The Premieres series continues with more early and exclusive looks at the very best in current arthouse cinema—on the big screen where they belong! Our 2025 calendar kicks off with The Brutalist, a must-see epic from visionary auteur Brady Corbet (veteran Cinemathequers may recall our packed screening of his first feature, Childhood of a Leader, back in 2016). Similarly, several of this spring’s selections are second films by up-and-coming directors making good on the promise of debut features that were featured in past Wisconsin Film Festivals: Payal Kapadia (All We Imagine as Light), Astrid Rondero & Fernanda Valadez (Sujo), Rungano Nyoni (On Becoming a Guinea Fowl), and Matthew Rankin (Universal Language). This series was made possible by a generous donation from an anonymous cinephile. (MK)
THURS., 1/23, 7 p.m.
THE BRUTALIST
USA, UK, Hungary | 2024 | DCP | 215 min.
Director: Brady Corbet
Cast: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce
A maximalist tour-de-force, this great American epic unfolds in post-WWII Pennsylvania. Adrien Brody gives one of his career best performances as László Tóth, a Hungarian immigrant and visionary architect who undertakes a massive commission at the behest of a wealthy industrialist. Shot in VistaVision with style and ambition to spare, The Brutalist achieves a monumental grandeur seldom seen in contemporary cinema. (MK)
THURS., 1/30, 7 p.m.
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT
India, France, The Netherlands, Luxembourg | 2024 | DCP | 118 min. | Malayalam, Hindi with English subtitles
Director: Payal Kapadia
Cast: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam
Named best film of 2024 in The New York Times and Sight & Sound, this richly realized slice of life follows a pair of roommate nurses in Mumbai. Prabha’s husband left to work abroad many years ago, while Anu has a clandestine affair with a Muslim man. Poetic and delicate, the first fiction feature from Payal Kapadia (A Night of Knowing Nothing, which screened at the 2022 Wisconsin Film Festival) won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. Presented with the support of the Center for South Asia at UW-Madison. (MK)
THURS., 2/6, 7 p.m.
DEAD MAIL
USA | 2024 | DCP | 106 min.
Director: Joe DeBoer, Kyle McConaghy
Cast: John Fleck, Sterling Macer Jr., Tomas Boykin
Evocatively set in the Midwest at the dawn of the digital age, this dark comedy and thriller is one of the most exciting American movies of the decade! Jasper (Boykin), a diligent post-office clerk, discovers a blood-stained cry for help delivered to his “dead letter” office. With assistance from Jasper’s quirky colleagues and a Scandinavian hacker, an investigation uncovers a psychodrama played-out between a synthesizer engineer and his possessive patron. Frequently reminiscent of the best films by Brian De Palma and the Coen Brothers, Dead Mail’s story is compelling and its numerous stylistic flourishes are hypnotically entrancing.
THURS., 2/13, 7 p.m.
SUJO
Mexico, France, USA | 2024 | DCP | 126 min. | Spanish with English subtitles
Director: Astrid Rondero, Fernanda Valadez
Cast: Juan Jesús Varela, Yadira Pérez, Alexis Varela
Growing up in the Mexican countryside, the orphaned son of a sicario struggles to escape his father’s dangerous legacy… and fate. Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s haunting followup to Identifying Features (WFF 2020) won a Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. “Thunderously demonstrates why Valdez and Rondero stand among those soon to be regarded as the new masters of Mexican cinema” (Indiewire). Presented with the support of Latin American Caribbean, and Iberian Studies at UW-Madison. (MK)
THURS., 2/20, 7 p.m.
ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL
Zambia, UK, Ireland | 2024 | DCP | 99 min. | Bemba with English subtitles
Director: Rungano Nyoni
Cast: Susan Chardy, Elizabeth Chisela, Henry B.J. Phiri
Driving home late at night, Shula discovers a dead body on the road—her uncle’s. Her eerily unfazed reaction puts her at odds with the elaborate Zambian funeral traditions carried out by her aunts. As long-buried family secrets come to light, a generational reckoning emerges. Rungano Nyoni’s gripping and evocative followup to I Am Not a Witch (WFF 2018) earned a Best Director prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. (MK)
THURS., 2/27, 7 p.m.
UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
Canada | 2024 | DCP | 89 min. | Farsi & French with English subtitles
Director: Matthew Rankin
Cast: Rojina Esmaeili, Saba Vahedyousefi, Pirouz Nemati
One of the year’s most original films is this imaginative, droll, and surprisingly moving second feature by Matthew Rankin (The Twentieth Century, WFF 2020). In an alternate universe Winnipeg that bears more than a passing resemblance to Tehran, a bizarre walking tour is underway; meanwhile, a pair of school kids discover money frozen under ice, and a low-level Montreal bureaucrat (played by Rankin himself) returns home after many years away. Having proved himself a technical virtuoso with a dazzling series of short films, Rankin here turns to the Iranian New Wave for inspiration, marrying that movement’s formal playfulness and humanism with his characteristically offbeat Winnipegian style to wondrous ends. (MK)
THURS., 3/6, 7 p.m.
EAT THE NIGHT
France | 2024 | DCP | 107 min. | French with English subtitles
Director: Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel
Cast: Théo Cholbi, Erwan Kepoa Falé, Lila Gueneau
Siblings Apoline and Pablo are diehard fans of online video game Darknoon. With the news that the platform will be shut down on the winter solstice, teenaged Apoline burrows even deeper into her fantastical virtual world, while Pablo enters a real-world life of crime. Unfolding both IRL and in the realm of Darknoon, Eat the Night is an immersive and forward-looking cinematic experience. (MK)
THURS., 3/13, 7 p.m.
THEATER OF THOUGHT
USA | 2022 | DCP | 108 min.
Director: Werner Herzog
The most recently completed essay film from the great Werner Herzog explores the profound mysteries of the human brain, blending philosophical musings with an investigation of cutting-edge neurotechnology. Partnering with neuroscientist Rafael Yuste, Herzog embarks on a journey to meet innovators and thinkers grappling with the ethical, social, and existential implications of brain-computer interfaces, mind control, and consciousness itself. Illuminating the wonders and dangers of these advancements, the film challenges us to reconsider autonomy, identity, and the ever-blurring lines between science fiction and reality.
THURS., 3/20, 7 p.m.
DINNER IN AMERICA
USA | 2020 | DCP | 106 min.
Director: Adam Rehmeier
Cast: Kyle Gallner, Emily Skeggs, Pat Healy
On the run from police, punk rocker Simon (Gallner) meets the indescribably eccentric Patty (Skeggs), and hides out in the house Patty lives in with her parents. Setting off on a series of anarchistic adventures in bland suburbia, Simon and Patty discover they have more in common than either realized. Beginning with a rude and funny series of sequences that establish the outsider status of our heroes, Dinner in America, in the words of one of its characters, “takes it down a notch” and the movie blossoms into a sweet story of friendship, and maybe even love, between this decidedly non-conformist duo. Because of the fully committed performances from Gallner and Skeggs, Simon and Patty become real people who are impossible to not care about as they attempt, through music and mayhem, to make their small-minded community a more comfortable place in which they can live. After earning comparisons to Repo Man, Ghost World, Welcome to the Dollhouse, and Napoleon Dynamite upon its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020, Dinner in America slowly gained a cult-following over the next five years, aided by devoted fans spreading the word on TikTok and the irresistible appeal of Simon and Patty’s original anthem, “Watermelon.” “Adam Rehmeier’s film takes no prisoners with an energy that reflects its youthful protagonists… By the end, I was a little sad to say goodbye to these two” (Brian Tallerico, Rogerebert.com).