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Jazz musicians, politicians, painters, historians, and feminists: Our upcoming Culture Vulture films.

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We have the next several months of our Culture Vulture series set, and as always the films are eclectic and stimulating, featuring documentaries about artists and writers, gallery films, a National Theater Live stage production, and more.

April 22 & 23 ~ On the Adamant ~ Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Fest, this affecting, enlightening documentary from nonfiction master Nicolas Philibert (To Be and to Have) invites viewers to come aboard the Adamant and witness the transformational power of art and community. The Adamant is a one-of-a-kind place: a floating refuge on the Seine in the heart of Paris that offers day programs for adults with mental illnesses. Its attendees come from across the city and are offered care that grounds and helps them recover and stabilize.

April 29 & 30 ~ John Singer Sargent is known as the greatest portrait artist of his era. What made his ‘swagger’ portraits remarkable was his power over his sitters, what they wore and how they were presented to the audience. Through interviews with curators, contemporary fashionistas and style influencers, John Singer Sargent: Fashion & Swagger examines how Sargent’s unique practice has influenced modern art, culture and fashion.

May 6 & 7 ~ J’Accuse! ~ This blistering documentary recalibrates the dialogue between the Jewish People and Lithuania by demanding that the Lithuanian government stops telling Holocaust lies. Made on a shoestring budget of less than $30,000, this painful, angry film has has won over 120 Best Documentary Awards and film festival selections across the world and has become one of the key weapons in the ongoing fight for Holocaust Truth. J’Accuse! also powerfully challenges the silence of the EU, the UN and NATO… and asks if the Holocaust has ceased to have moral meaning.

May 13 & 14 ~ Patricia Rozema’s Mouthpiece centers on Cassandra, an aspiring writer who, while struggling to compose a eulogy after the sudden death of her mother, comes to discover that her own rebelliousness is as much a response to the male gaze as her mother’s conformity. Enacting the two sides of Cassandra’s conflicting inner dialogue, playwright-performers Nostbakken and Sadava create a compelling portrayal of the tension between regression and progress that is often found within women.

May 20 & 21 ~ In the vein of Frederick Wiseman’s work, Art Talent Show offers insightful commentary on the intergenerational cultural dissonance surrounding topics like identity politics and social justice in relation to art and its practice. A “documentary less about art or talent than about the Sisyphean task of assessing one and nurturing the other” (Variety), filmmakers Adéla Komrzý and Tomáš Bojar take a sensitive and ultimately light-hearted approach to the examination of art school admission.

June 3 & 4 ~ Nye ~ Michael Sheen plays Nye Bevan in a surreal and spectacular journey through the life and legacy of the man who transformed Britain’s welfare state. From campaigning at the coalfield to leading the battle to create the National Health Service, Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan is often referred to as the politician with greatest influence over the UK without ever being Prime Minister. Confronted with death, Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan’s deepest memories lead him on a mind-bending journey back through his life; from childhood to mining underground, Parliament and fights with Churchill.

June 10 & 11 ~ My National Gallery~ The National Gallery of London is one of the world’s greatest art galleries. It is full of masterpieces, an endless resource of history, an endless source of stories. But whose stories are told? Which art has the most impact and on whom? The power of great art lies in its ability to communicate with anyone, no matter their art historical knowledge, their background, their beliefs. This film gives voice to those who work at the gallery – from cleaner to curator, security guard to director – who identify the one artwork that means the most to them and why.

June 17 & 18 ~ Lyd ~ A sci-fi documentary that follows the rise and fall of Lyd — a 5,000-year-old metropolis that was once a bustling Palestinian town until it was conquered when Israel was established in 1948. As the film unfolds, a chorus of characters creates a tapestry of the Palestinian experience of this city and the trauma left by the massacre and expulsion.

June 24 & 25 ~ An informed and intimate portrayal of the jazz scene that offers revelatory glimpses for fans of the genre, Music for Black Pigeons strikes a universal chord in its pursuit of wider questions centered around creativity. How does it feel to play? What does it mean to listen? Is it even possible to put the emotions of music into words?

July 1 & 2 ~ My Name is Andrea ~ A hybrid feature documentary about controversial feminist writer and public intellectual Andrea Dworkin, who offered a revolutionary analysis of male supremacy with iconoclastic flair. Decades before #MeToo, Dworkin called out the pervasiveness of sexism and rape culture, and the ways it impacts every woman’s daily life.

July 8 & 9 ~ Apolonia, Apolonia ~ A talented Parisian painter grows up seeking her place in the art world while grappling with the agonies and joys of womanhood and relationships in a world dominated by patriarchy, capitalism, and war.

Featuring a “spine-tingling” lead performance, NOWHERE SPECIAL opens April 26.

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Uberto Pasolini’s new film Nowhere Special stars the gifted English actor James Norton as a single father who dedicates the last few months of his life to finding a new family for his four-year-old son. It’s based on a true story. We open Nowhere Special April 26 at the Royal and May 3 at our Claremont, Glendale and Encino theaters. Pasolini wrote the following about how he, his cast and crew were able to create this brilliant, understated movie:

“I wanted to make this film as soon as I read about the case of a terminally ill father attempting to find a new family for his toddler son before his death. Although the situation the main characters find themselves in is very dramatic, the decision at script level was to approach the story in a very subtle, “quiet” way, as far away from melodrama and sentimentalism as possible, as in a film by Yasujirō Ozu, or, more recently, the work of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. This approach was reflected in the style of the filmmaking we adopted, direct and free from distracting stylistic flourishes. Marius Panduru’s camera work was designed to be both fluid and unobtrusive, when appropriate even reflecting the child’s point of view. The main directorial challenge of the film was that of working with a very young child, and of creating a believable and moving father-son relationship on camera. Fortunately, in young Daniel Lamont, then four years old, we have an extraordinarily aware and sensitive natural performer, and in James Norton a most generous actor, who was happy to dedicate long days into creating a connection with the boy well ahead of the shoot, and to support and guide Daniel throughout what for any child would have been an intense and at times bewildering experience.”

“In spite of myself I invested totally in Norton’s spine-tingling, intimate performance; and, in spite of myself, the end had me in floods of tears.” ~ Cath Clarke, Guardian

“Uberto Pasolini’s film takes a real-life story as his starting block and turns this tiny Northern Ireland-set tale into an almost sensory experience.” Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International
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“Be warned: you will need to keep a box of tissues to hand, if not all the tissues in the world.” ~ Deborah Ross, The Spectator

“If it is indeed Loach’s farewell, it’s one hell of a fine note to go out on.” THE OLD OAK opens Friday.

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The 28th feature directed by renowned British filmmaker Ken Loach follows a once-vibrant mining town’s response to the arrival of a group of Syrian refugees. TJ, the amiable proprietor of the titular pub – the last meeting point left in town – struggles to keep his more narrow-minded local clientele amid prejudice as he befriends these new residents, in particular a Syrian photographer, Yara. As he has over his six-decade career, Loach gives compassionate voice to the oppressed – both the Syrian migrants as well as the out-of-work locals — in this, the concluding chapter of his Northeast England trilogy (following I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You) and his self-proclaimed final film. 

Laemmle Theatres is proud to open The Old Oak this Friday, April 12 at the Royal, Town Center and Claremont and April 19 at our Glendale theater.

“It’s as engrossing, thoughtful, heartfelt, angry, hopeful, and altogether valuable as his best work. If it is indeed Loach’s farewell, it’s one hell of a fine note to go out on.” ~ Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com

“With The Old Oak, Ken Loach goes out with one last, full-throated call for brotherhood and solidarity. It’s the most hopeful the old soldier’s been in years.” ~ Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture

“A film as fired up and human as any you’ll see this year.” – Phil de Semlyen, Time Out 

“Ken Loach’s fierce final call for compassion and solidarity… He is the fierce plain-speaker of political indignation with a style that is unironised and unadorned… It is a filmmaking language utterly without the cynical twang that is de rigueur for everyone else…I hope that this isn’t Loach’s final film, but if it is, he has concluded with a ringing statement of faith in compassion for the oppressed.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (UK)

“[Loach] could hardly have delivered a more resonant, timely or indeed angry swansong than this feature which takes up arms against the decay of national compassion.” – Jonathan Romney, Screen International

“What Loach adds to this scenario, as he’s done in most of his films, is a natural intimacy that goes beyond the issues to bring something human and emotional to the table… Working with screenwriter Paul Laverty, who’s been the auteur’s trusted scribe ever since Carla’s Song in 1996, Loach builds up to such emotional high points through a slow-burn narrative that sets up all the conflicts and then has them play out as naturally as possible…as if he were capturing real life as it happened, with cinematographer Robbie Ryan (American Honey) adding a dose of warmth and color to the drab town setting.” – Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

“A poignant and moving coda to a career spent chronicling personal indignities amid broader social ills like poverty and unemployment.” ~ Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press

“In place of magical thinking and a happy ending, “The Old Oak” serves up something harder: a meditation on hope.” ~ Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times

“The chemistry between Turner and Mari leads to a relationship rarely seen in cinema.” ~ Sophie Monks Kaufman, indieWire

“The film unfolds with a fierce crackle. And a wide lens is in play alongside the micro close-up.” ~ Danny Leigh, Financial Times

“Loach’s faith in the human capacity for empathy prevails in the end. Best of all, he brings off this optimistic flourish without the taint of sentimentality.” ~ Sandra Hall, Sydney Morning Herald

Anniversary screenings of Claire Denis’s debut, “a film of infinite delicacy,” CHOCOLAT.

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The next film in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series is Claire Denis’s intense 1988 debut feature, Chocolat, screening April 24 at our Claremont, Encino, Glendale, Newhall and West L.A. theaters. Denis drew on her own childhood experiences growing up in colonial French Africa for her visually beautiful, multilayered, languorously absorbing movie. She explores many of the themes that would recur throughout her work. Returning to the town where she grew up in Cameroon after many years living in France, a white woman (Mireille Perrier) reflects on her relationship with Protée (Isaach De Bankolé), a Black servant with whom she formed a friendship while not fully grasping the racial divides that governed their worlds.

Roger Ebert was quick to identify Chocolat as a major accomplishment. His review is worth reading in full, but here’s its final paragraph:

“Chocolat is one of those rare films with an entirely mature, adult sensibility; it is made with the complexity and subtlety of a great short story, and it assumes an audience that can understand what a strong flow of sex can exist between two people who barely even touch each other. It is a deliberately beautiful film – many of the frames create breathtaking compositions – but it is not a travelogue and it is not a love story. It is about how racism can prevent two people from looking each other straight in the eyes, and how they punish each other for the pain that causes them. This is one of the best films of the year.”
Denis was nominated for several major prizes for Chocolat: the Palme d’Or at Cannes, the Best First Feature at the César Awards, and the Best Foreign Language Film prize by the New York Film Critics Circle. Some of her later career highlights include Beau Travail, High Life, White Material and 35 Shots of Rum.

RESISTANCE: THEY FOUGHT BACK Q&As May 11-13 at the Town Center.

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Resistance: They Fought Back Q&A’s at the Town Center will be hosted on May 11th at 7:10 PM by Co-Director & Executive Producer Paula S. Apsell, Co-Director Kirk Wolfinger, along with Roberta Grossman, Co-Executive Director of Jewish Story Partners, and actress and writer Romy Rosemont. On May 12th at 1:10 PM, Co-Director & Executive Producer Paula S. Apsell and Co-Producer Yael Beals will host a Q&A and on May 13th at 7:10 PM, Co-Director & Executive Producer Paula S. Apsell and Dr. Michael Berenbaum, Professor of Jewish & Holocaust Studies at American Jewish University, will host a Q&A.

“The deal Mr. Haffmann tries to strike is wild. But they were wild times, and nothing was normal.” Daniel Auteuil on his new film FAREWELL, MR. HAFFMANN.

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French star Daniel Auteuil (Caché, Jean de Florette, The Well-Digger’s Daughter, many more) stars in Farewell, Mr. Haffmann as a talented Jewish jeweler in Nazi-occupied Paris who arranges for his family to flee the city and offers one of his employees (Gilles Lellouche) the opportunity to take over his store until the conflict subsides. When his own escape is thwarted, he has to rely on his employee to protect him. We open the film this Friday at the Royal and Town Center.

M. Auteuil recently sat for an interview about Farewell, Mr. Haffmann:

WHO IS JOSEPH HAFFMANN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FILM?

He is a man whose sole purpose is to save the lives of himself and his family. He is hunted, in danger, and the whole situation is closing in on him. But I’d say that deep down, his purpose is the same as that of François (Gilles Lellouche): both men are obsessed with their children. The children Haffmann hopes to see again, and the one François hopes to have.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE WHAT HAPPENS BETWEEN THE TWO MEN?

It’s a relationship where the power dynamic immediately shifts. It’s what I liked when I first read the script. The deal Mr. Haffmann tries to strike is wild. But they were wild times, and nothing was normal. There was no “normal” behavior. It was the law of survival. War and danger create a context in which you react however you can to the crazy violence around you. When Haffmann comes up from the basement, he “acts crazy.” He can’t take it anymore. Because there is a moment when people who are persecuted want to revolt. Even if it puts their lives on the line. Anyway, that’s how I experienced it… or how I acted it!

THE FILM IS SHOT BASICALLY ON ONE SET, AND CENTERS ON THE INTIMACY OF THE THREE MAIN CHARACTERS. WERE YOU AFRAID TO BE IN SUCH CLOSE QUARTERS?

Not at all! There are wonderful examples like Claude Miller’s GARDE À VUE (THE INQUISITOR) where Lino Ventura and Michel Serrault face off in a room throughout the entire film. It’s more of a challenge for directors, who need to find more ideas for shots, than it is for actors. And we shot in a studio. When I was young, I preferred shooting on location, but certain films work better in studio. Farewell, Mr. Haffmann is one of them. We are more concentrated on these characters, who are obliged to dig within themselves. And Fred Cavayé hones things down up until the very last minute. He is constantly streamlining his writing. He removes more than he adds. He pares down, cuts to the bone. It’s amazing because it gives the actors more room to let themselves go in front of the camera.

HAFFMANN IS NOT AT ALL TALKATIVE. HE ONLY SAYS THE STRICT MINIMUM. DO YOU ENJOY ACTING SILENCES AND PREGNANT STARES?

Not particularly. I play the score I’m given. What can I say? I’m alone in a basement, so…! But it’s true I’ve been told that before, especially for Claude Sautet’s A HEART IN WINTER. I often heard: “You don’t say much, but your eyes.” And when I saw the movie, I realized I was speaking all the time. But it’s not what people remembered …

SARA GIRAUDEAU REFERS TO YOUR EXTREME CALM ON THE SET. IS THAT ALWAYS THE CASE OR WAS YOUR CHARACTER THAT CALLED FOR IT?

Well, I know I’m going to be spending 12 hours doing the same thing over and over, so I try to go about it as serenely as possible! And it’s a pleasure for me to be there. Film shoots are a privilege. They allow me to work in good conditions. I love the atmosphere on sets, love watching the actors and the crew. When you work in cinema, you’re protected from the outside world. But I must say that is calming. But sometimes, actors do become their characters, unconsciously. Haffmann’s discretion, his silent presence, may have rubbed off on me…

THIS IS THE FIRST TIME YOU’VE ACTED WITH GILLES LELLOUCHE…

Yes, and I accepted the film because I knew who my partners were. It was wonderful to witness Gilles’ enthusiasm, his method, his search, his questioning… He overflows with an energy that I must now try to preserve. Everyone on the set was extremely absorbed, focused. There was a lot of pleasure in doing as we were doing it. That’s already pretty good, right?

PURE O Q&As

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Several screenings of Pure O will feature Q&As. Here are the details:

  1. International OCD Foundation (IOCDF)
    • Date: Friday, April 5th
    • Description: Join us for an exclusive screening of the film as we collaborate with the International OCD Foundation. With a focus on serving a diverse global community affected by OCD and related disorders, the IOCDF is dedicated to providing support, resources, and fostering connections for individuals, families, mental health professionals, and researchers worldwide.
  1. Purely OCD: The Podcast
    • Date: Sunday, April 7th
    • Description: Don’t miss this special screening of Pure O, featuring a collaboration with the creators of Purely OCD: the Podcast, hosted by Lauren Rosen and Kelley Franke. Gain invaluable insights into OCD treatment and navigate the complexities of the disorder’s journey with guidance from these experienced therapists.
  1. OCD Gamechangers
    • Date: Tuesday, April 9th
    • Description: Mark your calendars for an empowering screening event in partnership with OCD Gamechangers. Dedicated to serving individuals affected by OCD, their families, and healthcare providers globally, OCD Gamechangers is committed to fostering a supportive community and inspiring hope.
  1. Made of Millions Foundation
    • Date: Thursday, April 11th
    • Description: Join us for the final screening of Pure O, featuring a collaboration with the Made of Millions Foundation. As a leading global advocacy nonprofit, Made of Millions is actively re-shaping perceptions around mental health, offering support, encouragement, and a platform for change.

Jean-Pierre Melville & Alain Delon’s 1967 French noir LE SAMOURAÏ, newly restored, opens April 5.

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“The closest thing to a perfect movie that I have ever seen.” – John Woo

“Noir Nirvana.” – Eddie Muller

“Jean-Pierre Melville’s coolest, sleekest, and most influential salute to the French underworld.” – Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

“The beauty of Le Samouraï isn’t its plot, but the assured handling of tone, mood, and style, which tips its hat to the noir of the past while standing out as a unique heady cocktail of its own.” – Angelica Jade Bastien, Vulture

“[Jean-Pierre Melville] made the coolest gangster films ever.” – Quentin Tarantino

In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, Le Samouraï is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture—with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology.

We open Le Samouraï April 5 and the Laemmle Glendale and Royal.