Synopsis

Academy Award nominee Amy Adams stars as a woman who has left the city and her career to be a stay-at-home mom. Through the challenges of parenting a young toddler, her mighty maternal instincts begin to manifest in newly empowered canine form. In this penetrating, funny, and outrageous look at the realities of being an American mom, Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me) has crafted a wildly entertaining and satirical tale of female struggle and strength. Propelled by Adams’s primal, captivating, and truly transformational performance, Nightbitch is a bold and sardonic story of motherhood like no other.

Synopsis

Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from a small town on the West Bank, has been fighting the forceful expulsion of his community by Israeli authorities since he was a child. For decades, he has looked on as houses have been demolished and his family has been harassed, because, as he says, “we have no other land.” When he meets Yuval, an idealistic Israeli journalist who wants to document the ongoing brutality, an unlikely alliance develops between the two.

Compelling and inspiring, the film closely chronicles the devastating and heartbreaking day-to-day assaults against the Palestinian people, as well as their attempts to rebuild. It also explores the complicated relationship between Adra and Yuval, who — despite their differences in privilege and power — share an unwavering faith in the recorded image to make a difference. Extraordinarily empathic and moving, No Other Land is a stunning and all-too-relevant testament to resistance and resilience.

Synopsis

When their mother disappears, a young boy and his three siblings must figure out how to get by on their own in this at once heartfelt and heartbreaking drama. Shown on 35mm with Tribute

Synopsis

Louie Mulgrin is the one who got out of his rural Illinois town, becoming a bestselling novelist and writing searing literary tell-alls about his rustic Midwestern enclave. When Louie, newly engaged and successful, returns home to settle his late father’s affairs, he receives a welcome that’s equal parts admiration and resentment. Is Louie a local hero or an exploitive opportunist, getting rich off the stories of those he was once closest to?

In her accomplished feature debut, Chicago native Kate Cobb crafts a skillful tale that’s tinged with suspense, as Louie revisits relationships from his youth: a resentful best friend, an ex-girlfriend, a bully turned local cop. As he gets sucked deeper into the past, he must come to grips with what he’s done to get ahead in the present — and his loosening grip on reality. Shot in and around Dekalb, IL, Okie is an absorbing and complex dramatic thriller about the delicate balance between ambition and loyalty.

Synopsis

On an empty road in the middle of the night, Shula stumbles across her uncle’s dead body. As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family in filmmaker Rungano Nyoni’s surreal and vibrant reckoning with the lies we tell ourselves.

Blending dark comedy with poetic realism, Nyoni critiques the traditional expectation to bury pain with the dead as a family of women refuses to feign grief. Featuring a striking visual style and haunting sound design, the film culminates in a defiant protest against silence and denial, suggesting that memory and truth will always endure.