Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Post-apocalyptic landscape, or present-day Ethiopia? Director Miguel Llansó passes off the latter as the former in this strange and inventive science fiction adventure starring an actor who was abandoned by his parents due to his birth defects. Daniel Tadesse plays Gagano, a scavenger who gathers valuable pop culture detritus like toys and a Michael Jackson album and tries to sell them to a shifty antique dealer. Much of the film takes place in a forbidding, alien countryside, but the film really takes off in lyrical, jazzy asides on pop culture, reimaginging 20th century scraps as talismans from a forgotten era. The AFI’s 12th annual New African Films Festival opens Friday, and the films I had a chance to preview are intriguing. Also screening this week, Beats of the Antonov (Saturday, March 12 at 1:15 p.m.), director Hajooj Kuka’s documentary about the civil war in Sudan and the musicians that, by means of mostly homemade instruments, transcend its nation’s brutal struggles. And you won’t want to miss Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai (Friday, March 18 at 7:15 p.m.), aka the Nigerian Purple Rain—more on that next week.
Watch the trailer for Crumbs.
Tuesday, March 15 at 9:30 p.m. and Thursday, March 17 at 05:15 p.m at the AFI Silver.
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Nilbio Torres (Andres Córdoba/Oscilloscope)Director Ciro Guerra’s Oscar-nominated film shifts back and forth in time over 40 years. Amazonian shaman Karamakate (played by Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolívar Salvado), the last of his people, becomes an uneasy guide for two scientists. Embrace the Serpent was the first film made in the Amazon in over 30 years, and presuming that Fitzcarraldo was the last, Guerra is clearly paying homage to Werner Herzog, especially as one of the scientists that Karamkate guides along the river carries a record player. The film’s black-and-white cinematography is almost too beautiful, which ends up being its weakness. This is an exquisite picture postcard, and an engaging one, but one in which the evils of colonialism are drawn all too bluntly. For the most part, the film works as an adventure, but Guerra is no Herzog, and leaves nothing to the imagination.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema
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Directors Zach Ingrasci and Chris Temple embedded themselves in the Za’atari camp in Jordan, seven miles from the Syrian border, and lived among 85,000 Syrian refugees. Their film documents the personal stories of those escaping persecution and looking for hope. This screening coincides with the fifth anniversary of the start of the Syrian Civil War. The event is hosted by Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA), who will participate in a post-screening discussion with the filmmakers about the Syrian refugee crisis and humanitarian aid.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, March 14 at 7 p.m., preceded by a public reception and virtual reality exhibit at 6 p.m. at the Capitol Hill Visitor Center, First St NE. Free, RSVP at Eventbrite.
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Tiny Giants 3D, March 19 at AMC Loews Georgetown (Randall Babb/BBC)The 24th edition of this popular festival includes over 140 films, including the local premiere of City of Trees (March 16 at the Carnegie Institution for Science and March 23 at Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus), Brandon and Lance Kramer’s documentary about a jobs program to plant trees in Ward 8 parkland (stay tuned for more about that film, including an interview with one of the coordinators of the jobs program). Also premiering will be Cemetery of Splendour (March 20 at the AFI), the latest film from Thai arthouse favorite Apichatpong Weerasethakul. And no environmental festival can be complete without a 3D chipmunk and grasshopper mouse; come to the AMC Loews Georgetown on March 19 for Tiny Giants 3D.
Watch the trailer for Tiny Giants 3D.
March 15-26 at venues around town. See the full schedule here.
Bistro Bohem’s fifth annual film and beer series continues with this 1941 Czech comedy. Zuzanka (Natasa Gollová) is a humble dishwasher whose life changes when she inherits The Blue Star, which she thinks is a luxury hotel. She’s put in an insane asylum before she learns that the hotel is actually a shabby establishment of the same name. Director Martin Fric made 100 movies over a 40-year career, before committing suicide after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Tuesday, March 15 at Bistro Bohem, 600 Florida Avenue, NW. Free, but reservations are required – call 202-735-5895 or email bistrobohem [at] gmail.com.
