DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.

Foreign: Ballad of a Soldier
The AFI’s great Janus Films retrospective continues, and there is probably no title on the schedule this writer is more eager to see on the big screen. Grigori Chukhrai’s 1959 classic takes a simple concept — the tale of a Russian soldier making his way home to see his mother during a brief furlough during his service in WWII — and turns it into a beautiful and tender meditation on emotional bonds, particularly in times of war. The movie is straightforward, yet deeply layered, and Chukhrai strikes a perfect balance between the needs of the story to continue its forward march, and his own objective to convey deeper meaning. Beautifully shot and artfully rendered, Ballad of a Soldier may be about as close to perfect as a film can get. Another great Soviet film from the same era is Mikheil Kalatozishvili’s The Cranes Are Flying, also showing this week.

Ballad of a Soldier plays at the AFI Silver Theatre on Saturday and Monday.

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Special Event: Casablanca
Screen on the Green comes to a close in grand style with one of the greats. Judging from the days we’ve made it down on the Mall to see films the past few weeks, attendance has been great, and with a title like this, we expect the space between 4th & 7th Streets to be packed. If you haven’t seen Casablanca, you owe it to yourself to go. And if you have, I don’t need to sell you on the movie. Show up early, enjoy the summer weather (which, by next week, may be back into a range one might consider enjoyable), and be sure to stand for the HBO Dance. It’ll be your last chance to do it for nearly a year.

View the trailer.
Playing on the Mall Monday night at sunset.