to be the exception, for Indians at least). Much of the road traveled is even called “the hippie trail.” So like any great mythic hero, P.K. met several interesting characters along the way, some of whom helped, while others hindered. At least one could almost have been a morality test from the gods, which he passed.

Von Einsiedel has made a unique choice not to strictly document the journey as it happened, but in spirit as he retraces it. Rather than specifically recasting the individuals encountered by P.K., he has actor Chirag Benedict Lobo interact in character with real people along the way, as the film crew follows the same path. It’s shot in a grainy style designed to evoke the ’70s, and presented as if it is, interspersed with what little available archival film exists, yet the presence of the lead actor tells us it’s new, while the testimonies of the real people he meets indicate that too little has changed over the years. In particular, P.K.’s heritage as part of the “Untouchable” Dalit caste in Indian society made him the victim of his own culture’s bigotry, viewing him as so spiritually dirty that even physical contact requires an immediate cleanse. When Lobo-as-P.K. speaks to other Dalits, it’s clear the prejudice remains.

The Cycle of Love also pointedly films the real P.K. and the real Lotta against completely different backdrops, leaving us in suspense for most of the movie as to whether or not the quest succeeded, or even if they’ve talked since then. Because it’s a documentary – albeit a mostly restaged one — viewers can find out the answer in advance if they really want to, but for better appreciation of the dramatic arc, the filmmakers strongly suggest that you refrain from that, and take the journey as it is meant to be experienced. In a year that cinema has rediscovered the classic literary Odyssey, come along for the ride on the one that really happened.

“Einsiedel’s method edges toward the revelatory, often recalling the cockeyed realities of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami.” – Christian Craig, In Review Online.

“Delicate and heartwarming, Orlando von Einsiedel’s stirring documentary “The Cycle of Love” is the kind of film whose sweet subject transcends time and borders.” – Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com.

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.

Rafael Manuel’s ‘Filipiñana’ Captures National Class Struggle in a Golf Course

August 25, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Writer-director Rafael Manuel has made a debut feature to immediately command attention with Filipiñana, a deadpan, day-in-the-life look at an elite golf course through the eyes of the teenage country girl who works there on the lowest rung of the service scale.

Filipiñana opens Friday, Sept. 4^th at Laemmle’s Glendale and Monica Film Center. In person Q&As with writer-director Rafael Manuel after a special 7 p.m. show on Sept. 2nd at the Royal, a 7 p.m. show on Sept. 3rd at the NoHo, and after the 7 p.m. shows Sept. 4th and 8th in Glendale!

As the title of the movie appears onscreen, Filipiñana delivers an edit that recalls the famous matchstick-to-desert cut in Lawrence of Arabia, but deliberately, ironically in reverse. The hot, crowded streets of Manila, where families line up for limited water rations, instantaneously transition to a view of sprinklers on a vast golf course. The water here is freely given away – to the plants rather than the people – while the fruit trees drop their mangoes that nobody is allowed to pick, to be eaten by ants on the ground. From a high angle, the rows of golf carts traveling in unison along the designated paths look like nothing more than the world’s most expensive model train set.

Earlier this summer, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass riffed on The Wizard of Oz for comedic effect. Here, Manuel gives us a verdant Emerald City of sorts more akin to the original Baum novel, or perhaps Wicked, complete with all-female caddies in Glinda-pink uniforms. It’s an impressive kingdom – the movie’s golf resort was filmed using eight different courses to create the impression of one massive one. And it suggests opulence and luxury, yet it’s a fraud at heart, just like its very own “wizard,” Dr. Pelanca (Teroy Guzman). Like the nation of the Philippines itself, it’s built on colonization and exploitation, and its artificial space allows the richest clientele the luxury of not having to pay attention to anything else.

Seventeen year-old Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto) is new to the job, from the northern, rural region of Ilocos, which has a distinct culture and language (and was home to dictator Ferdinand Marcos). She’s a tee girl, whose job it is to ensure there is always a ball ready for players on the driving range to hit. Tee girls aren’t allowed on the actual course, but its vast size makes that an impossible rule to fully enforce. In the morning, as she cools off lying on the grass, a smaller girl walks into her field of vision, greets her, and then runs off. Later in the day, that girl will be reported missing, and almost nobody will care.

Cinematograoher Xenia Patricia shoots mostly long, static shots in 3:4 aspect ratio – not due to any expectation that Filipiñana will be screened in IMAX, but to emphasize vertical power dynamics, and the trees on the course which represent the labor. Water is thrown at them until they die, at which point they are easily replaceable. Employees are frequently filmed either lying down or from higher angles, while Dr. Pelanca and his friends are forcibly looked up to. Like Michael Haneke, Manuel wants to see how manipulable you are as an audience member. The takes are slow, but blink and you might miss a clue. The ultimate test of this is the end credits – be sure you sit through them rather than walking away too soon (as every character onscreen does), in order to get the real ending.

Like Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winning The Zone of Interest, Filipiñana says as much with what it doesn’t show as what it does, which is mostly luxury and comfort if you don’t look too closely. The caddies are old enough to speak truth, but only among ears that will hear it. Music is sparse, and mostly in the form of bands playing stereotypical “exotic” music they imagine the mostly Chinese guests will want to hear.

The feature is an expansion of Manuel’s thesis short film at the London Film School, and produced by Jia Zhangke (Still Life) who served as his mentor for two years. Filipiñana won the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, rewarding everyone’s faith in the material. It should similarly reward viewers in theaters this fall.

“An incisive, slow-burning satire of capitalism and powerful men with far too much hubris — basically, a story for our times.” – Aisha Harris, NPR.

“Through heightened control of imagery and mood, attention to composition and texture and sound, Manuel turns this simple, languid setting into something far more sinister without ever betraying the beauty of what’s onscreen.” – Bilge Ebiri, Vulture.

Emmanuel Courcol’s ‘The Marching Band’ Is Like a French Spin on ‘School of Rock’

August 19, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Triumph and tragedy are inextricably intertwined in Emmanuel Courcol’s The Marching Band, from the moment superstar conductor Thibaut Desormeaux (Benjamin Lavernhe) gets a leukemia diagnoses that results in him finding a long-lost brother. As they mend fences and fight the illness, the two also prepare to compete together in a regional marching band contest.

The Marching Band opens at Laemmle’s Town Center 5 and Royal Aug. 28^th, and at the Glendale Sept. 4^th.

You’ve likely heard of School of Rock – consider this movie “Factory of Classical.” Mishaps escalate early in the story for Thibaut, as he doesn’t just have cancer, but his sister can’t donate bone marrow to him, because she’s not his biological sister, and he never knew it. It’s a hell of a way to learn he’s adopted, just as it’s awkward for his long-lost brother Jimmy (Pierre Lotin) to suddenly learn about Thibaut when he suddenly shows up on the doorstep requesting a transfusion.

Jimmy works in a cafeteria, but plays in a marching band made up of local factory workers. He appears to have a genetic affinity for music, and Thibaut sees in him the potential to also become a conductor. When the band’s own conductor has to leave town over a job change, the two newfound brothers work together to get these decidedly ragtag, argumentative local musicians into shape for a regional competition.

The selection they practice is “Bolero” by Maurice Ravel, which Thibaut calls the biggest classical hit of all time, possibly showing some patriotic bias as Ravel was French. Trust us, though, you’ve heard this piece, even if the name doesn’t ring a bell. It’s narratively related, too: “Bolero” was one of Ravel’s last compositions before e contracted a mystery illness that would ultimately kill him. It was also likely inspired by the rhythms of the factory in which Ravel’s father worked, and used to frequently take him as a child. (Thibaut claims this as a fact, but the actual facts are less clear.)

While the preparation and build up towards a big concert makes for a traditional underdog triumphant arc, Courcol is less interested in that aspect than he is the bonding between two very different siblings with similar gifts. Slender, well-dressed Thibaut had every advantage in life, worked hard on his music, and became a superstar in the classical world. Jimmy, who dons blue jeans and a tracksuit top, had to struggle to stay just above the poverty line, and could only find time for music as a hobby. The circumstances were out of their control, and it’s too late to radically change, especially with leukemia lurking, but if they can find forgiveness and the camaraderie they were never allowed as separated kids, maybe that’s as big a triumph as any competition victory.

As a result, you don’t have to know anything about classical music to appreciate the story. Indeed, many of Jimmy’s bandmates don’t, but “Bolero” is a perfect entry-level tune for singers, musicians, and listeners, even as more knowledgeable audophiles will appreciate its thematic resonance as well.

Courcol’s first film as director was Ceasefire, a period drama about a World War I veteran who abandons his family for Africa, then returns and has to heal the wound he caused. His second, The Big Hit, was a comedy abut a prison theater troupe. With The Marching Band, he might just have hit the crowd-pleasing sweet spot, with both a performing troupe and healing familial bonds in play. The movie’s not above being a tear jerker at times, but a reason to cheer the characters onward is never far behind.

“This film may not surprise, but it’s a sincere and uplifting tale that is in tune with the spirit of underdog crowd-pleasers Brassed Off and The Full Monty.” – Dulcie Pearce, The Sun UK

“A huge hit in its native France, this uplifting, moving and subtly funny affair has been making friends right around the world.” – Leigh Paatsch, Daily Telegraph (Australia)

Cédric Klapisch’s ‘Colors of Time’ Irreverently Approaches Art Appreciation

August 19, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Never entirely serious nor quite an all-out comedy, Cédric Klapisch’s Colors of Time might best be described as “cheeky” in its comparison of our current media moment to that of early 20th-century Paris. Through parallel narratives that play fast and loose with history, it’s all about how art may change, but reactions to it remain universal.

Colors of Time opens Aug. 27^th at Laemmle’s Royal, Glendale, and Town Center 5.

As the film opens, a punk-styled girl with dyed red hair and intricate body art takes selfies in front of large, impressionist paintings in a gallery. Across the room, a film crew is creating “content” by having an influencer strike dance poses in front of another artwork. Alas, the color of her dress doesn’t match the painting, but since the clothes are sponsor-provided, they’ll just have to tweak the color of the masterpiece behind her in post-production. Throughout the gallery, there’s nary a spectator who isn’t utilizing some sort of mobile device in some way. This is how we consume and process art now.

In another time period, a century or so earlier, Adele (Spring Blossom writer-director-star Suzanne Lindon) journeys from the country to Paris, first by horse-drawn cart and then by riverboat, in search of the mother who funds her life but has never shown up in person. Along the way, she’ll find herself amidst a burgeoning art movement, at the birth of impressionism, photography, and even a rumored new invention called the cinematograph.

Connecting the two time periods is Adele’s country house, unopened since 1945 or thereabouts. Today, she has approximately 30 descendants, who must decide whether or not to sell the property to a shopping mall. Four are chosen to be representative of the group; each clad in different primary colors, they seem to have each inherited different aspects of the young Adele’s personality. Content-creator Seb (Abraham Wapler) is her youth, anti-capitalist beekeper Guy (playwright and actor Vincent Macaigne) her idealism, future planner and iconoclast Celine (Julia Piaton) her ambition, and schoolteacher Abdel (Klapisch regular Zinadine Soualem) her grounded self.

As the four distant cousins journey by train back and forth from the plant-covered house, they find letters, photos, and even two mysterious paintings that offer clues to their shared past. Meanwhile, with clever cuts and dissolves, the past comes alive, with Adele standing out in a bright red blouse amid the more muted gentlemen of Paris. Only when she finds her mother, now a high-end prostitute, in an equally red room, does she blend into the background, much as Adele might like to shrink away in embarrassment herself.

In both time periods, attitudes towards art are changing, with young people embracing the new, be it photography or digital editing, as the older generation of critics scoffs. While the past illuminates the future and present, Klapisch suggests that it personal stakes will always motivate the best art in any era. When the timelines briefly merge, in one of cinema’s unlikeliest drug trips, things get really interesting!

Klapisch’s 2002 hit L’Auberge Espagnole brought together a group of international grad students, and in the subsequent two sequels, followed them over the course of ten years. A gulf of much more than a decade separates the two generations in Colors of Time, but their needs and desires are universal, as are their naysayers, who wish those darn kids in their respective generations would take the time to slow down and enjoy real conversation and connection. This is a movie which suggests that art should facilitate that dialogue rather than separate spectators from it, no matter the tech involved. That most of the primary actors are also creators feels like a pointed, relevant choice in that regard.

“Klapisch is brilliant at directing an ensemble piece, in which the relationships between the characters weave the story, but he also takes the opportunity to pay homage to those who lived…before us.” – Roger Salvans, Fotogramas.

“Klapisch demonstrates, in the most aesthetic and sensory way, the necessity of engaging with the past to move forward in the present.” – Paula Hernandez Platero, Cinemania.

Mye Hoang’s ’25 Cats From Qatar’ Are the Most Adorable Refugees

August 12, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Cats have always gotten the short end of the stick from the movies relative to dogs, but director Mye Hoang has worked hard to even the odds, with her previous documentary Cat Daddies and her latest, 25 Cats From Qatar, which has the benefit of helping the kitties it showcases, and more.

25 Cats From Qatar opens Aug. 12th at the Town Center 5, Aug. 13th at Laemmle’s Royal, and Aug. 14th at the Glendale. Director Mye Hoang will participate in Q&As at the Glendale following the 4:30 PM shows from August 14 through August 20, as well as after the 1:20 PM and 7:00 PM shows on August 15 and 16.

Producer Alex Megaro will join Hoang on August 15 through August 19 for the 4:30 PM Q&As. Rescuer Katy McHugh will join Hoang on August 14 and August 15 after the 4:30 PM and 7:00 PM shows.

Hoang will participate in a Q&A following the 7:30pm shows on August 12 at the Town Center, and August 13 at the Royal. Cinematographer Patrick Ouziel will join Hoang on August 13. Cat food and supply donations will be accepted Aug. 14-16 by Del Gato Rescue, Urban Panthers, and Kitty Bungalow.

Cats might not take instruction from major studio directors as well as dogs do, but focus a documentary camera on them, and plenty will give the filmmaker a performance, even if hitting their marks is out of the question. In Qatar, where the stray cat population is equal to that of the human population at around three million apiece, many of these felines have become fearless. They pop up from drains, run across busy roads, beg for food and survive the harshness of gum disease and eye injury. Curiosity doesn’t cull the cat population, but it often leaves the fur babies hurting.

Into Qatar comes Milwaukee cat cafe owner Katy McHugh, looking to bring as many of the strays as possible to the U.S. for adoption – 25 is about as much as she can get away with per trip. Numerous rescuers within Qatar are her allies; over the course of four days, they help her select and prepare 25, out of the exponentially more available, that experience has taught Katy will most likely appeal to American adopters.

Qatar’s population is primarily temporary immigrant workers lured by the paychecks, and penchant for construction, of the wealthy. They take on pets – often cute kittens bought at a store – for companionship, but once their tenure is over and they have to leave the country, they often leave the cats behind too. This has helped with the rat problem, but now presents an overpopulation issue that welcomes other countries taking in, essentially, refugee cats.

Animal lovers, have no fear – this is not a movie about cats getting hurt, but rather, rescued. The conflict comes from which cats get to go and how they can make the trip; McHugh, who has done this so often she knows airport ground crew personnel by face, comes prepared, both with knowledge of the process and a charming midwestern manner that endears her to most people she meets. It’s a targeted charm that achieves results – much as a cat purring against your leg is likely to get food or rubs.

Like many advocacy documentaries, 25 Cats From Qatar is something of a call to action, but what it doesn’t outright say might be as powerful as what it does. If we can be brought to care this much about animals in need being brought over for a better life, why do we not more often care about children in similar circumstances as well?

The bottom line, though, is that if you’re coming to see hordes of adorable kitties, it delivers.

“25 Cats from Qatar succeeds not just as an advocacy piece but as a compelling, fast-paced rescue adventure.” – Alan Ng, Film Threat.

“Beyond the cats, 25 Cats From Qatar is a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people in the Middle East, kind people with the same hopes and dreams as everybody else, that feels timely and necessary right now.” – Rob Thomas, Substack.