Cinematheque

France, United Kingdom, United States | 2012 | Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel

Life aboard a New England commercial fishing vessel on the roiling sea is vividly, indelibly captured in this engulfing new film from the makers of Sweetgrass. One of the most acclaimed and visceral films of the year, Leviathan deserves to be seen and experienced on the big screen, as it will be tonight at the Capitol Theatre. “Plunging viewers into the thick of chaos, Leviathan explodes the antiquated paradigm of the documentary or ethnographic film.”...

Mexico, United States | 2012 | David Riker

An unfit but feisty Texas single mother whose son is in foster care decides to start smuggling immigrants across the Mexico/U.S. border. In the process, she becomes the unwitting custodian of a six-year-old Mexican girl. Abbie Cornish stars in this touching new film from David Riker, the director of the superb NYC-set immigrant drama La Ciudad (1998) and the co-writer of Sleep Dealer (2008).

Australia, Germany, United Kingdom | 2012 | Cate Shortland

When their Nazi parents are arrested at the chaotic close of WWII, five German siblings set off on a difficult journey through a devastated landscape to their grandmother’s house in distant Hamburg. Stunned by Hitler’s defeat, and suddenly poor and hungry, the children no longer know whom to trust or what to believe. Cate (Somersault) Shortland’s second feature is a tense and lyrical coming-of-age story unlike any other, as well as one of the best-reviewed...

Japan | 1957 | Yasujiro Ozu

Chishu Ryu, Setsuko Hara, and Isuzu Yamada star in Ozu’s intense family saga, one of his longest, harshest, and most melodramatic films, in which his usual gentleness seems to give way to bitterness. The movie focuses on two grown daughters—one unhappily married with a child, the other in an affair that leaves her pregnant—who are living with their single father. Their sad lives are further shattered by stunning revelations about their mother. “One of the...