AFI FEST Presented by Audi 2019
November 14-21 - TCL Chinese Theatres
AFI FEST 2019 presented by Audi takes place November 14-21,
2019, at historic theaters in Los Angeles.
Screenings, Galas, and other events will be held at the TCL Chinese
Theatre, the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres and the Hollywood Roosevelt and will open
on Thursday, November 14 with the World Premiere of AFI Conservatory alumna
Melina Matsoukas’s QUEEN & SLIM.
Academy Award® nominee Peter Morgan will be honored with a
Tribute of his career and a Gala screening of the third season of THE CROWN on
Saturday, November 16, Academy Award® winner Clint Eastwood’s RICHARD JEWELL
will have its World Premiere as a Gala screening on Wednesday, November 20 and
the festival will close with the World Premiere of George Nolfi’s THE BANKER on
Thursday, November 21.
This year’s Tribute honors famed producer and director Alan
J. Pakula, creator of some of the most iconic films of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
Academy Award®-nominated Pakula will be celebrated with a screening of the new
documentary ALAN PAKULA: GOING FOR THE TRUTH (DIR Matthew Miele), along with
screenings of three of his classic films, KLUTE, SOPHIE’S CHOICE and THE
STERILE CUCKOO.
AFI FEST will honor Martin Scorsese with a Tribute on
Friday, November 15 at the TCL Chinese Theatre. The evening will celebrate the
AFI Life Achievement Award recipient and Academy Award® winner’s indelible
impact on culture as one cinema’s most acclaimed filmmakers. Following the
conversation with Scorsese, AFI FEST will present his most recent film,
Netflix’s THE IRISHMAN, an epic saga of organized crime in post-war America
told through the eyes of World War II veteran Frank Sheeran, a hustler and hitman
who worked alongside some of the most notorious figures of the 20th century.
The program for this year’s AFI FEST includes 142 titles of
which 51% are directed by women. The Midnight section screenings feature the
chilling and provocative genre films JALLIKATTU and SAINT MAUD.
For the full film lineup and schedule, please visit
Fest.afi.com.
WORLD CINEMA SECTION
The World Cinema section showcases the most anticipated and
celebrated international films of the year and features 16 titles representing
19 countries. The section includes five official International Feature Film
Oscar® submissions screening at this year’s festival: Sweden’s AND THEN WE DANCED (DIR Levan Akin),
Canada’s ANTIGONE (DIR Sophie Deraspe), Poland’s CORPUS CHRISTI (BOŻE CIAŁO)
(DIR Jan Komasa), Italy’s THE TRAITOR (DIR Marco Bellocchio), and Romania’s THE
WHISTLERS (DIR Cornlieu Porumboiu). The section also includes the Los Angeles
premiere of Terrence Malick’s A HIDDEN LIFE. The film, a historical drama about
Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter who refused to fight for the Nazis during
World War II, is set to be released in the United States on December 13, 2019.
AND THEN WE DANCED
While training at the National Georgian Ensemble, the
arrival of preternaturally talented Irakli awakens a sense of friendly
competition in Merab, along with more complicated feelings between the two
boys. This twirling, rhythmic romance sees the profundity of first love
intensified by the risk that exposure could threaten career, familial and
community support.
ANTIGONE
An immigrant family is ripped apart by a police shooting in
Québécois writer/director Sophie Deraspe’s original and propulsive drama that
takes its inspiration from Sophocles’ tragedy and centers it on a daughter’s
painful choices that could determine the family’s fate.
BACURAU
The inhabitants of a remote Brazilian village realize that
their town has been erased from the map. When the water supply is cut,
cell-phone coverage fades and a local family is murdered, it becomes clear they
are under attack. Tension explodes into war as the community bands together,
determined to survive the assault.
BALLOON (QI QIU)
Shepard Dargye and his wife, Drolkar, live a simple life
with their sons and patriarch on the family farm in rural Tibet. When a death
in the family occurs, the family must make decisions as faith and political
realities collide in this delicate and beautiful film from Pema Tseden.
CORPUS CHRISTI (BOŻE CIAŁO)
After he is released from a brutally violent juvenile
detention center, a young man, disguised as a priest, finds himself hiding out
in a small town with a dark past. As the townspeople grieve and the priest
attempts to help them heal, he moves towards grace in a most unexpected way.
DEERSKIN
In Quentin Dupieux’s surreal, dark comedy, Georges (Jean
Dujardin) buys his dream jacket — vintage, fringed and 100% deerskin —in the
French Alps. As George’s madness spirals from existential midlife crisis to
violent psychotic breakdown, he attempts to document his new mission of
ensuring that the jacket is the only one left in existence.
A HIDDEN LIFE
Terrence Malick returns with this harrowing true-life tale
of conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter, eliciting comparisons in scope to
his Academy Award-nominated TREE OF LIFE. When the Third Reich shatters Franz’s
simple life, he is forced to reconcile the prevailing beliefs of his church and
country with his own personal convictions.
I WAS AT HOME, BUT… (ICH WAR ZUHAUSE, ABER…)
In Angela Schanelec’s cryptic, disjointed and enigmatic
winner of Best Director at the 2019 Berlinale, familial trauma is premise to a
series of defiantly fragmented vignettes. Astrid attempts to purchase a
second-hand bicycle, her son and his classmates stage Hamlet, two teachers
discuss their relationship, a dog, a rabbit and a donkey.
LIBERTÉ
In a small clearing in the woods somewhere between Potsdam
and Berlin, over the course of one extended night of debauchery, a band of
exiled Libertines seeking support from the German Duc de Walchen (Helmut
Berger) will revel in the freedom to take sexuality to its darkest places.
PROXIMA
Sarah, a French astronaut, earns her dream job: a spot on a
year-long mission to Mars. During training, Sarah wrestles with the stress of
separation from her daughter and earning respect from her male colleagues. Shot
on location in real training facilities, PROXIMA is a poignant, thoughtful
journey through the complexities of parenthood.
THE SLEEPWALKERS (LOS SONÁMBULOS)
While preparing to spend the summer at her mother-in-law’s
cottage, Luisa discovers her teenage daughter Ana sleepwalking naked. In the
countryside, each woman becomes alienated by repeated attempts to connect and
be understood and, with surmounting feelings of entrapment, will be pushed
beyond complacency in Paula Hernández’s elegant and bold debut.
SON-MOTHER (PESAR-MADAR)
A single mother of two faces a terrible dilemma of whether
to marry a single father who will provide for her and her daughter but, who,
due to Iranian custom, refuses to also take in her 12-year-old son. Director
Mahnaz Muhammadi brilliantly navigates this unsentimental critique of Iranian
traditions and the impossible choices that they can impose.
TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
Facing production difficulties and confrontations amid
language barriers and uncomfortable misunderstandings, the on-camera host of a
Japanese crew shooting a travelogue in Uzbekistan begins to spiral into
untapped anxieties, alienation and loneliness, leaving her to wander the
streets of the unfamiliar landscape alone, where fears of the unknown are
all-consuming.
THE TRAITOR
Celebrated Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio (FISTS IN THE
POCKET, 1965) steps behind the camera with one of the most compelling modern
dramatic stories of our time. THE TRAITOR is the ultra-widescreen true story of
the Sicilian Mafia and Tommaso Buscetta, who makes a fateful decision that will
permanently transform the Mafia.
THE TRUTH
In his first film outside of Japan, Palme d’Or winner
Hirokazu Kore-eda (SHOPLIFTERS) casts legendary actresses Catherine Deneuve and
Juliette Binoche as a fading screen star and her daughter in this witty and
touching battle of wills between two women coming to grips with the movie
business and each other.
THE WHISTLERS
An epically proportioned heist plot unravels when corrupt
police officer Cristi is drawn into an elaborate money laundering scheme and
ubiquitous hidden cameras threaten to expose him. A departure for Romanian
auteur Corneliu Porumboiu, this tremendously entertaining and inventive crime
thriller flashes a droll sense of humor under its stone-faced seriousness.
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
ATLANTICS
After a group of unpaid construction workers disappear at
sea one night in search of a better life abroad, the women they have left
behind in Dakar are overwhelmed with a mysterious fever. Ada, 17, secretly
grieves for her love Souleiman, one of the departed workers, but she has been
promised to another man. After a fire breaks out on her wedding night, a young
policeman is sent to investigate the crime. Little does he know that the
aggrieved workers have come back as haunting, possessive spirits. While many of
them seek vengeance for their unpaid labor, Souleiman has come back for a
different purpose — to be with his Ada one last time. Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2019 Cannes
Film Festival, ATLANTICS marks the feature narrative debut of director Mati Diop.
BLACKBIRD
Battling a terminal illness, Lily has decided to end her
life on her own terms and requests her loved ones spend a final weekend
together. Lily’s daughters arrive with their own families and emotional baggage
in tow and what begins as a peaceful gathering unravels as secrets are exposed.
With a stellar ensemble cast, BLACKBIRD is a thoughtful and elegant portrait of
life, death and family.
CLEMENCY
Bernadine Williams (Alfre Woodard), a stoic death row prison
warden, navigates the physiological complexities and consequences of her
profession. With the next execution looming, Bernadine detaches emotionally
from her husband and colleagues. Awarded the US Narrative Grand Jury Prize at
Sundance, CLEMENCY showcases the collateral damage of flawed justice.
THE FRIEND
Based on the National Magazine Award winning article that
went viral moving millions, THE FRIEND tells the extraordinary true story of
Nicole (Dakota Johnson) and Matthew Teague (Casey Affleck) who, after learning
that Nicole has only six months to live, receive the unexpected support of the
couple’s best friend Dane (Jason Segel) who puts his life on hold and moves
into their family’s home. Infused with
heart, humor, and ultimately hope, THE FRIEND is a moving and entertaining depiction
of the power of friendship, unconditional love and how one person can make a
difference in the world.
JUST MERCY
JUST MERCY is the true story of young lawyer Bryan Stevenson
(Michael B. Jordan) and his history-making battles for justice in Alabama.
Stevenson refuses to back down as he fights a legal system without mercy
stacked against him and his clients at every turn. One of his first, and most
incendiary, cases is that of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a man whose clear
innocence means nothing to the corrupt and compassionless forces Stevenson
doggedly takes on.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (PORTRAIT DE LA JEUNE FILLE EN
FEU)
At a French villa, Marianne is charged with secretly
painting Héloïse, a woman fresh from a convent and betrothed to a strange man.
Spending days as Héloïse’s walking companion, Marianne paints her by memory at
night. Filmmaker Céline Sciamma delivers a bold cinematic masterpiece about
self-discovery, memory and freedom.
THE SONG OF NAMES
Director François Girard orchestrates a stellar ensemble as
its players in this potent film about two boys connected by World War II and
music. Spanning generations — as boys,
Jewish violin prodigy Dovidl and non-Jewish Martin come together in London and
remain close for years until Dovidl’s mysterious disappearance. Decades later the adult Martin (Tim Roth)
embarks on a transcontinental journey in search of his beloved friend (Clive
Owen).
TROOP ZERO
In rural 1977 Georgia, a misfit girl dreams of making
contact with outer space. When a national competition offers her a chance at
her dream, to be recorded on NASA’s Golden Record, she recruits a makeshift
troop of Birdie Scouts, forging friendships that last a lifetime and beyond.
DOCUMENTARY FILMS SECTION
The Documentary section presents some of the most
engaging and powerful real-life stories depicted in global non-fiction cinema.
With subjects and themes both profound and impactful, the section includes
two-time Academy Award®-winning director Barbara Kopple’s DESERT ONE, a film
that revisits the 1980 secret mission by the Army’s elite Delta Force to rescue
US hostages held captive in Tehran.
BIKRAM: YOGI, GURU, PREDATOR
Capitalizing on yoga’s growing popularity, the charismatic
Bikram Choudhury, founder of Bikram Yoga, built an empire of yoga studios and
teaching programs. Eva Orner’s stunning documentary exposes Choudhury’s dark
secret — he was abusing his position of authority, preying on women and
creating a cult-like atmosphere that gave him virtual immunity.
CHEZ JOLIE COIFFURE
Inside a bustling Brussels hair salon, manager Sabine can be
seen braiding hair and lending support to a vibrant group of African migrants.
In this lovely observational chamber piece, filmmaker Rosine Mbakam offers an
affectionate tribute to Sabine and her community. Despite the traumas of
migration, their enduring charm and laughter are testament to human resilience.
CITIZEN K
Hero or villain? Mikhail Khodorkovsky is perhaps a unique
blend of both. In this gripping documentary, Academy Award-winning director
Alex Gibney charts the fascinating rise and fall of the former Russian oil
tycoon whose story bears witness to Putin’s ruthlessness and to the changing
fortunes of those who dared to oppose him.
DESERT ONE
Two-time Academy Award®-winning director Barbara Kopple
revisits the 1980 secret mission by the Army’s elite Delta Force to rescue US
hostages held captive in Tehran. Using previously unused archival material and
featuring riveting interviews with the principals, Kopple’s breathtaking
account paints an unforgettable portrait of American heroism — and its profound
cost.
THE HUMAN FACTOR
Dror Moreh’s (THE GATEKEEPERS) fair-minded and highly
dramatic documentary delivers vivid recollections from American diplomatic
envoys who have witnessed — and shaped —the most tenuous negotiations of the
Middle East peace process. Their insights
into world leaders, including Arafat, Rabin and Clinton, leave a devastating
impression about what could have been… and still isn’t.
I AM NOT ALONE
Capturing the fury, emotion and spontaneous expressions of
freedom that overtook the streets of Armenia in 2018, Garin Hovannisian’s
fascinating eye-witness documentary affords a unique glimpse into a
revolution-in-the-making by offering unprecedented access to the grassroots
movement that dared to challenge an entrenched regime, as well as the regime’s
leaders themselves.
OLIVER SACKS: HIS OWN LIFE
Famed neurologist and best-selling author Oliver Sacks (“The
Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat”), who died in 2015, led an extraordinary
life. Master filmmaker Ric Burns granted intimate access in Sacks’ final
months, paints a deeply moving portrait that captures his remarkable life and
reveals the enormity of his spirit.
PRESENT.PERFECT. (WAN MEI XIAN ZAI SHI)
Winner of the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival,
Zhu Shengze’s found-footage documentary compiles live streaming footage from over
800 hours of material. Its hosts are those with disabilities, the marginalized
and the working-class, who poetically demonstrate the need to seek out or
create global communities and the threat this poses to state control.
READY FOR WAR
Andrew Renzi’s startling documentary tells the heartbreaking
immigration story of veterans of the Armed Services who, after having fought
for the U.S. as a path to legal citizenship, find themselves not only without
citizenship but being deported instead. For some, in a cruel twist, once in
Mexico, the drug cartels pressure them to join their ranks.
SEARCHING EVA
For 25-year-old Eva, complex emotions surrounding
adolescence, family, body, art and sex work are processed publicly through
unflinchingly personal photos and writing posted on social media. In an attempt
to capture the essence of this elusive personality, Pia Hellenthal’s
extraordinary feature debut is a cinematic portrait that unfolds as a blitz of
sound and image.
SOUTH OXFORD, ALL IOWA LAWN TENNIS CLUB, MARAVILLA, SERVE
Filmmaker Darius Clark Monroe returns to the screen with a
series of intimate nonfiction shorts exploring America’s culture and passion
for tennis and handball. Four stories, warmly crafted with both archival and
original materials, illustrates the great humanity of society and the powerful,
soulful bond we experience through sports.
