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Arabic
Blessed Benefit
(Inshallah Estafadit)
Directed by Mahmoud Al Massad
(Jordan, 2016, 83 min.)
In this sly comedy, the middle-aged, scrawny, bespectacled Ahmad doesn’t belong in prison. But when the quiet contractor and father of two is charged with fraud over an unfortunate business deal, things spiral out of control. Ironically, once behind bars, he gradually feels something that he’s never felt before — liberty (part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival).
AMC Mazza Gallerie
Fri., Oct. 20, 6:30 p.m.,
Sun., Oct. 22, 4 p.m.
A Day for Women
(Yom Lel Setat)
Directed by Kamla Abu Zekry
(Egypt, 2016, 111 min.)
The opening of a new swimming pool is the talk of the town, particularly because Sunday has been announced as a day for women. Bringing together very different women of a small community is an unexpected equalizer — and no one is more excited than Azza, who dreams of wearing a swimsuit. Naturally, the men of the community can’t help but be curious and find their own colorful way of protesting against the women’s day (part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival).
AMC Mazza Gallerie
Fri., Oct. 27, 9 p.m.,
Sat., Oct. 28, 9 p.m.
Foreign Body
Directed by Raja Amari
(Tunisia/France, 2016, 92 min.)
Seeking refuge from her Islamist radical brother, whom she denounced to authorities, young Samia flees her homeland in the turbulent aftermath of the Tunisian revolution. She braves hostile seas in the crossing to France, but once there she finds that her struggles have only just begun (Arabic and French; part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival).
AMC Mazza Gallerie
Sat., Oct. 21, 7 p.m.,
Sun., Oct. 29, 5 p.m.
In Syria (Insyriated)
Directed by Philippe Van Leeuw
(Lebanon/Belgium/France, 2017, 86 min.)
Trapped inside her home in a city under siege, a mother of three turns her flat into a safe harbor for her family and neighbors in an attempt to protect them from the war raging on the streets of Damascus (part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival).
AMC Mazza Gallerie
Sun., Oct. 22, 6 p.m.,
Sun., Oct. 29, 3 p.m.
My Uncle
(Mon Oncle / Aammi)
Directed by Nassim Abassi
(Morocco, 2016, 115 min.)
Alia is a struggling actress living in Rabat with her two roommates. As she attempts to navigate her way in cinema — in spite of the negative perceptions of women in the acting profession — she remains diligently optimistic that she will become a famous actress. But one day Alia’s life is thrown into a comedic confusion of circumstances as she juggles hosting her uncle and pursuing her acting career, while facing problems with her fiancé and his family (part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival).
AMC Mazza Gallerie
Fri., Oct. 20, 8:30 p.m.,
Sat., Oct. 28, 4:45 p.m.
The Originals
(Al Asleyeen)
Directed by Marwan Hamed
(Egypt, 2017, 125 min.)
In this visually stunning thriller, Samir works for a bank, provides for his ever-demanding family and dreams of singing in an Egyptian talent show. When he is unexpectedly fired, Samir finds himself recruited to be part of a secret society, called The Originals, which has unlimited access to surveillance at their disposal (part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival).
AMC Mazza Gallerie
Sat., Oct. 21, 4:30 p.m.,
Fri., Oct. 27, 6:30 p.m.
Solitaire
(Mahbas)
Directed by Sophie Boutros
(Lebanon/Jordan/Egypt, 2016, 92 min.)
Therese is the wife of a mayor of a small Lebanese village. The highly anticipated visit of her daughter’s suitor’s family causes much excitement — until she discovers that her long-awaited guests are from Syria. When Therese cannot contain her personal prejudices, the film turns increasingly farcical as she makes outlandish attempts to thwart the union (part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival).
AMC Mazza Gallerie
Sat., Oct. 28, 7 p.m.
The Worthy
(Al Mokhtaroun)
Directed by Ali F. Mostafa
(UAE, 2017, 99 min.)
Part social commentary, and part sheer thrill ride, “The Worthy” is breathless and audacious, ripping up the script of what to expect from an Arabic language film with this visually spectacular dystopian take on an Arab world torn apart by social disorder (closing night of the Arabian Sights Film Festival).
AMC Mazza Gallerie
Sun., Oct. 29, 7 p.m.
Armenian
Apricot Groves
Directed by Pouria Heidary Oureh
(Armenia, 2016, 78 min.)
Aram, the Iranian Armenian youth who immigrated to the U.S. as a child, returns to Armenia for the first time to propose to an Armenian girlfriend he met in America. But he soon discovers sees many cultural and religious between his adopted country and homeland, with harder obstacles ahead (part of the Reel Affirmations Film Festival).
GALA Hispanic Theatre
Sun., Oct. 22, 3 p.m.
English
American Made
Directed by Doug Liman
(U.S., 2017, 115 min.)
Tom Cruise stars in this film based on the outrageous (and real) exploits of a hustler and pilot unexpectedly recruited by the CIA to run one of the biggest covert operations in U.S. history (English and Spanish).
Angelika Mosaic
Atlantic Plumbing Cinema
Battle of the Sexes
Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
(U.K./U.S., 2017, 121 min.)
This true story follows the 1973 tennis match between world number-one Billie Jean King and ex-champ and serial hustler Bobby Riggs.
Angelika Mosaic
Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema
Landmark’s E Street Cinema
The Big Sick
Directed by Michael Showalter
(U.S., 2017, 119 min.)
Pakistan-born aspiring comedian Kumail connects with grad student Emily after one of his standup sets. However, what they thought would be just a one-night stand blossoms into the real thing, which complicates the life that is expected of Kumail by his traditional Muslim parents (English and Urdu).
Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema
Landmark’s E Street Cinema
Blade Runner 2049
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
(U.K./U.S./Canada, 2017, 163 min.)
A new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos, forcing him on a quest to find a former blade runner (Harrison Ford) who has been missing for 30 years.
Angelika Mosaic
Atlantic Plumbing Cinema
Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema
Opens Fri., Oct. 6
Breathe
Directed by
(U.K., 2017, 117 min.)
When Robin is struck down by polio at the age of 28, he is confined to a hospital bed and given only a few months to live. With the help of Diana’s twin brothers and the groundbreaking ideas of inventor Teddy Hall, Robin and Diana dare to escape the hospital ward to seek out a full and passionate life together.
Angelika Mosaic
Opens Fri., Oct. 20
Columbus
Directed by Kogonada
(U.S., 2017, 100 min.)
A Korean-born man finds himself stuck in Columbus, Indiana, where his estranged architect father is in a coma. The man meets a young woman who wants to stay in Columbus with her mother, a recovering addict, instead of pursuing her own dreams.
West End Cinema
Dolores
Directed by Peter Bratt
(U.S., 2017, 95 min.)
Dolores Huerta is one of the most important, yet least known, activists in the fight for racial, class and gender equality in American history. She was an equal partner co-founding the first farm workers union with Cesar Chavez, but her enormous contributions have gone largely unrecognized.
Landmark’s E Street Cinema
Game of Death
Directed by Sébastien Landry and Laurence Morais-Lagacé
(France/Canada/U.S., 2017, 73 min.)
“Kill or be killed” is the golden rule of the Game of Death, which is bad news for seven young friends who decide to play one sunny day. They quickly and gruesomely realize that if they don’t murder people, their heads will literally explode.
AFI Silver Theatre
Sat., Oct. 7, 8 p.m.
God’s Own Country
Directed by Francis Lee
(U.K., 2017, 104 min.)
In rural Yorkshire, isolated young sheep farmer Johnny numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker Gheorghe, employed for the lambing season, ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path (part of the Reel Affirmations Film Festival).
GALA Hispanic Theatre
Thu., Oct. 19, 9 p.m.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
(U.K./U.S., 2017)
When their headquarters are destroyed and the world is held hostage, the Kingsman’s journey leads them to the discovery of an allied spy organization in the U.S. These two elite secret organizations must band together to defeat a ruthless common enemy.
Angelika Mosaic
Angelika Pop-Up
Atlantic Plumbing Cinema
Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards
Directed by Michael Roberts
(U.K., 2017, 89 min.)
“Manolo” is the in-depth portrait of legendary fashion designer Manolo Blahnik and how his extraordinary dedication to his craft led him to become the world’s most famous luxury shoemaker. Growing up on a remote Spanish Canary island, Manolo made shoes out of sweet wrappers for lizards that he caught in his family’s garden. After opening his first store in London in 1973 and coming of age in fashion capitals such as Paris and New York, Manolo now has shops and department store concessions in over 20 countries and still creates every shoe.
Landmark’s E Street Cinema
Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
Directed by Peter Landesman
(U.S., 2017, 103 min.)
Liam Neeson stars as “Deep Throat,” the pseudonym given to the notorious whistleblower for one of the greatest scandals of all time: Watergate.
Angelika Mosaic
Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema
Landmark’s E Street Cinema
Opens Fri., Oct. 6
Menashe
Directed by Joshua Z. Weinstein
(U.S., 2017, 82 min.)
Set within the New York Hasidic community in Brooklyn, “Menashe” follows a kind but hapless grocery store clerk trying to maintain custody of his son Rieven after his wife, Lea, passes away. Since they live in a tradition-bound culture that requires a mother present in every home, Rieven is supposed to be adopted by the boy’s strict, married uncle, but Menashe’s Rabbi decides to grant him one week to spend with Rieven prior to Lea’s memorial, giving the father a final chance to prove to his skeptical community that he can be a capable parent (English and Yiddish).
Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema
Red Christmas
Directed by Craig Anderson
(Australia, 2016, 82 min.)
Horror legend Dee Wallace stars as the stressed-out mother of a squabbling family, gathered together in a remote Outback estate on Christmas Eve. When a deformed stranger named Cletus appears at their door, things move quickly from petty insults to bloody, imaginatively orchestrated violence.
AFI Silver Theatre
Thu., Oct. 5, 9:30 p.m.
Viceroy’s House
Directed by Gurinder Chadha
(U.K./India/Sweden, 2017, 106 min.)
In this lavish, sweeping historical epic, Hugh Bonneville (“Downton Abbey”) stars as the last Viceroy of India. He and his wife (Gillian Anderson) arrive at Delhi’s palatial Viceroy’s House in 1947 to oversee handing the country back to its people, negotiating with Hindu, Sikh and Muslim leaders as conflict erupts and two independent nations are carved out of the subcontinent.
Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema
Victoria and Abdul
Directed by Stephen Frears
(U.K./U.S., 2017, 112 min.)
Queen Victoria strikes up an unlikely friendship with a young Indian clerk named Abdul Karim with a loyalty to one another that her household and inner circle all attempt to destroy.
Angelika Mosaic
Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema
Landmark’s E Street Cinema
Finnish
Lake Bodom
Directed by Taneli Mustonen
(Finland/Estonia, 2016, 85 min.)
Every camper’s worst nightmare came true at Lake Bodom in 1960 when four teenagers were stabbed to death while sleeping in their tent. As the years passed and the case grew cold, the unsolved mystery turned into an urban legend. Now, a group of teenagers arrive at the same campsite, hoping to solve the murder by reconstructing it minute by minute.
AFI Silver Theatre
Sat., Oct. 7, 3:30 p.m.
French
I Still Hide to Smoke
(A mon âge je me cache encore pour fumer)
Directed by Rayhana
(Algeria/France/Greece, 2016, 90 min.)
Set in the 1990s, when Algerian politics boiled over after the Islamist uprising, “I Still Hide to Smoke” follows a day-in-the-life of 50-year-old Fatima, who runs a women’s bath that becomes the setting for a series of steamy, provocative and political confrontations between women of all ages, shapes and sizes (French and Arabic; part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival).
AMC Mazza Gallerie
Sat., Oct. 21, 9 p.m.,
Sun., Oct. 22, 8 p.m.
Joseph, the Rebel
Directed by Caroline Glorion
(France, 2011, 90 min.)
From a small group of destitute families in an emergency housing camp outside Paris in 1957, a movement was born that spans the world today. “Joseph, The Rebel” tells the story of Joseph Wresinski, a parish priest who had himself grown up in extreme poverty, and the founding of ATD Fourth World. This year marks the centenary of Wresinski’s birth and the 60th anniversary of ATD Fourth World, representative of which will be on hand after the screening.
Embassy of France – La Maison Française
The Paris Opera
(L’Opéra)
Directed by Jean-Stéphane Bron
(Switzerland/France, 2017, 110 min.)
This film takes a behind-the-scenes look at how the Paris Opera is run under the direction of Stephane Lissner (French and English).
Landmark’s Theatres
Opens Fri., Oct. 27
The Unknown Girl
(La fille inconnue)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne
(Belgium/France, 2017, 113 min.)
A woman gets obsessed with the case of a dead woman after learning that the woman had died shortly after having rung her door for help.
Angelika Pop-Up
German
Bye Bye Germany
Directed by Sam Garbarski
(Germany, 2017, 102 min.)
Frankfurt, 1946: David Bermann and his Jewish friends have escaped the Nazi regime and are now dreaming of leaving for America. But how will they get the money in these tough post-war times? The smooth-talking businessman focuses on what the Germans now need most: fine bed linens nicely wrapped in amusing stories.
Edlavitch DCJCC
Tue., Oct. 24, 7:30 p.m.
Schmitke
Directed by Stepan Altrichter
(Germany/Czech Republic, 2015, 97 min.)
A wind turbine engineer of few words, employed by a German power company, is invited to a small mysterious town in the Ore Mountains of the Czech Republic. He travels there to repair a seemingly unrecoverable windmill, but something lurks behind the bushes — a mysterious growling from the forest.
The Avalon Theatre
Wed., Oct. 11, 8 p.m.
Japanese
Neko Atsume House
Directed by Masatoshi Kurakata
(Japan, 2017, 92 min.)
A once-bestselling novelist now suffering from writer’s block and poor sales. Forced by his publisher to introduce a zombie plotline into his latest work, he retreats to a house in the country to nurse the blow to his artistic integrity. A surprise visit from a group of adorable stray cats might be just what he needs to get his life back on track.
Freer Gallery of Art
Sun., Oct. 29, 3:30 p.m.
Mandarin
Dragonfly Eyes
Directed by Xu Bing
(China/U.S., 2017, 81 min.)
Composed entirely of actual surveillance and dashboard camera footage, “Dragonfly Eyes” tells the story of a young woman who abandons her training at a Buddhist temple to explore the secular world — only to become absorbed in the digital one.
Freer Gallery of Art
Sat., Oct. 21, 7 p.m.
Norwegian
The King’s Choice
(Kongens nei)
Directed by Erik Poppe
(Norway, 2017, 133 min.)
Based on a true the story, over the course of three dramatic days in April 1940, the king of Norway is presented with the monstrous ultimatum from the Germans: surrender or die. With German Air Force and soldiers hunting them down, the royal family is forced to flee from the capital. After three days of desperately trying to evade the Germans, King Haakon makes his final decision, one that may cost him, his family and many Norwegians their lives (Norwegian, German, Danish and Swedish).
Landmark’s E Street Cinema
Opens Fri., Oct. 6
Spanish
Bad Influence
(Mala Junta)
Directed by Claudia Huaiquimilla
(Chile, 2016, 89 min.)
When rebellious teen Tano is sent from Santiago to southern Chile to live with his estranged father, he meets Cheo, a shy boy perpetually bullied for his indigenous origins. As the two outsiders bond over their troubles, the strange death of a Mapuche leader unleashes a spree of violence in the area (part of the AFI Latin American Film Festival).
AFI Silver Theatre
Sun., Oct. 1, 11 a.m.,
Wed., Oct. 4, 5:30 p.m.
Bluebeard aka Kékszakállú
Directed by Gastón Solnicki
(Argentina, 2016, 72 min.)
Inspired by Béla Bartók’s sole opera “Bluebeard’s Castle,” this portrait of several young women on the cusp of adolescence is a visually striking meditation on class, privilege and gender in contemporary Argentina (part of the AFI Latin American Film Festival).
AFI Silver Theatre
Mon., Oct. 2, 9:45 p.m.,
Tue., Oct. 3, 5:30 p.m.
The Desert Bride
(La novia del desierto)
Directed by Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato
(Argentina/Chile, 2017, 78 min.)
a lonely Chilean woman who has spent all of her life caring about the needs of others as a maid is forced to spend several hours in a desert town, where the unplanned interruption allows her to rediscover herself (part of the AFI Latin American Film Festival).
AFI Silver Theatre
Sun., Oct. 1, 3 p.m.,
Mon., Oct. 2, 5:30 p.m.
I Dream in Another Language
Directed by Ernesto Contreras
(Mexico/Netherlands, 2017, 101 min.)
A young linguist travels to the jungle of Mexico to research a language on the verge of disappearing. Once there, he discoverers its last two speakers clashed 50 years ago, and have refused to speak to each other since. Attempting to reunite them, the researcher discovers a secret past — and a forbidden gay love story (Spanish and English; part of the Reel Affirmations Film Festival).
GALA Hispanic Theatre
Fri., Oct. 20, 9 p.m.
El Puma de Quelepa
Directed by Victor Ruano
(El Salvador, 2017, 75 min.)
Filmed in stunning black and white, this immersive dive into the lives of the people of Quelepa, El Salvador, is a tour de force of experimentation along the lines of the work of Mexican surrealist director Carlos Reygadas (part of the AFI Latin American Film Festival).
AFI Silver Theatre
Tue., Oct. 3, 9 p.m.
Woodpeckers
Directed by José María Cabral
(Dominican Republic, 2016, 106 min.)
Tall, dark and handsome, Julián (Jean Jean) steps off a bus and becomes fresh meat walking inside the Najayo Prison in the Dominican Republic. He locates his cellblock underneath the corner where the “woodpeckers” perch. Woodpeckers — prisoners who romance ladies incarcerated at the women’s prison 150 meters away — spend their days in affectionate conversation with their lovers via sign language (closing night of the AFI Latin American Film Festival).
AFI Silver Theatre
Wed., Oct. 4, 7:30 p.m.
Turkish
Kedi
Directed by Ceyda Torun
(Turkey, 2016, 80 min.)
Hundreds of thousands of cats roam the metropolis of Istanbul freely. For thousands of years they’ve wandered in and out of people’s lives, becoming an essential part of the communities that make the city so rich. Claiming no owners, these animals live between two worlds — neither wild nor tame — and bring joy and purpose to those people they choose to adopt.
Freer Gallery of Art
Sun., Oct. 29, 1 p.m.