January 2017

The Space Between Us

Directed by: Peter Chelsom

Starring: Britt Robertson, Carla Gugino, Gary Oldman and Asa Butterfield

In this interplanetary adventure, shortly after arriving to help colonize Mars, an astronaut dies while giving birth to the first human born on the red planet. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Gardner Elliot - an inquisitive, highly intelligent boy who reaches the age of 16 having only met 14 people in his very unconventional upbringing. While searching for clues about his father, and the home planet he's never known, Gardner begins an online friendship with a street smart girl named Tulsa. When he finally gets a chance to go to Earth, Gardner is eager to experience all of the wonders he could only read about on Mars. But after his explorations begin, scientists discover that Gardner's organs can't withstand Earth's atmosphere. Gardner joins with Tulsa on a race against time to unravel the mysteries of how he came to be, and where he belongs in the universe.

January 2017

20th Century Women

Directed by: Mike Mills

Starring: Elle Fanning, Alia Shawkat, Billy Crudup, Greta Gerwig, Annette Bening

With 20th Century Women, acclaimed filmmaker Mike Mills brings us a richly multilayered, funny, heart-stirring celebration of the complexities of women, family, time, and the connections we search for our whole lives. It is a film that keeps redefining itself as it goes along, shifting with its characters as they navigate the pivotal summer of 1979.

 

January 2017

To celebrate the release of Mike Mills' new film 20th Century Women, The Phoenix Film Society is presenting a retro screening of Beginners, Mills's Oscar winning film from 2010 starring Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer.

Beginners

Director: Mike Mills

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Mélanie Laurent 

When it comes to relationships, we’re all beginners. From writer/director Mike Mills comes Beginners, a comedy/drama about how deeply funny and transformative life can be, even at its most serious moments.

Beginners imaginatively explores the hilarity, confusion, and surprises of love through the evolving consciousness of Oliver (Golden Globe Award nominee Ewan McGregor). Oliver meets the irreverent and unpredictable Anna (Mélanie Laurent of Inglourious Basterds) only months after his father Hal Fields (Academy Award nominee Christopher Plummer) has passed away.

This new love floods Oliver with memories of his father, who, following the death of his wife of 45 years, came out of the closet at age 75 to live a full, energized, and wonderfully tumultuous gay life – which included a younger boyfriend, Andy (Goran Visnjic of ER). The upheavals of Hal’s new honesty, by turns funny and moving, brought father and son closer than they’d ever been able to be. Now Oliver endeavors to love Anna with all the bravery, humor, and hope that his father taught him.

At once deeply personal and universal, Beginners was inspired by Mike Mills’ own father and is meant in turn to inspire everyone weighing their chances and choices in life and love.

December 2016

Paterson

Directed by: Jim Jarmusch

Starring: Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani and Helen-Jean Arthur

Synopsis: Paterson is a bus driver in the city of Paterson, New Jersey - they share the name. Every day, Paterson adheres to a simple routine: he drives his daily route, observing the city as it drifts across his windshield and overhearing fragments of conversation swirling around him; he writes poetry into a notebook; he walks his dog; he stops in a bar and drinks exactly one beer. He goes home to his wife, Laura. By contrast, Laura's world is ever changing. New dreams come to her almost daily, each a different and inspired project. Paterson loves Laura and she loves him. He supports her newfound ambitions; she champions his secret gift for poetry. The history and energy of the City of Paterson is a felt presence in the film and its simple structure unfolds over the course of a single week. The quiet triumphs and defeats of daily life are observed, along with the poetry evident in its smallest details.

November 2016

Things to Come

Official Selection: Toronto International Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival

Directed by: Mia Hansen-Løve

Starring: Isabelle Huppert, André Marcon and Roman Kolinka

What happens when the life you’ve worked so hard to build falls apart all at once? Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert, in a radiant performance) is a philosophy teacher with a seemingly settled existence, juggling a rich life of the mind with the day-to-day demands of career and family (including frequent visits to her drama queen mother, played by the legendary Édith Scob). But beginning with the bombshell revelation that her husband of twenty-five years is leaving her, one by one the pillars of Nathalie’s life start to crumble. For the first time in ages, she finds herself adrift, but also with a newfound sense of liberation. With nothing to hold her back, Nathalie sets out to define this new phase of her life and to rediscover herself. Winner of the Best Director award at the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival, the new film from Mia Hansen-Løve (Eden) is an uncommonly intelligent, soul-searching look at what it means to create a life of one’s own.

November 2016

Bleed for This

Starring: Miles Teller, Katey Sagal, Aaron Eckhart, Ciarán Hinds, Ted Levine, Stephanie McIntyre and Christine Evangelista. 

Director: Ben Younger

BLEED FOR THIS is the incredible true story of one of the most inspiring and unlikely comebacks in sports history. Miles Teller stars as Vinny "The Pazmanian Devil" Pazienza, a local Providence boxer who shot to stardom after winning 2 world title fights. After a near-fatal car accident leaves Vinny with a severed spine, doctors tell him he may never walk again. With the help of renowned trainer Kevin Rooney, Vinny becomes a legend when he not only walks again, but miraculously returns to the ring to reclaim his title belt only a year after the accident.

 

October 2016

Loving

Starring: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Marton Csokas, Ruth Negga, Nick Kroll, Alano Miller, Bill Camp, Terri Abney, Jon Bass

Director: Jeff Nichols

Synopsis: Loving celebrates the real-life courage and commitment of an interracial couple, Richard and Mildred Loving, who fell in love and were married in 1958.The couple had grown up in Central Point, a small town in Virginia that was more integrated than surrounding areas in the American South. Yet it was the state of Virginia, where they were making their home and starting a family, that first jailed and then banished them. Richard and Mildred relocated with their children to the inner city of Washington, D.C. While relatives made them feel welcome there, the more urban environment did not feel like home to them. Ultimately, the pull of their roots in Virginia would spur Mildred to try to find a way back.

October 2016

American Pastoral

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Jennifer Connelly, Dakota Fanning, Uzo Aduba and David Strathairn

Director: Ewan McGregor

Synopsis: Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Philip Roth novel, AMERICAN PASTORAL follows an all American family across several decades, as their idyllic existence is shattered by social and political turmoil that will change the fabric of American culture forever. Ewan McGregor (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Beginners) makes his directorial debut and stars as Seymour “Swede” Levov, a once legendary high school athlete who is now a successful businessman married to Dawn, a former beauty queen. But turmoil brews beneath the polished veneer of Swede’s life. When his beloved daughter, Merry, disappears after being accused of committing a violent act, Swede dedicates himself to finding her and reuniting his family. What he discovers shakes him to the core, forcing him to look beneath the surface and confront the chaos that is shaping the modern world around him: no American family will ever be the same.  AMERICAN PASTORAL also stars Academy Award® winner Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind) as Dawn, Dakota Fanning (The Runaways, The Twilight Saga) as Merry, Emmy® winner Uzo Aduba (Orange Is the New Black), and Academy Award® nominee David Strathairn (Lincoln, Good Night, and Good Luck).

September 2016

The Pickle Recipe

Cast: Jon Dore, Lynn Cohen and David Paymer

Santa Barbara Film Festival Official Selection
Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival Audience Award Winner
Palm Beach International Film Festival Selection

Synopsis: Joey Miller is the undisputed king of Detroit party MC’s. He’s also a single father and deeply in debt. To make matters worse, during his latest, one-of-a-kind wedding performances, all his prized sound and lighting equipment is destroyed in a freak accident. To add insult to injury, his daughter Julie’s Bat-Mitzvah is only four weeks away and she’s counting on him to MC her party. After exhausting all his options, he turns to his shady Uncle Morty, who agrees to give him the money he needs to get back into business, but only under one condition. Joey must steal his grandmother Rose’s most prized possession: her famous top secret dill pickle recipe. It’s a recipe which she has vowed to take to her grave.

 

August 2016

The Hollars

Cast: Anna Kendrick, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Sharlto Copley, John Krasinski, Randall Park, Charlie Day, Richard Jenkins, Josh Groban, Margo Martindale and Mary Kay Place

Directed by: John Krasinski

Synopsis: John Hollar, a struggling NYC artist is forced to navigate the small middle-American town he left behind when news of his mother's illness brings him home. Back in the house he grew up in, John is immediately swept up in the problems of his dysfunctional family, high school rival, and an over-eager ex-girlfriend as he faces impending fatherhood with his girlfriend in New York.

August 2016

Anthropoid

Cast: Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan

Directed by: Sean Ellis

Synopsis: ANTHROPOID is based on the extraordinary true story of “Operation Anthropoid,” the code name for the Czechoslovakian operatives’ mission to assassinate SS officer Reinhard Heydrich.

Heydrich, the main architect behind the Final Solution, was the Reich’s third in command behind Hitler and Himmler and the leader of Nazi forces in Czechoslovakia. The film follows two soldiers from the Czechoslovakian army-in-exile, Josef Gabčík (Cillian Murphy) and Jan Kubiš (Jamie Dornan), who are parachuted into their occupied homeland in December 1941. With limited intelligence and little equipment in a city under lock down, they must find a way to assassinate Heydrich, an operation that would change the face of Europe forever.

 

July 2016

Hell or High Water

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Gil Birmingham

Directed by: David Mackenzie

Synopsis: A story about the collision of the Old and New West, two brothers -- Toby (Chris Pine), a straight-living, divorced father trying to make a better life for his son; and Tanner (Ben Foster), a short-tempered ex-con with a loose trigger finger -- come together to rob branch after branch of the bank that is foreclosing on their family land.  The hold-ups are part of a last-ditch scheme to take back a future that powerful forces beyond their control have stolen from under their feet.  Vengeance seems to be theirs until they find themselves in the crosshairs of a relentless, foul-mouthed Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges) looking for one last triumph on the eve of his retirement.  As the brothers plot a final bank heist to complete their plan, a showdown looms at the crossroads where the last honest law man and a pair of brothers with nothing to live for except family collide. 

July 2016

Captain Fantastic


Cast: Kathryn Hahn, Viggo Mortensen, Missi Pyle, Frank Langella, Steve Zahn, George MacKay, Erin Moriarty

Directed by: Matt Ross

Synopsis: Deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, isolated from society, a devoted father dedicates his life to transforming his six young children into extraordinary adults. But when a tragedy strikes the family, they are forced to leave this self-created paradise and begin a journey into the outside world that challenges his idea of what it means to be a parent and brings into question everything he's taught them.

June 2016

Wiener Dog

Cast: Kieran Culkin, Danny DeVito, Greta Gerwig, Ellen Burstyn, Zosia Mamet, Julie Delpy, Tracy Letts, Michael James Shaw

Directed by: Todd Solondz

Synopsis: WIENER-DOG is a dark, starkly funny story of a single dog and the many different people she touches over her short lifetime. Man's best friend starts out teaching a young boy some contorted life lessons before being taken in by a compassionate vet tech named Dawn Wiener. Dawn reunites with someone from her past and sets off on a road trip. After leaving Dawn, Wiener-Dog encounters a floundering film professor, as well as an embittered elderly woman and her needy granddaughter-all longing for something more.

June 2016

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Cast: Julian Dennison, Rachel House, Rima Te Wiata, Oscar Kightley, Rhys Darby, Cohen Holloway and Mike Minogue

Directed by: Taika Waititi

Synopsis: Raised on hip-hop and foster care, defiant city kid Ricky gets a fresh start in the New Zealand countryside. He quickly finds himself at home with his new foster family: the loving Aunt Bella, the cantankerous Uncle Hec, and dog Tupac. When a tragedy strikes that threatens to ship Ricky to another home, both he and Hec go on the run in the bush. As a national manhunt ensues, the newly branded outlaws must face their options: go out in a blaze of glory or overcome their differences and survive as a family.

May 2016

Hunky Dory

Directed by: Michael Curtis Johnson

Cast: Tomas Pais, Edouard Holdener, Nora Rothman, Chad Borden, Jeff Newburg, Peter Van Norden and Chad Hartigan.

Synopsis: Sidney always wanted to be a rock star, but he ended working for tips as a dive bar drag queen instead. He manages to make his rent by swindling his friends and family. His life takes a dramatic turn when his ex vanishes after she unexpectedly drops their 11-year-old son off at his apartment. Sidney has always been best buds with his son George, but he’s never had to bear sole responsibility for him. Sidney has been able to hide his personal demons from his son for most of his life, but as the stresses of single parenthood take their toll on Sidney, his life starts to fall apart. George gets suspicious about his mother’s absence and Sidney lies to him. After Sidney learns that George’s mother might never return, Sidney falls into crisis. He binges on drugs and alcohol, lashes out at the only people who love him and George runs away to look for his mother. Can Sidney look after his son when he doesn’t have the power to save himself?

 

May 2016

Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise

Directed by: Bob Hercules & Rita Coburn Whack

The film includes interviews with President Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Common, Alfre Woodard, Cicely Tyson, Quincy Jones, Secretary Hillary Clinton, John Singleton and Dr. Angelou’s son, Guy Johnson.

Synopsis: Distinctly referred to as “a redwood tree, with deep roots in American culture,” icon Maya Angelou gave people the freedom to think about their history in a way they never had before. Dr. Angelou’s was a prolific life; as a singer, dancer, activist, poet, and writer she inspired generations with lyrical modern African American thought that pushed boundaries.

This unprecedented film celebrates Dr. Maya Angelou by weaving her words with rare and intimate archival photographs and videos, which paint hidden moments of her exuberant life during some of America’s most defining moments. From her upbringing in the Depression-era South to her work with Malcolm X in Ghana to her inaugural speech for President Bill Clinton, we are given special access to interviews with Dr. Angelou whose indelible charm and quick wit make it easy to love her.

Phoenix Film Foundation

7000 E. Mayo Blvd., #1059
Phoenix, AZ  85054             480-513-3195

Questions? Contact us.

The Phoenix Film Society is a program under the 501(c)3 non-profit organization Phoenix Film Foundation, and is a sibling of Phoenix Film Festival, International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival, IFP/Phoenix, Arizona Student Film Festival, Peoria Film Fest and Phoenix Critics Circle. The Phoenix Film Foundation is dedicated to promoting diversity and education in the arts, elevating underrepresented voices, and driving the growth of independent film in Arizona. Through film showcases and accessible educational initiatives, we cultivate a vibrant, inclusive cinematic community, utilizing it as a catalyst for personal growth, creative expression, and positive social change.