SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009

2:00PM - Capawock Theatre

Munyurangabo

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Drama / Rwanda / 97 mins
Grand Jury Prize, AFI Fest; Jury Prize, Sarasota Film Festival.

This tale of a friendship a Hutu and a Tutsi boy is the first film ever produced in the Kinyarwandan language. Its director, a first generation Korean American raised in Arkansasa was teaching filmmaking at a relief mission when he shot the footage in eleven days, using a cast of nonprofessional actors. The result is a film praised by critics as “beautiful,” “powerful,” and “a masterpiece.”

Click To Watch Trailer

2:00PM - Katharine Cornell Theatre

Little Zizou

Director: Sooni Taraporevala

Comedy / India / 100 mins

Best Feature, Film Festival of Los Angeles; Best Director, Best Screenplay, Indo-American Art Council Festival

Special Guest: Actress Zenobia Shroff who appears in ''Little Zizou'', which has won several awards on the festival circuit and a best actress nomination for her role at the IAAC FILM FESTIVAL.

From Bollywood comes a tale that is part Fellini, part Mel Brooks, and part Romeo and Juliet. Told from the point of view of an 11-year-old soccer-mad boy, Zizou, the film looks at two battling Mumbai familes, and shows how they settled their differences. This is the directorial debut of Sooni Taraporevala, who previous wrote the screenplays for Mississippi Masala and The Namesake. Produced by Mira Nair.

Click To Watch Trailer

2:00PM - Vineyard Playhouse

Days and Clouds

Director: Silvio Soldini

Drama / Italy / 115 mins

Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, David di Donatello Awards;

The director of “Bread and Tulips,” Soldini this time explores how a marriage fares when economic disaster strikes. Michele and Elsa are a happy, prosperous couple but then Michele is forced out of his company and the couple must radically change their ways—sell the house, accept menial jobs—while keeping the truth from their friends. A happy marriage caught in an economic tug-of-war, Variety calls the film “perceptively written, finely-played”.

Click To Watch Trailer

4:00PM - CAPAWOCK THEATER

Captain Abu Raed

Director: Amin Matalqa

Drama / Jordan / 102 mins Audience Award, Sundance Film Festival; Best Director, Seattle International Film Festival

Special Guest: Amin Matalqa, Director for Q&A

The Village Voice: “A Mark of Extraordinary Promise From This Remarkable New FilmMaker”

Michael Moore: “Don’t Miss This Film”

In this Oscar contender, an aging airport janitor finds a discarded pilot’s hat, puts it on, and is mistaken by poor children in his neighborhood who beg for stories of the far-off places he’s seen. The first feature from a Jordanian-born American writer director offers a rare view of contemporary Amman.

Click To Watch Trailer

4:00PM - Katharine Cornell Theatre

Rain

Director: Maria Govan

Drama/The Bahamas/94 mins

Toronto International Film Festival

Introduction by Lisa Van Leesten

One of the first indigenous feature films to come out of the Bahamas, Rain steers us away from the simplistic perception of a postcard paradise, instead taking us "over the hill" into the challenged life of a young local girl determined to get to know the mother who abandoned her as a young child.

Rain is a spirited fourteen-year old who, after the death of her grandmother forgoes the sheltered, simple life of her home on Ragged Island to seek out her estranged mother in the big city of Nassau.

4:30PM - Vineyard Playhouse

This Program has been cancelled.

7:00PM - Capawock Theatre

Lemon Tree (Etz Limon)

Director: Eran Riklis

Drama / Germany, Palestine / 106 mins

Winner, Best Actress, Israeli Film Academy Awards; Audience Award, Berlin International Film Festival

Based on a true story, Salma, a Palestinian widow battles her new neighbor, the Israeli defense minister, when he moves into his new house opposite her lemon grove, on the border between Israel and the West Bank. The Israeli security forces are quick to declare that Salma's trees are a threat to the minister’s safety and orders they be uprooted. Salma, played by the exquisite Hiam Abbass (last seen by most in “The Visitor”) takes her fight all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court and draws in an unexpected ally—the minister’s wife, who feels trapped in her new home and unhappy life.

Click To Watch Trailer

7:00PM - KATHARINE CORNELL THEATER

The Maid (La Nana)

Drama / Argentina / 95 minutes

Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Jury Prize and World Cinema Special Prize for Acting; Best film, Cartagena Film Festival and Guadalajara Mexican Film Festival

After 23 years of service to the Valdes family, Raquel is comfortably ensconced in a vague existence between maid and her illusion that she is a family member. Her barely concealed bitterness and increased clashes with her employer's eldest daughter lead the family to think she is overworked. They hire more help, and, feeling usurped, Raquel begins to sabotage each new employee by resorting to childish antics, clinging to her ambiguous place within the family.

Click To Watch Trailer

7:00PM - VINEYARD PLAYHOUSE

Pray the Devil Back to Hell

Director: Gini Reticker

Documentary / Liberia
Best Documentary, Tribeca Film Festival, Audience Choice Award, Jackson Hole Film Festival

Special Introduction by Tim Miller, Film Critic and Entertainment Editor, Cape Cod Times

The chronicle of how brave Liberian women came together to end a bloody civil war. Christina and Muslim mothers, grandmothers, aunts and daughters prayed for peace and shamed their nation’s rulers into restarting peace talks. A compelling account of how grassroots activism can change a nation’s history. A story of sacrifice,unity and transcendence.

Click To Watch Trailer

9:00PM - Capawock Theatre

Rudo y Cursi

Rough and Corny (Rudo y Cursi)

Director: Carlos Cuarón

Comedy / Mexico / 103 mins
Audience Award, Newport Beach Film Festival

One of the top-grossing Mexican films of all time, this screwball comedy stars Gael Garcia Bernal (Babel, Motorcycle Diaries) and Diego Luna (Milk), last seen together in Y Tu Mama Tambien. In their new collaboration, two two play brothers who go from laborers on a banana plantation to players in the world of professional soccer. They are rivals in life and in games, but mostly—as the Village Voice puts it—“the real competition is which of the two can be more self-destructive.”

Click To Watch Trailer

9:00PM - Katharine Cornell Theatre

Animation Shorts Program

Animation Shorts/ Various Countries/ 70 minutes
Presented by Bill Plympton and Friends.

Join Bill Plympton, Aaron Hughes, and others for Q&A afterwards

Famed animator, illustrator, and cartoonist (and two-time Oscar nominee) Plympton returns with a collection of animated shorts from Signe Baumane, Jean-Christophe Lie, Eun-Ha Paek, and many more. A showcase of the world’s greatest animation talent.

Click here to download a .pdf of the entire animation gala program of shorts

9:00PM - Vineyard Playhouse

Nameless (Sin Nombre)

Writer/Director: Cary Fukunaga

Thriller / Mexico / 96 mins

New Director’s Award, Edinburgh International Film Festival; Directing and Cinematography awards, Sundance Film Festival