Marie Wawa and Mungau Dain (Lightyear)

Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.

Marie Wawa and Mungau Dain (Lightyear)

Tanna

On the remote island of Tanna in the South Pacific, Wawa (Marie Wawa) and Dain (Mungau Dain) are in love. But their families object to their union because Wawa has been promised in an arranged marriage to a rival tribe known for their aggression. Based on an incident that occurred among the Yakel people in 1987, Tanna was made by Martin Butler and Bentley Dean, Australian documentary filmmakers who lived for months with the tribe and passed on this lushly photographed story of young romance. The Yakel villagers who act in the film turn in good performances, but the movie’s picture-postcard beauty and melodramatic score feel somehow patronizing, as if casting an air of wonder and mystery over the proceedings could fairly capture the concerns of a living tribe. Tanna is actually the second film to come along this year about an arranged marriage among people who live in the shadow of a volcano. I wrote that Ixcanul had “the feel of a soap opera directed by Werner Herzog.” This simply feels like outsiders descended on a village and turned their livelihood into a slick soap opera.

Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema

‘Speed Sisters’ (October 7 at Landmark E Street Cinema)


DC Palestinian Film And Arts Festival

The sixth annual showcase for filmmakers and artists from Palestine kicks off next week. Among the festival’s 33 featured films are the documentary Speed Sisters (October 7 at E Street), about Palestine’s first all-woman car racing team; Ave Maria (October 7 at Regal Gallery Place), a short film set in the Nuns of the Sisters of Mercy convent in the middle of the West Bank; Love, Theft, and Other Entanglements (October 7 at Regal Gallery Place), a comic thriller about a Palestinian car thief who finds a kidnapped Israeli solder in the trunk of a hot car; the sci-fi film In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain (October 9 at Regal Gallery Place); and many more intriguing films that you probably won’t get another chance to see on the big screen. The film series is in conjunction with the exhibit What Is Home? Palestine Across the Diaspora on view at the District Architecture Center in Chinatown.

Watch trailers for Love, Theft and Other Entanglements and In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain.
October 5-9 at venues around town. See the complete festival program here.

Abulele’ screens October 8 and 9 at the DCJCC

Seret DC: A Celebration of Contemporary Israeli Cinema

Next week the Washington Jewish Film Festival launches Seret DC, a showcase of contemporary Israeli cinema. In the opening night film, One Week and a Day, (October 5), a father (Israeli comedian Shai Avivi) who has just finished sitting shiva for his late son finds himself returning to his old routine in a way that may have made his son proud: he gets high with a neighbor. Also screening, Abulele (pictured, October 8 and 9), about a boy who makes an imaginary friend after the death of his brother; Atomic Falafel (October 5 and 9), an unlikely comedy about a nuclear showdown between Israel and Iran; and Sand Storm (October 9), about a Bedouin mother and daughter who defy polygamist marital traditions.

Watch trailers for One Week and a Day and Abulele
October 5-9 at the DCJCC. See the complete festival schedule here.

‘The Eyes of My Mother,’ October 8 at the AFI Silver.

Spooky Movie International Horror Film Festival

Halloween programming is upon us with the AFI Silver’s annual Spooky Movie festival. The series launches next week with Trash Fire (October 5) from Richard Bates, Jr., director of festival favorites Excursion and Suburban Gothic. Also screening are Creepy (October 8), the latest from cult director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure), in which a police detective recovering from trauma finds that his new neighbors hold a dark secret; the French miniseries Beyond the Walls (October 9), about a speech therapist who inherits a house that shifts in terrifying ways; and the Sundance favorite Eyes of My Mother (October 8), about a young girl who’s father teaches her to be unfazed by death.

Watch the trailers for Creepy and Eyes of My Mother.
October 5-9 at the AFI Silver. See the whole festival schedule here.

The Disco Exorcist

The Washington Psychotronic Film Society’s next screening is this horror comedy from Richard Griffin (Raving Maniacs). While it was made in 2011, the film was partially shot on Super 8mm film and is a fond tribute to ’70s exploitation. Michael Reed, whose entire career seems to take place in the world of low-budget horror, stars as Rex Romanski, who the WPFS describes as “a suave 1970s disco swinger womanizer. But this time he’s loved and left the wrong woman—wicked black magic priestess Rita Maria. Now it’s up to Rex to stop Rita’s subsequent rampage of revenge, murder, and destruction, as well as reclaim the soul of his new porn starlet gal Amoreena Jones before it’s too late. Get Down… and Get Dead!”

Watch the trailer.
Monday, October 3 at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel

Also opening this week, Tim Burton’s adaptation of the young adult novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children; and Operation Mekong, a Chinese-Hong Kong crime thriller based on the Mekong River Massacre. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.