Tag Archives: walter reade theater

THE FEMALE GAZE: TOKYO SONATA

Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) has trouble facing his sudden unemployment in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata

TOKYO SONATA (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008)
Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center
165 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Aves.
Tuesday, August 7, 6:45
Festival runs through August 9
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org

Winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes, Tokyo Sonata serves as a parable for modern-day Japan. Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) is a simple family man, with a wife, Megumi (Kyōko Koizumi), two sons, Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) and Kenji (Kai Inowaki), and an honest job as an administration director for a major company. When Ryuhei is suddenly let go — he is being replaced by much cheaper Chinese labor — he is so ashamed, he doesn’t tell his family. Instead, he puts on his suit every day and, briefcase in hand, walks out the door, but instead of going to work, he first waits on line at the unemployment agency, then at an outdoor food kitchen for a free lunch with the homeless — and other businessmen in the same boat as he is. Taking out his anger on his family, Ryuhei refuses to allow Kenji to take piano lessons and protests strongly against Takashi’s desire to join the American military. But then, on one crazy night — which includes a shopping mall, a haphazard thief (Koji Yakusho), a convertible, and some unexpected violence — it all comes to a head, leading to a brilliant finale that makes you forget all of the uneven missteps in the middle of the film, which is about a half hour too long anyway.

Kagawa (Sukiyaki Western Django, Tokyo!), is outstanding as the sad-sack husband and father, matched note for note by the wonderful pop star Koizumi (Hanging Garden, Adrift in Tokyo), who searches for strength as everything around her is falling apart. And it’s always great to see Yakusho, the star of such films as Kurosawa’s Cure, Shohei Imamura’s The Eel, Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel, seen here as a wild-haired, wild-eyed wannabe burglar. Tokyo Sonata, which is warmly photographed by Akiko Ashizawa, is screening August 7 at 6:45 in the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “The Female Gaze,” consisting of nearly three dozen films shot by women, investigating whether they bring something different to cinematic storytelling than men do. The series continues through August 9 with such other works as Céline Sciamma’s Tomboy, photographed by Crystel Fournier; Wim Wenders’s Pina in 3D, photographed by Hélène Louvart; Babette Mangolte’s The Camera: Je or La Camera: I, photographed by Mangolte; and Jacques Rivette’s Around a Small Mountain, photographed by Irina Lubtchansky.

THE FEMALE GAZE: EASTERN BOYS

Marek (Paul Kirill Emelyanov), Boss (Danil Vorobyev), and Daniel (Oliver Rabourdin) get involved in a dangerous game in Eastern Boys

EASTERN BOYS (Robin Campillo, 2013)
Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center
165 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Aves.
Saturday, August 4, 4:45
Festival runs through August 9
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org

Robin Campillo takes a genuinely compassionate look at immigration, home invasion, and sexual obsession in the compelling, always surprising Eastern Boys. Seeking out companionship, middle-aged Daniel (Olivier Rabourdin) spots young Marek (Kirill Emelyanov) and cruises him at the Gare du Nord station in Paris. They set up a paid rendezvous at Daniel’s apartment for the next day, but Marek’s arrival is preceded by that of his primarily male friends from Eastern Europe, illegal immigrants who begin taking things from Daniel’s place as they dance and drink; it’s a heartbreaking party scene, with Daniel not knowing how to react, an implicit if not overt threat to his physical well-being hovering over the thick atmosphere. But when Marek eventually does show up, Daniel is desperate for his attention, still determined to be alone with him, an attraction that has dangerous consequences.

Employing a cinéma vérité style with Jeanne Lapoirie as cinematographer, writer, director, and editor Campillo, whose previous, debut feature was 2004’s Les Revenants and has written several films with Laurent Cantet, including The Class and Heading South, tells the intimate story of Daniel and Marek’s complicated relationship with grace and subtlety as they both balance fear with desire, knowing that the unpredictable and violent Boss (Danil Vorobyev), the leader of the gang, is lurking around them. The opening scene has a documentary, neo-Realist quality, but it’s all fiction, the characters portrayed by actors. Campillo divides the film into four chapters based on location and thematic elements, with the home invasion set in his own apartment so he could feel like he himself was being invaded while making it. Nominated for three César Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, and Emelyanov as Most Promising Actor) Eastern Boys goes from a dark romance to a gripping thriller in the final section, but Campillo never reverts to purely good and evil characters, and he provides no straightforward answers, especially in the open-ended finale, while raising important questions about society. It’s a deeply affecting film, one that seeps into your system, an often uncomfortable experience that mirrors Daniel’s fascination with Marek; you’ll squirm in your seat, but you won’t be able to turn away. Eastern Boys is screening August 4 at 4:45 in the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “The Female Gaze,” consisting of nearly three dozen works shot by women, investigating whether they bring something different to cinematic storytelling. The series continues through August 9 with such other films as Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station, photographed by Rachel Morrison; Bertrand Bonello’s House of Tolerance, photographed by Josée Deshaies; Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, photographed by Rain Li; and Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine, photographed by Maryse Alberti.

THE FEMALE GAZE: THE WONDERS

A beekeeping family tries to hold it all together in The Wonders

THE WONDERS (LE MERAVIGLIE) (Alice Rohrwacher, 2014)
Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center
165 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Aves.
Friday, August 3, 9:15
Wednesday, August 8, 3:45
Festival runs through August 9
212-875-5050
lemeraviglie.mymovies.it
www.filmlinc.org

Winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders is a sweet little gem of a movie, focusing on a German-Italian family that finds itself at a critical crossroads. Set in Rohrwacher’s (Corpo celeste) hometown in the countryside between Umbria-Lazio and Tuscany, the film follows the travails of a beekeeping family led by the gangly Wolfgang (Sam Louwyck), a grumpy ne’er-do-well from one of the Germanic countries who is trying to live some kind of back-to-the-land life away from authorities in an undeveloped backwater. His allegiance to old-fashioned tradition includes overworking his four young daughters while his wife, Angelica (Alba Rohrwacher, the director’s older sister), keeps at a distance and live-in friend Cocò (Sabine Timoteo) keeps stirring up the pot. At the center of it all is twelve-year-old Gelsomina (first-time actress Maria Alexandra Lungu, who was discovered in a catechism class), an exceptional beekeeper who wants her father to allow the family to participate in a television contest, Countryside Wonders, that could earn them much-needed money. But her father prefers taking care of things himself — though not very well, particularly when he acquires a camel for no apparent reason. Suspicious of the government and contemporary society, Wolfgang likes living in relative isolation; inviting strangers into their world could reveal the illegal working conditions, not to mention abuse of child labor laws. However, Gelsomina is determined to improve their existence, starting with the competition, which is hosted by the beguiling, fairy-tale-like Milly Catena (Monica Bellucci in a marvelous white head piece, partially poking fun at her own sex-symbol image).

Propelled by Lungu’s beautifully gentle performance, which captures the essence of so many basic childhood dilemmas, The Wonders is a warm, tender-hearted film, one that keeps buzzing even if it lacks a big sting, a coming-of-age drama not only for Gelsomina but for the family as a whole. Photographed in a neorealist style by Hélène Louvart, the film is about tradition and change, about the city and the country, about the old and the new, about what home means, and, yes, about bees and honey; there are no trick shots or special effects when it comes to the actors working with beehives and swarms. “The parents of Maria Alexandra Lungu were very happy,” the director states in the film’s press kit. “They said that if the film wouldn’t work out, at least their daughter learned a real skill and could become a beekeeper!” The Wonders, which was a selection of the fifty-second New York Film Festival, is screening August 3 at 9:15 and August 8 at 3:45 in the Lincoln Center series “The Female Gaze,” consisting of nearly three dozen films with women cinematographers, investigating whether women bring something different to cinematic storytelling. The series continues through August 9 with such other works as Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson, photographed by Johnson; Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, photographed by Ellen Kuras; Claire Denis’s The Intruder, photographed by Agnès Godard; and Jacques Rivette’s Le Pont du Nord, photographed by Caroline Chametier.

NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018: THE BIG CALL

Xu Xiaotu (Jiang Mengjie) goes deep undercover to foil a complex phone-scam ring in The Big Call

HONG KONG PANORAMA: THE BIG CALL (巨额来电) (Oxide Pang, 2017)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Wednesday, July 4, 2:40
Festival runs through July 15
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org

Hong Kong-born filmmaker Oxide Pang Chun has his work cut out for him in The Big Call, a thriller about phone scams somewhat more complicated than the classic Nigerian cons. “It’s a war with keyboards,” one character proclaims, and indeed, much of the film is spent showing people on their smartphones and typing at computers, trying to explain the often inexplicable plot, which is riddled with ridiculous twists and turns yet still has its compelling moments and, ultimately, foot and car chases, torture, and violence. After his high school teacher commits suicide because of a scam, young cop Ding Xiaotian (Cheney Chen) begins investigating a ring of high-tech thieves who trick and/or threaten people in order to drain their bank accounts. Run by lovers Lin Ahai (Zhang Xiaoquan) and Liu Lifang (Gwei Lun-mei), the operation recruits women and essentially imprisons them in Thailand, where they make the calls in a carefully orchestrated system that rarely fails. They have been infiltrated by Xu Xiaotu (Jiang Mengjie), an ambitious officer who went to the academy with Ding, who has joined the Anti-Telecommunication Fraud Centre, where he butts heads with Inspector Tan Sirong (Zhang Zhaohui). When Lin Xiaoqin (Peng Xinchen), Lin’s sister, gets scammed and Taiwan mastermind Lu Chixiong (Luo Dahua) makes an aggressive bet with Lin Ahai, the risks rise and the blood-spilling ratchets up.

Ding Xiaotian (Cheney Chen) and Xu Xiaotu (Jiang Mengjie) are on the case in Oxide Pang’s The Big Call

Pang has made a series of popular films with his twin brother, Danny Pang Phat, including Bangkok Dangerous,
The Eye, and Re-Cycle. Working solo here, Pang, who cowrote the screenplay with Liu Hua, keeps the tension building, pulling you back in every time the ever-more-absurd story nearly flies off the handle. Taiwanese star Lun-mei (Girlfriend, Boyfriend; Black Coal, Thin Ice) is ultracool as the vicious Liu and the main reason to keep on watching. The Big Call is screening July 4 at 2:40 at Lincoln Center in the Hong Kong Panorama section of the “Savage Seventeenth” edition of the New York Asian Film Festival, which continues through July 15 with a wide range of movies from China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Denmark, by such directors as Wilson Yip, Zhou Ziyang, Dante Lam, Shinsuke Sato, Lee Byeong-heon, Huang Xi, and Masato Harada.

RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA: WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS

The SDF (Clément Durand) and the Non-Bobo (Frédéric Schulz-Richard) are among six characters searching for sanctuary in Eugène Green’s Waiting for the Barbarians

WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS (ATTENDANT LES BARBARES VOSTA) (Eugène Green, 2017)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Tuesday, March 13, 6:30; Friday, March 16, 4:00
Festival runs March 8-18
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org

Six characters are in search of an exit from modern life in Eugène Green’s delightfully surreal and very strange Waiting for the Barbarians, which is screening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Rendez-Vous with French Cinema” festival on March 13 and 16. American expat Green’s previous two films, La Sapienza and The Son of Joseph, featured gorgeous architecture and lush landscapes; Waiting for the Barbarians opens with a beautiful static shot by cinematographer Raphaël O’Byrne of the Seine on a slightly cloudy day, accompanied by the soothing sounds of rushing water and birds. Green next sets the stage by explaining through photographs and text that what we are about to see is the result of a workshop (Les Chantiers Nomades) in which “The reality of twelve actors and a small crew . . . becomes a fiction expressing the reality of the world.” The film then moves into a dungeonlike basement run by the Mage (Fitzgerald Berthon) and the Magesse (Hélène Gratet), a mysterious couple who live in near-darkness, using only candlelight. There’s a knock on the door, and the Mage answers it. “We were told you’re a mage,” a young man says. “Do you believe what you’re told?” the Mage responds. “In this case, yes,” the man says. The Mage: “Freedom of conscience is guaranteed by secularity.” The man: “We were told we’d be safe here.” The Mage: “What do you fear?” The man: “The barbarians. They’re coming.” The Mage: “How do you know?” The man: “Social media.” It’s a hilarious beginning, all deadpan, a candle illuminating the man’s face like in a Caravaggio painting. The Mage agrees to let them in, if they hand over all of their electronic devices. Over the next seventy minutes, the slow-moving, slow-talking Mage and Magesse conduct odd ritualistic gatherings in which the Poet (Arnaud Vrech), the Bobo (Ugo Broussot), the Bobelle (Chloé Chevalier), the Paintress (Anne-Sophie Bailly), the Non-Bobo (Frédéric Schulz-Richard), and the homeless SDF (Clément Durand) discuss their lives in bizarre, often disconnected statements delivered in a straightforward, direct, almost zombielike manner, which turns pedantic dialogue into very funny riffs on art, politics, class structure, love, parenting, and death.

An Arthurian novel is reenacted in blue light in Waiting for the Barbarians

“I’m not the least bit phallocratic, and I always agree with my wife,” the Bobo says. “How can you expect us to know anything if we don’t have internet?” the Bobelle asks. The Paintress explains that she doesn’t paint because “running a paintbrush over a naked, pure, virginal surface feels like an act of unbearable violence.” The Non-Bobo is a politician who has never run for office. The six characters identify the barbarians they are escaping from as the Scythians, the Thracians, the Goths, the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Vandals, the Huns, the Avars, the Alans, the Cumans, the Tatars, the Pechenegs, and the United Statesians. (Green is a Brooklyn native who lives in France and refers to America as “Barbaria” in interviews.) The Poet encounters a ghost named Sophie (Valentine Carette), the daughter of the Mage and Magesse, who says she has been expecting him; her red scarf is the only color amid the blackness. The Non-Bobo lets loose a magnificent eye roll. The Mage examine two works by Nicolas Tournier. They all enter a blue-lit courtyard where they watch apparitions perform scenes from the twelfth-century verse romance Jaufré, a melodrama involving Jaufré (Roman Kané), Brunissen de Montbrun (Marine Chesnais), Taulat de Rougemont (François Lebas), and Mélian de Montmélior (Durand). In introducing the performance, the Mage says, “Fiction is merely an attempt to show something more real than the world,” which describes Green’s film as well. Waiting for the Barbarians is about the fear of contemporary society and its future, of being alone, of not being connected in the twenty-first century, when everyone is on the move all the time, never stepping back and just being in the moment. It is droll and languorous, inscrutable and hysterical, didactic and wryly clever. Be sure to stick around through the end credits, which give updates on the characters. Green likes to make cameos in his films, but there’s no room for him in Waiting for Barbarians; fortunately, you will be able to see him on March 13, when he will take part in a Q&A following the 6:30 North American premiere of the film. “Rendez-Vous with French Cinema” continues through March 18 with films by Vincent Macaigne, Xavier Legrand, Xavier Beauvois, Bruno Dumont, Nobuhiro Suwa, Laurent Cantet, and others.

NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL CLOSING NIGHT: WEST OF THE JORDAN RIVER

makes its U.S. premiere at the New York Jewish Film Festival

Amos Gitai’s West of the Jordan River makes its U.S. premiere as the closing selection of the New York Jewish Film Festival on January 23

WEST OF THE JORDAN RIVER (Amos Gitai, 2017)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday, January 23, 12:30 & 6:00 pm
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.org

Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, January 26
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com

The New York Jewish Film Festival, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum, concludes January 23 with the U.S. premiere of Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai’s West of the Jordan River, screening at 12:30 and 6:00 at the Walter Reade Theater. Both are followed by a Q&A with Gitai; the first will be moderated by New York Film Festival director emeritus Richard Peña. The eighty-seven-minute documentary revisits a familiar theme for Gitai, the continuing crisis between Jews and Palestinians, which he previously explored in such nonfiction works as 1982’s Field Diary, 2016’s Rabin, the Last Day, and last year’s Shalom Rabin. The camera follows Gitai from the Erez checkpoint at the Gaza Border in 1994 to Hebron in the West Bank in 2016, from a conference room where he interviews Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1994 to a backgammon tournament in Jerusalem in 2016. “I’m making a film which will have entries like a travel diary and it will chronicle the negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians,” he explains at the beginning. “I decided that my role in this visual diary should be like an archeologist. I want to scratch layer after layer to get to the substance of the matter to understand how we could possibly reach some reconciliation in the region.” Gitai, who likens himself to an architect (he has a PhD in architecture), speaks with groups of angry Palestinians in the street, demanding fair treatment; Israeli soldiers explaining how complicated it can be dealing with Arab children throwing rocks; the Parents Circle in Beit Jala in the West Bank, where Israeli and Palestinian women who have lost children in the conflict get together to promote peace; the NGO B’tselem, an Israeli organization that teaches women to document human rights violations in the occupied territories safely using their cell phones; Khan Al-Ahmar, who runs a Bedouin school in the West Bank that is threatened with demolition; and terrorist victim Michal Froman and her sister, Lia Raz Twito Froman, who live in the Israeli settlement of Teqoa and offer a surprising reaction to Michal’s stabbing by a fifteen-year-old Arab boy when she was pregnant.

Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai meets with groups of Jews and Palestinians to get to the bottom of the Arab-Israeli conflict in West of the Jordan River

Gitai also interviews Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Hotovely, Knesset member and former minister of foreign affairs Tzipi Livni, Knesset member Tamar Zandberg, Haaretz journalists Ari Shavit and Gideon Levy, Yediot Aharonot journalist Ben-Dror Yemini, and Haaretz editor in chief Aluf Benn, who offer their intriguingly different views of the Israel-Palestine dilemma, discussing humanization and dehumanization on both sides. But Gitai, who has made such well-regarded sociopolitical fictional trilogies as Devarim, Yom Yom, and Kadosh and Kippur, Eden, and Kedma in addition to the play Yitzhak Rabin: Chronicle of an Assassination, does not take the passive role of documentary filmmaker; instead, he often puts himself front and center, sharing his own opinions and challenging those of some of his subjects. (The project was a commission by France Télévisions, which wanted Gitai’s personal point of view.) “Nothing is more solid than the coalition of those who oppose peace,” he tells a group of Arabs mourning the killing of a fifteen-year-old boy. Gitai is shown traveling in cars and on planes, setting up for interviews, and walking through various areas to talk to regular citizens, revealing significant parts of his creative process. “I want to look at the little moments in life and the general political discussions,” he says. He sees the Middle East conflict as a TV series in which “the roles of heroes and villains can be interchangeable,” and that’s how West of the Jordan River, which opens theatrically at the Quad on January 26, unfolds. Perhaps one of the most important lines in the film is one of the first. As Gitai sits down with Prime Minister Rabin in 1994, the thirty-five-year-old director says, “I understand we don’t have much time.” The next year, Rabin was assassinated, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues, with no end in sight.

NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL: THE PRINCE AND THE DYBBUK

The Prince and the Dybbuk makes its U.S. premiere at the New York Jewish Film Festival

THE PRINCE AND THE DYBBUK (Piotr Rosolowski & Elwira Niewiera, 2017)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Wednesday, January 10, 2:45, and Thursday, January 11, 9:00
Festival runs January 10-23
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.org
prince-dybbuk.com

The New York Jewish Film Festival gets under way January 10 with an intriguing look at enigmatic filmmaker Michał Waszyński, the director of one of the most important Yiddish movies of all time, the 1937 supernatural tale The Dybbuk. In The Prince and the Dybbuk, directors Piotr Rosolowski and Elwira Niewiera find that discovering who Waszyński was is like chasing a ghost, as he continually reinvented himself while being haunted by a past he tried to erase. Like the characters in many of the films he produced and directed, he was constantly searching for his true identity as he journeyed from Poland and Germany to Italy and Spain. “He was in his world, so mysterious and exciting. Nobody really knows what he’s really like,” one of his assistant directors, Enrico Bergier, says. Throughout the eighty-minute documentary, friends, relatives, colleagues, and others describe Waszyński, who produced and/or directed nearly 150 films, as a gentleman, Jewish, Catholic, noble-minded, lonely, elegant and refined, an exceptional boss, generous, isolated, very smart, a larger-than-life character, an aristocrat, a bit strange, and a mythomaniac. He married a countess, dubbing himself the Polish Prince, and took one of his actors, Albin Ossowski, to gay restaurants. “He was longing for his youth,” Ossowski says. He hobnobbed with Orson Welles, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, and Claudia Cardinale. He appeared in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1954 film, The Barefoot Contessa. He was singled out by Josef Goebbels as an enemy. He was involved with such 1960s blockbusters as El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire as well as smaller Eastern European films, most famously The Dybbuk, about a young bride possessed by a spirit. Rosolowski and Niewiera, who previously collaborated on the award-winning Domino Effect, include newsreel footage, family photos, home movies, a behind-the-scenes promotional piece narrated by James Mason about the making of Anthony Mann’s budget-busting The Fall of the Roman Empire, spoken excerpts from Waszyński’s diaries, and clips from such Waszyński films as His Excellency the Shop Assistant, Unknown Man of San Marino, Dvanáct kresel, Gehenna, Wielka Droga, Zabawka, and Znachor, many of which feature lost characters.

Enigmatic filmmaker Michał Waszyński (in red shirt) plays cards in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa

Waszyński was born Moshe Waks in the village of Kovel in Poland (what is now Ukraine) in 1904 and later changed his name to Michał Waszyński and converted to Catholicism. Even when facts are revealed about him, there is no evidence about why he did the things he did in his personal life. “To me he was a great magician. He lived in a dream world, because cinema is a dream,” explains Maurizio Dickmann, a member of the Italian family that took him in. Later, in an Under the Flag of Love radio broadcast, Waszyński explains, “I do what I love. Cinema is my passion and it stimulates my intellect. . . . To me, film is like a second reality, subject to completely different rules. In a split second, a king can become a shepherd or a beggar a rich man.” His diaries divulge a dark side about his search for who he is and who he was as he transformed himself from shepherd to king. “My city vanishes from my mind, as if the place of my youth had never existed,” he writes. “But I can never rid myself of you. You were the one who abandoned us. Although, even now, in my dreams and when awake, you return to me every night, like a stab to the heart. You drive deep inside me. Like an evil spirit, you circle around me.” Waszyński was chased by spirits his entire life — he passed away suddenly in 1965 — and turned to the movies for answers, which only led to more questions. Named Best Documentary on Cinema at the Venice Film Festival, The Prince and the Dybbuk is making its U.S. premiere at the New York Jewish Film Festival, screening at the Walter Reade Theater on January 10 at 2:45 and January 11 at 9:00, preceded by Daria Martin’s short film A Hunger Artist, based on the Franz Kafka story. The January 11 screening will be followed by a Q&A with Rosolowski, Niewiera, and Martin. A copresentation of the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the festival, which runs January 10-23, is also showing the world premiere of a brand-new restoration of The Dybbuk on January 14 and 17.