This weekend marks the return of FilmColumbia, Chatham’s impressively ambitious film festival, back in person after its pandemic hiatus. Always provocative, this year’s 10-day lineup includes a slew of award-winning, independent and international films, as well as special screenings, workshops, events with filmmakers, and an intriguing line-up of Q&As. All films are to be shown at the historic, superbly restored Crandell Theatre, the largest, single-screen movie theater in Columbia County and a truly fabulous venue for watching movies (even better than your couch!).
Given the quality of films, choosing which screenings to attend is tough, but here are five compelling, challenging, and superbly made options that are definitely worth your while. And families, keep in mind the special Children’s International Shorts Program, presented for free on Saturday morning, October 22. A full schedule of all FilmColumbia screenings and events can be found here.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon | October 21, 4:30pm
Why not start on opening day of the festival (Friday, October 21) with FilmColumbia’s special matinee presentation of this groundbreaking film in honor of Sony Pictures Classics’ 30th anniversary. In 2001, Crouching Tiger was nominated for nine Academy Awards and took home four, including Best Foreign Language Film. It’s worth it just for the performance of Michelle Yeoh, who may well be up for an Academy Award for her work in this year’s Everything Everywhere All at Once. Plus, stick around after the show for a conversation between Sony Pictures Classics’ co-president Tom Bernar and Oscar-nominated James Shamus, who co-wrote the screenplay for Crouching Tiger. Buy Crouching Tiger tickets.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed | October 22, 7:15pm
From a chance meeting between award-winning director Laura Poitras (Citizen Four) and activist/photographer Nan Goldin comes All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. This documentary tells the stunning personal and political tale of Goldin’s art and genuinely remarkable life in which a near-fatal OxyContin overdose led to a consuming passion to hold Purdue Pharma, and in particular the billionaire Sackler Family, accountable for their central role in the deadly opioid epidemic. Goldin’s provocative work and personal courage hold center stage in this mesmerizing, intimate story of a single artist’s life, and of art as political expression. It deservedly won the 2022 Golden Lion for best film at the 79th Venice International Film Festival, only the second documentary ever to do so. Buy All That Beauty tickets.
Saint Omer | October 25, 5:15pm
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Saint Omer is director Alice Diop’s first narrative feature, and France’s official entry for the Foreign Film Oscar category. On the surface, it’s a taught courtroom drama based on the tragic, true-life story of a Senegalese woman who stood trial in France for murder after abandoning her infant child on a beach. But Diop’s background as a documentary filmmaker leads her to tell a more vivid and nuanced tale about the immigrant experience that challenges our basic understanding of what it means to be a foreigner, and beyond that, our ability to reconcile culturally determined beliefs in science and spirituality. Buy Saint Omer tickets.
All That Breathes | October 28, 5pm
A bird hospital in a cramped, dank New Delhi basement. Two brothers dedicated to protecting their city’s population of kites, a majestic bird of prey that are falling prey themselves to the environmental toxicity of the city. A sprawl of urban life under siege by changes both political and climatic. All these elements are beautifully woven into this dreamy, evocative documentary that lures us into a world both geographically and emotionally foreign, a vivid, quiet portrait of two brothers in a very particular time and place. All that Breathes won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Buy All That Breathes tickets.
Close | October 30, 5pm
The intense beauty in the portrayal of the friendship at the heart of Close— — the angelic faces of these two 13-year-old boys, the endless fields of flowers in which they play, the ease they feel in their shared silence— — cannot possibly hold. Winner of the 2022 Cannes Grand Prix Award, this sly, poignant coming-of-age tale takes on larger questions of identity and gender, of lost innocence, and of the thin line between the inevitability of growing up and the harsh betrayals that mark so many young lives…and older ones as well. Buy Close tickets.
Bonus Pick: Late Night 3D Screening of Dawn of the Dead | October 22, 10pm
Wait…what? You heard right! For the first time ever, the 1978 horror classic Dawn of the Dead will be presented in 3D at Crandell Theater on Saturday night, October 22 at 10pm. Zombies in a shopping mall! What more can you ask of cinema? And as a bonus, the movie’s producer and local zombie aficionado, Richard P. Rubinstein, will be on hand to answer all your lifestyles-of-the-dead queries. Buy Dawn of the Dead tickets.
This article appears in October 2022.
