this week in film and television

RIVER TO RIVER FESTIVAL 2019

Ernesto Pujol’s The Listeners invites attendees to speak for as long as they want to an artist at Federal Hall (photo by Nisa Ojalvo)

R2R
Multiple downtown locations
June 18-29, free
lmcc.net

The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s eighteenth annual River to River Festival comprises a host of exciting downtown events, from dance and immersive art to film and interactive performance. Running June 18-29, the festival is free, but many events require advance RSVP. “Our contemporary reality is rushed, and nowhere is this more apparent than in New York—the city that keeps moving,” curator and LMCC executive director of artistic programs Lili Chopra said in a statement. “There is always somewhere to go, something to see and more to achieve, creating a frenetic energy that makes this city fabulous and exhausting in equal parts. Increasingly, external stimulation seems to be stifling internal introspection as we anxiously charge forward blinkered to our surroundings and, in this digital age, hardened towards the very people that make up our physical community. In response to this, the River to River Festival addresses the experience of the individual within the urban setting by making space for balance.”

Among the artists participating in this year’s iteration are Yoko Ono, Sarah Michelson, Ernesto Pujol, Pam Tanowitz, Kamau Ware, Jennifer Monson, Carol Becker & Mark Epstein, and NIC Kay, at such locations as the Oculus, Federal Hall, Rockefeller Park, the Seaport District, the African Burial Ground National Monument, and the East River Esplanade. You can take a walking tour through the black experience, reveal your innermost desires to a stranger, meet with emerging artists in a studio setting, and add your thoughts to a refugee boat.

Tuesday, June 18
through
Saturday, June 29
Yoko Ono: Add Color (Refugee Boat) (1960/2019), interactive installation, 203 Front St., Seaport District, noon –8:00

Yoko Ono: The Reflection Project, instructional text works by Yoko Ono at such locations as 28 Liberty, the Fulton Transit Center, the Oculus at the WTC Transportation Hub, and the Seaport District

Elia Alba: The Supper Club, NYC DOT Art Display Cases on Water St. and Maiden Ln. and Gouverneur Ln. between Water & Front Sts.

Ezra Wube: Fulton Flow, Fulton Transit Center

Tuesday, June 18
Pam Tanowitz: Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures, with live music by composer and vocalist Ted Hearne, guitarist Taylor Levine, and Rachel Drehmann, Daniel Salera, Kate Sheeran, and Colin Weyman on French horns, costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, and sound design by Garth MacAleavey, performed by Sara Mearns, Taylor Stanley, Reid Bartelme, Jason Collins, Zachary Gonder, Victor Lozano and Melissa Toogood, Nelson A. Rockefeller Park, Battery Park City, 7:45

Wednesday, June 19
Pam Tanowitz: Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures, with live music by composer and vocalist Ted Hearne, guitarist Taylor Levine, and Rachel Drehmann, Daniel Salera, Kate Sheeran, and Colin Weyman on French horns, costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, and sound design by Garth MacAleavey, performed by Sara Mearns, Taylor Stanley, Reid Bartelme, Jason Collins, Zachary Gonder, Victor Lozano and Melissa Toogood, Nelson A. Rockefeller Park, Battery Park City, 7:45

NIC Kay’s pushit!! is a site-responsive meditation walk through Lower Manhattan (photo by Sarah-ji Rhee)

Thursday, June 20
Tribeca Art + Culture Night, with AIM—Bronx Museum of the Arts, Anita Rogers Gallery, apexart, Barney Savage Gallery, BM Franklin, Cheryl Hazan, Church Street School for Music and Art, Double Knot, Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York Academy of Art, Pearl River Mart, Postmasters Gallery, R & Company, SAPAR Contemporary, Shirley Fiterman Art Center, Soho Photo Gallery, the Drawing Center, the Untitled Space, Twenty First Gallery / White Space, White Street Studio, and Y2K group, 6:00 – 9:00

NIC Kay: pushit!!, site-responsive moving performance from Albert Capsouto Park at Varick & Laight Sts. to the African Burial Ground National Monument, 7:00

Friday, June 21
Workspace Artists-in-Residence: Open Studios, with Golnar Adili, Jennifer Bartlett, Eliza Bent, Keisha Bush, André Daughtry, Jonathan González, Zac Hacmon, Terrance James Jr., NIC Kay, Ying Liu, Asif Mian, Kenneth Pietrobono, Orlando Tirado, and Zhiyuan Yang, LMCC’s Workspace Studios, 101 Greenwich St., fifteenth floor, 6:00 – 9:00

Saturday, June 22
Workspace Artists-in-Residence: Open Studios, with Golnar Adili, Jennifer Bartlett, Eliza Bent, Keisha Bush, André Daughtry, Jonathan González, Zac Hacmon, Terrance James Jr., NIC Kay, Ying Liu, Asif Mian, Kenneth Pietrobono, Orlando Tirado, and Zhiyuan Yang, LMCC’s Workspace Studios, 101 Greenwich St., fifteenth floor, 1:00 – 8:00

Sunday, June 23
Jennifer Monson: ditch, with music and sound by Jeff Kolar, costumes by Susan Becker, and dancers Evie Allison, Madeline Mellinger, and Kaitlin Fox, Pier 35, East River Esplanade by Rutgers Slip, sunrise

iLANDing: Researching Urban Ecologies with Movement Based Scores, workshop with Jennifer Monson, Pier 35, East River Esplanade by Rutgers Slip, 11:00

Monday, June 24
Ernesto Pujol: The Listening School, Anderson Contemporary in the Atrium at 180 Maiden Ln. and the Plaza at 88 Pine St., 11:30 am – 2:30 pm

Sarah Michelson: june2019:/\, location revealed with RSVP, 1:30, 4:00, 7:00

Tuesday, June 25
Ernesto Pujol: The Listening School, Liberty Park, 155 Cedar St., and South Oculus Plaza, Church & Greenwich Sts. at Dey St., 11:30 am – 2:30 pm

Night at the Museums, free admission to the African Burial Ground National Monument, China Institute, Federal Hall National Memorial, Fraunces Tavern Museum, Lower Manhattan Tours, Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, National Archives at New York City, National Museum of the American Indian—Smithsonian Institution, National September 11 Memorial Museum, NYC Municipal Archives Visitor Center, 9/11 Tribute Museum, Poets House, the Skyscraper Museum, and the South Street Seaport Museum, 4:00 – 8:00

Black Gotham Experience: Sarah’s Fire, walking tour and story about black rebellion of 1712, 192 Front St., 4:00, 5:00, 6:00

Black Gotham Experience: Talk with BGX Creator and Artist Kamau Ware, 192 Front St., 8:00

Yoko Ono, Add Color (Refugee Boat), 1960/2016, installation view: Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2016

Wednesday, June 26
Ernesto Pujol: The Listening School, 28 Liberty: Fosun Plaza, 11:30 am – 2:30 pm

Sarah Michelson: june2019:/\, location revealed with RSVP, 1:30, 4:00

Jennifer Monson: ditch, with music and sound by Jeff Kolar, costumes by Susan Becker, and dancers Evie Allison, Madeline Mellinger, and Kaitlin Fox, Melville Gallery, South Street Seaport Museum, 7:00

Thursday, June 27
The Agitated Now: A Lecture Performance by Mark Epstein + Carol Becker, Federal Hall, 26 Wall St., 7:00

Ernesto Pujol: The Listeners, Federal Hall, 26 Wall St., 9:00

Friday, June 28
Jennifer Monson: ditch, with music and sound by Jeff Kolar, costumes by Susan Becker, and dancers Evie Allison, Madeline Mellinger, and Kaitlin Fox, Melville Gallery, South Street Seaport Museum, 7:00

Rooftop Films: The Sound of Silence (Michael Tyburski, 2019), preceded by live music and followed by a Q&A, New Design High School, 350 Grand St., 8:00

Saturday, June 29
WorldPride NYC: Drag Queen Story Hour, for families and kids, Seward Park Library, 192 East Broadway, 11:00 am & 3:30 pm

WorldPride NYC: Workshop on the Street, with Amy, Jennifer, & Noah Khoshbin, for families and kids, Oculus Plaza, 1:30

UNZIPPED WITH ISAAC MIZRAHI IN PERSON

Isaac Mizrahi contemplates his future in UNZIPPED

Fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi contemplates his future in fab documentary, Unzipped

UNZIPPED (Douglas Keeve, 1995)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Thursday, June 13, 8:30
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
www.miramax.com

About halfway through Unzipped, Douglas Keeve’s thrilling 1995 documentary, which follows fashion designer extraordinaire Isaac Mizrahi as he puts together his fall 1994 collection following a critical disaster, Mizrahi says, “Everything’s frustrating; every single thing is frustrating. Except designing clothes. That’s not frustrating. That’s really liberating and beautiful. I don’t know, being overweight and not being able to lose weight, you know, that’s a problem. Anything you’re really working hard at and that’s not working, that’s a problem. But frankly, designing clothes is never a problem.” Of course, the statement doesn’t exactly ring true as Mizrahi, usually with his trademark bandanna wound around his wild, curly hair, encounters his fair share of difficulties as he meets with Candy Pratts and André Leon Talley from Vogue and Polly Mellen from Allure, expresses his hopes and fears with Mark Morris, Sandra Bernhard, Eartha Kitt, and his mother, and works with such supermodels as Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Shalom Harlow, Linda Evangelista, Carla Bruni, Christy Turlington, and Amber Valletta. Along the way he makes endless pop-culture references, singing the theme song from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, citing scenes from The Red Shoes, Marnie, Valley of the Dolls, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and using Nanook of the North and The Call of the Wild as creative inspiration.

Mizrahi is a ball of neuroses throughout as he consults Ouija boards and Tarot cards to peek into his future and plays classical piano (Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier,” Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”) to calm himself down. “I’m not that stressed out,” he says. “I hate when people tell me I’m stressed out.” In his first film, director Keeve (Seamless, Hotel Gramercy Park), who was dating Mizrahi at the time, and Oscar-winning cinematographer Ellen Kuras (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Betrayal) switch from grainy black-and-white to color to sharp b&w as Mizrahi’s big show approaches, in which the major point of conflict is the designer’s desperate desire to use a scrim that will allow the high-powered audience to see the backlit silhouettes of the models as they change backstage, something not all the women, or his colleagues at Mizrahi & Co., are in favor of. The film opens with Mizrahi devastated by the reviews of his previous show and closes with him quietly examining the reviews for his fall collection; in between is a delightful look inside the crazy world of fashion. And then Mizrahi will have to do it all over again for the next season. Winner of the Audience Award at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival, Unzipped is having a special Pride Month screening at Film Forum on June 13 with Mizrahi present for a Q&A.

PRIDE MONTH: SAVING FACE

Alice Wu’s Saving Face breaks the chains of conventions in LGBTQ love story

REPRESENTATION: SAVING FACE (Alice Wu, 2004)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Thursday, June 6, 7:00
718-384-3980
nitehawkcinema.com
www.sonyclassics.com

Nitehawk is celebrating Pride Month with a trio of films honoring the LGBTQ experience, beginning June 6 with a screening of 2004’s Saving Face, followed by a Q&A with writer-director Alice Wu. While much of this independent first feature is entertaining enough, the last scenes are so much fun, so heartbreaking, and so charming that the film leaps to the next level, so stay with it. The captivating Michelle Krusiec (One World, Knife Fight) stars as Wilhelmina, a twenty-eight-year-old doctor trying to balance her career with her family in Flushing. Every Friday night she goes to the community dance, where her mother (Joan Chen) and the other Chinese yentas try to fix her up with a guy. Little do they know that she’s gay and strongly attracted to the boss’s daughter, Vivian (Lynn Chen), a ballerina dabbling in modern dance. Things get a little wacky when it turns out that Wil’s mother is pregnant and won’t tell anyone who the father is, leading to her banishment from her parents’ home and her friends’ inner circle. Suddenly Wil finds herself struggling to take care of her mother while also exploring a blossoming relationship that she hides from nearly everyone except her best friend, Jay (Ato Essandoh).

Tradition battles modern life, generation battles generation, sexual preference battles gossip and scandal, and conventional roles get turned upside down and inside out in this film-festival favorite that will leave you smiling. The Pride Month series continues June 7 with A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge and June 8 with a NewFest Brunch screening of Punks. Saving Face, which earned Krusiec a Best Actress nomination at the Golden Horse Film Festival, is also part of Nitehawk’s Representation series, which continues June 8 with Dominga Sotomayor Castillo’s 2019 Too Late to Die Young.

BROOKLYN FILM FESTIVAL: USE ME

Humiliatrix Ceara Lynch and filmmaker Julian Shaw play fictionalized versions of themselves in Use Me

USE ME (Julian Shaw, 2019)
Sunday, June 2, Wythe Hotel, 80 Wythe Ave. at North Eleventh St., 7:00
Monday, June 3, Windmill Studios, 300 Kingsland Ave., 8:30
Festival runs May 31 – June 9
www.brooklynfilmfestival.org

Fiction and reality collide in kinky ways in Julian Shaw’s thriller Use Me, making its world premiere at the twenty-second annual Brooklyn Film Festival. New Zealand-born director Shaw initially set out to make a documentary about Ceara Lynch, a professional humiliatrix who welcomes people to her website by proclaiming, “Here you will find a wide array of fetish and femdom POV videos specially designed to exacerbate your inexplicable urge to have a pretty girl ruin your life.” Ultimately, he decided to create a fictionalized tale in which it is often difficult to tell what is real and what is not. Lynch makes her living by humiliating men, who pay for the privilege; the film’s original title was Ruin Me. Shaw and Lynch, and various other characters, play themselves as he delves into her salacious business of sexual obsession. She has a clear set of guidelines, but when they breach a few key ground rules, Shaw finds himself trapped in a dangerous nightmare involving Lynch, her client Luke Adore (Joseph Reitman), and her protégée Princess Cassie (Jazlyn Yoder).

Shaw (Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story, Cup of Dreams) keeps the viewer off balance all the way, both through the use of shaky handheld cameras and his appropriately uncomfortable performance; he has noted in interviews that even he sometimes didn’t realize what scenes were completely made up and what was more real. The twists pile up, leading to a surprising conclusion as Shaw examines various forms of addiction, including the director’s need to film everything; he never turns the camera off, no matter what commitments he’s made to himself or others. Use Me is screening June 2 at 7:00 at the Wythe Hotel and June 3 at 8:30 at Windmill Studios, followed by Q&As with Shaw and others. The Brooklyn Film Festival continues through June 9 with such other works as Dustin Feneley’s Stray, Kristian Gianfreda’s Only Good Things, and Zhang Zhonghua’s The Home in the Tree.

RENEGADE DREAMERS

Documentary follows new generation of protest singers and spoken word activists in New York City

RENEGADE DREAMERS (Karen Kramer, 2019)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, May 31
212-529-6799
www.cinemavillage.com
www.renegadedreamers.com

Filmmaker Karen Kramer spent seven years on Renegade Dreamers, including four years following a group of young contemporary spoken word artists and protest singers. She could have done something better with her time. A longtime downtown New Yorker who made The Ballad of Greenwich Village in 2005, Kramer initially set out to make a documentary about the coffeehouse scene around MacDougal and Bleecker Streets in the 1950s and ’60s, and the sections of Renegade Dreamers about the post–World War II Beat poets and folk singers, including Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Len Chandler, and others, as well as Woody Guthrie, are terrific, with rarely seen archival footage that is stirring and exciting. She speaks with such key figures as Wavy Gravy, Hettie Jones, Eric Andersen, Ronnie Gilbert of the Weavers, Maria Muldaur, David Amram, Izzy Young, Tom Paxton, and Richie Havens (some interview footage was completed for her previous film), who share intimate stories about their struggle against McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, anti-unionism, consumerism, and conformity. “They considered progressive thinking to be anti-American,” Peter Yarrow says of 1960s mainstream America, something that is true again today.

But that’s also where the documentary falls apart. The new generation of protest singers and spoken word activists Kramer focuses on are Matt Pless, Saroya Marsh, Gio Andollo, Tiffani Hillin, and Jeremy (Germ) DeHart, most of whom she discovered during the Occupy movement in Zuccotti Park; unfortunately, these quirky young people fighting the status quo with their mouths and their guitars are not particularly compelling or even that interesting. While it’s great that they’re directly influenced by their forebears, they’re preaching to tiny choirs, a sliver of political music connoisseurs, and they don’t seem to be adding anything to the already vigorous and inclusive twenty-first-century discourse battling Wall Street, the Iraq War, racism, economic inequality, police brutality, and other societal ills. It’s hard to see these determined artists making any kind of real difference outside of their very limited circle. “We have to question everything. We can’t just take for granted what we’ve been handed,” one of them says. They should keep fighting the power and spreading the word every way they can, as we all should. But that doesn’t make them worthy of a documentary, or anywhere near as influential as the coffeehouse renegades of fifty years ago; instead they seem quaint, obsessed with a bygone style. Renegade Dreamers opens May 31 at Cinema Village, with daily Q&As following the 5:10 and 7:10 shows through June 6.

SPLIT SCREENS FESTIVAL: THE ART & CRAFT OF TELEVISION

Alan Cumming will be at IF Center for Split Screens Festival showing of Instinct

IFC Center unless otherwise noted
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
May 29 – June 3, $12-$17
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.splitscreensfestival.com

We all watch television now in multiple formats, on computers, smartphones, and even, sometimes, on television. But the Split Screens Festival offers something unique: an opportunity to see episodes of your favorite television series on the big screen, followed by discussions with creators, actors, crew members, and critics, moderated by Split Screens co-creative directors Matt Zoller Seitz and Melanie McFarland. The third annual festival takes place May 29 to June 3 at IFC Center, with inside looks at such programs as Russian Doll, Fear the Walking Dead, The Good Place, Better Things, Mr. Robot, and others and will also present Janet Mock with the Vanguard Award for Pose. “At a time when the old boundaries between cinema and television have fallen and everything has become ‘content,’ yet stories of every kind of length and tone and genre are still using cinematic and literary language, a festival of this kind becomes more important than ever,” Zoller Seitz said in a statement. Among the participants at the festival are Alan Cumming, Pamela Adlon, William Jackson Harper, Sanaa Lathan, Christopher Abbott, and many others.

Wednesday, May 29
Inside Russian Doll: A Guided Tour of Time, Space, Death, and Resurrection, Netflix Close-Up with co-creator and co-executive producer Leslye Headland, production designer Michael Bricker, hair department head Marcel Dagenais, editor Todd Downing, costume designer Jenn Rogien, director of photography Chris Teague, and editor Laura Weinberg, 6:45

When They See Us, Netflix premiere screening, guests to be announced, 8:30

Thursday, May 30
Instinct, CBS premiere screening, with actor Alan Cumming, actress Bojana Novakovic, and executive producer Michael Rauch, 7:45

Friday, May 31
Better Things: How Pamela Adlon Makes Life into Art, FX Close-Up with executive producer, writer, director, and actress Pamela Adlon, 6:30

Deadwood: The Movie Viewing Party, HBO special event, SVA Theatre, followed by live video Q&A with star Ian McShane, 7:15

Replay episode of Twilight Zone is part of Split Screens Festival

Saturday, June 1
(S)heroes: Women of Action!, TV Talk with presenters Jessica Aldrich, Delia Harrington, Emmy Potter, Connor Ratliff, and Jamie Velez and critics Caroline Framke, Soraya McDonald, and Sonia Saraiya, 11:30 am

Skip Credits: Critics on Storytelling in the Age of Streaming, TV Talk with critics Caroline Framke, Soraya McDonald, James Poniewozik, and Sonia Saraiya, 2:00

That’s Some Catch: Christopher Abbott in Catch-22, Hulu Close-Up with actor Christopher Abbott, 3:30

Vanguard Award: Janet Mock, with a special screening of Love Is the Message from season 1 of FX’s Pose, with writer, producer, director, and advocate Janet Mock, 5:30

Is It Safe? Sam Esmail on Mr. Robot, Homecoming, and the Paranoid Thriller, Close-Up with Sam Esmail and a screening of Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999), 8:00

Sunday, June 2

Queen Sugar, OWN premiere screening, with actors Dawn-Lyen Gardner, Kofi Siriboe, and Rutina Wesley, showrunner and episode writer Anthony Sparks, and producing director and episode director Cheryl Dunye, 12:30

The Good Place: A Conversation with William Jackson Harper, NBC Close-Up, with actor William Jackson Harper, 2:30

Twilight Zone, CBS All Access screening of Replay episode, with actress Sanaa Lathan and screenwriter Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, 4:00

Warrior, Cinemax premiere screening with executive producer Shannon Lee and creator and executive producer Jonathan Tropper, 6:00

Fear the Walking Dead, AMC premiere screening, with executive producer Scott M. Gimple and others, 8:15

Monday, June 3
The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu premiere screening, 7:00

DIAMANTINO

Giant fluffy puppies get in the way of a Portuguese soccer star’s dreams in Diamantino

DIAMANTINO (Daniel Schmidt & Gabriel Abrantes, 2018)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
May 24-30
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.kinolorber.com

At the fifty-sixth annual New York Film Festival last fall, you could catch a documentary, foreign-language picture, political thriller, high-tech crime chiller, comedy, romantic melodrama, fantasy and sci-fi, and more — all in one wildly entertaining film that is having its theatrical release May 24 at Metrograph. Diamantino, Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s full-length feature debut, is an absurdist multigenre mashup that is as tense as it is funny, an unpredictable romp that evokes Ernst Lubitsch, Howard Hawks, Michel Gondry, Philip K. Dick, South Park, Cinderella, James Bond, Being There, Minority Report, and Au Hasard Balthazar while feeling wholly original. Carloto Cotta stars as the title character, Diamantino Matamouros, a Portuguese soccer star à la Cristiano Ronaldo (pre-sexual assault allegations) who sees giant fluffy puppies when he is on the field. After botching a penalty kick in the World Cup Final, the stupendously beautiful star learns that his beloved father and mentor (Chico Chapas) has died. His evil twin sisters, Sónia (Anabela Moreira) and Natasha (Margarida Moreira), become his agents and make a secret deal with the mysterious Dr. Lamborghini (Carla Maciel) and a government minister (Silva Joana). Meanwhile, investigators Aisha Brito (Cleo Tavares) and Lucia (Vargas Maria Leite) — lovers who are soon to be married — are looking into Diamantino’s finances and devise a plan to get close to him by having Aisha pose as a male refugee named Rahim who Diamantino adopts as his son.

Diamantino Matamouros (Carloto Cotta) is surrounded by images of himself in Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s dazzling feature debut

Everyone except his sisters, who know better, thinks he is some kind of genius mastermind, but Diamantino is actually an addled simpleton who understands very little about life. He enjoyed playing soccer, likes eating Nutella and whipped cream sandwiches, and, following his tearful retirement, hangs out with his cat, Mittens, and dedicates himself to raising Rahim, who he does not realize is actually a grown woman. He’s reminiscent of Chance the Gardener (Peter Sellers) in Being There, but his airheaded statements — which are outrageously funny — are seldom mistaken for brilliance, except when he’s manipulated into making fascistic political statements he doesn’t understand. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes Critics’ Week, Diamantino is stunningly photographed by Charles Ackley Anderson, who quickly adapts the film’s visual style as it switches from fantasy to love story to futuristic thriller, with numerous memorable shots, including Lucia in a white nun’s habit on a motorbike, Diamantino and Rahim sleeping on pillows with large images of the soccer star’s head, and a huge fluffy puppy playing goal in the championship game. American-born directors and longtime collaborators Abrantes and Schmidt, who edited the film with Raphaëlle Martin-Holger, show a deep love and respect for movies, infusing Diamantino with charm and energy, humor and compassion, honoring, in their own way, the history of cinema. The rest of the cast and crew do their part as well, from art director Bruno Duarte and composers Ulysse Klotz and Adriana Holtz to the Moreira sisters and multidisciplinary Portuguese star Manuela Moura Guedes as television interviewer Gisele.