Starring: Anaïs Demoustier, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Denis Podalydès, Jean-Charles Clichet

This is a preview screening presented by The Future of Film is Female. Anaïs in Love opens in theaters April 29. To make an additional $10 donation to The Future of Film is Female, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen.

Anaïs in Love, a buoyant French comedy, follows spirited and romantic thirtysomething Anaïs in her manic search for stability. Behind on her rent, contemplating breaking up with her boyfriend, and struggling to complete her thesis, she searches for inspiration while hurtling through lovers with abandon. When an affair with an older book publisher leads to her falling for his live-in partner, a brilliant and luminescent novelist, things get especially messy. This effervescent, cliche-shattering feature debut weaves a tale of self-discovery as literate and delightful as it is unexpected, keeping both Anaïs and viewers off-balance until the very last moment.

The Future of Film is Female presents a special screening of On the Divide directed by FOFIF filmmakers Maya Cueva and Leah Galant. To make an additional $10 donation to The Future of Film is Female, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen.

On the Divide follows the story of three Latinx people living in McAllen, Texas who, despite their views, are connected by the most unexpected of places: the last abortion clinic on the U.S./Mexico border. As threats to the clinic and their personal safety mount, these three are forced to make decisions they never could have imagined.

On the Divide had its world premiere at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival to a sold out crowd and received a standing ovation. The film has continued to screen across the US at a number of in-person and virtual festivals including rePRO Film Festival, Sidewalk Film Festival, the Heartland Film Festival, etc and took top documentary honors at the Santa Fe Independent & New Orleans Film Festival. On the Divide will have its broadcast premiere on POV | PBS and Latino Public Broadcasting on April 18th.

Starring: Erin Miller, Kate McGarrigle, Amanda Flowers, Abraham Sparrow, Dylan Mars Greenberg, Debbie Rochon, Zoe Geltman, Zac Amico, Monique Dupree, Catherine Corcoran, Lloyd Kaufman

The Opioid Epidemic is destroying America. Legendary director Lloyd Kaufman celebrates Troma’s 45th and his 50th year making movies, by taking on Big Pharma, addiction and the intolerance of social media in Shakespeare’s Shitstorm. This irreverent musical adaptation of “The Tempest” is ripe with bawdy couplets, Hieronymus Boschian images of excess and unrefined iambic pentameter.

Shakespeare’s Shitstorm marks the most ambitious project in Troma’s 45 year history. Working with one of Hollywood’s best special effects companies, Troma brings a whole new experience to their stylized brand. Having a bigger budget also brought about larger scale on-location filming in Albania (a first for narrative feature films in the country) as well as a celestial orchestral score from Portugal and a little help from the Bard. Shakespeare has never been this raw and unfiltered.

The Lost Record is a movie about a girl’s relationship to a record she finds, a valueless “lost record” from the cut out bin, which she brings to wider attention; first to her friends and then to mass culture.

The Lost Record she finds is obscure, unknown, and different than other records in that it talks to the listener. The girl and the record develop a very close relationship but tension arises; the Record urges her to turn her friends on to it, play it at parties, etc, while the girl would rather keep their thing intimate, to herself.

The Lost Record is a film about art, music, fetish, creation, popularity, fame, love, value, money, property and records.

Starring: Pris McEver, Emilie Crewe, Hope Esser, Yael Gabi

Co-presented by Screen Slate. Choose the “Reserved + $5 donation” ticket to add on a $5 donation to support Screen Slate with your ticket purchase!

With its inimitable style and attention to detail (down to walls of VHS tapes), Video Diary of a Lost Girl is the vision of writer/director Lindsay Denniberg, made while she was a student at School of the Art Institute Chicago. Combining her obsessions of body horror with a VHS aesthetic, she concocted something truly original using repurposed art materials and green screen.

This neon-slathered feature is the story of Louise, descendant of demon-mother Lilith, fulfilling her predestined need to have sex with a man, and then kill him, every full moon. When she meets Charlie, a reincarnated lover from her past, she struggles to avoid making him her victim as she did decades before.

Starring: Javier Drolas, Jazmín Stuart, Amanda Minujin, Ezequiel Fontanela

The Future of Film is Female presents the first U.S. screening of Ana García Blaya’s The Good Intentions (Las Buenas Intenciones), a poignant, semi-autobiographical portrait of a family fractured by fraught circumstances and unruly personalities, but united by an invincible love. To make an additional $10 donation to The Future of Film is Female, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen.

Set in Argentina during the economic slump of the 1990s, aging slacker Gustavo (Javier Drolas) lives for three things: fútbol, rock ‘n’ roll, and his children. Having separated some years ago, Gustavo and the kids’ mother Cecilia (Jazmin Stuart) share custody and remain more or less amicable, despite Gustavo’s inability to adhere to timetables or generate enough income to cover his share of the expenses. Gustavo runs a record store with his old buddy Néstor (Sebastián Arzeno), but business is poor, with bargain-priced pirate cassettes comprising the bulk of their sales.

This tentative status quo is upset when Cecilia announces that she and her current partner want to start a new life in Paraguay — and take the kids with them. Gustavo is in no position to argue, but Amanda (Amanda Minujin) — the eldest sibling, and at nine years old already accustomed to taking on adult responsibilities — is determined to stay with her father in Buenos Aires. – TIFF

Before The Good Intentions, we’ll be screening the short Cousins, which was the Jury Prize runner up in Nitehawk Shorts Fest 2022:
Mandy Marcus / U.S. / 2021 / 13 min
A Brooklyn teenager reunites with her Guyanese cousin for the funeral of a relative. On the last day of the wake the girls venture out into the city alone.

Starring: Hazel Doupe, Carolyn Bracken, Ingrid Craigie

The Future of Film is Female presents a preview screening of Kate Dolan’s debut feature film, You Are Not My Mother. To make an additional $10 donation to The Future of Film is Female, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen.

It’s the week before Halloween and Char’s mother, Angela, has inexplicably disappeared. All that remains is her abandoned car. When she returns home without explanation the following evening, it becomes clear to Char and her grandmother, Rita, that something is amiss. She might look and sound the same, but Angela’s behavior has become increasingly frightening, as if she has been replaced by a malevolent force. When Halloween arrives, a night steeped in ancient myth and legend, Char realizes that she is the only one who can save her, even if it means potentially losing her forever. Irish filmmaker Kate Dolan has created a surefire folklore classic.

Starring: Vincent Kartheiser, Chelsea Lopez, Breeda Wool, Tunde Adebimpe, Rainey Qualley, Bob Stephenson

Ultrasound follows Glen (Vincent Kartheiser), who is stranded by two flat tires on a rainy night and must seek help at a nearby house. There, he’s welcomed in by Art, who cajoles Glen into sleeping with his younger wife Cyndi. Glen’s unease only escalates when, a short time later, the consequences of this strange night begin to spiral out of control. Glen and Cyndi soon find themselves at the center of a web of deception and manipulation that tests the foundations of reality.

Starring: Kyle McCulloch, Gosia Dobrowolska, Sarah Neville, Brent Neale

Guy Maddin’s early masterpiece takes place in a 19th-century Alpine village where the wary residents —adult, child and animal!—must speak softly and tread lightly lest they cause an avalanche. But sexual frenzies teem in this world of repression, setting off incestuous love triangles and quadrangles with deadly consequences. Bathed in lurid, luminescent tints, Careful resembles a vintage melodrama from another planet—something that could only emerge from the singular mind of Maddin.