Category: Ithaca Film Journal

What I’m Seeing This Week: My top priority is On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, since it will be at Cinemapolis for one week only, and I’m planning to see Eephus there as well because I don’t want to risk missing it either. Finally, our plans for a “date night” outing to Black Bag at Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall last week fell through, so My Loving Wife and I trying again tomorrow.

Also in Theaters: The best new movie now playing Ithaca RIGHT NOW that I’ve already seen No Other Land, but its final screening at Cinemapolis is today at 2:50pm. After that it will be Anora, which continues its post-Best Picture Oscar run at Cinemapolis and the Regal. That should definitely be your first choice if you somehow haven’t already checked it out, but otherwise it’s all about special events and repertory fare this week. Highlights on the former front include free screenings at Cornell Cinema of an experimental short films program called “Matter Falling Out of Form” tonight, The Year Between on Monday evening and a shorts program called the “Women’s Adventure Film Tour 2025” on Wednesday, as well as a double feature of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and La La Land there on Saturday. My other “old movie” recommendation is Peeping Tom, which closes out Cornell Cinema’s “Powell and Pressburger: Titans of Technicolor” series tomorrow.

Home Video: My oldest daughter Lucy recently scored the first two points of her basketball career in the final game of her second season. We’re extremely proud of all the hard work she has put in on and off (her coaches think that indoor rock climbing has had a noticeable impact on her upper body strength) the court and have enjoyed watching her improve each week. In addition to the bucket, she also fought for rebounds and let her teammates know when she was open, which she attributes to our new pre-game ritual of playing the song “Defying Gravity” on repeat in the car so that she and her sister can lustily sing along to it to warm up her voice. In honor of this momentous event (which literally brought tears to My Loving Wife’s eyes!) in our family’s history, this week’s home video recommendation is Love & Basketball, which Cornell Cinema actually screened in February and which is now streaming on Peacock.

This film was released theatrically almost exactly one year before I officially became a diehard basketball fan during my freshman year at the University of Pittsburgh when my soon-to-be-beloved Panthers went on a Cinderella run during the Big East (RIP) tournament. Although this wasn’t enough to secure an NCAA Tournament bid that year, they went on to appear in the next ten and came within a heartbreaking miracle Scottie Reynolds coast-to-coast basket of the Final Four in 2009. Throughout this run they always had great point guards, so I was delighted when this turned out to be the position that Love & Basketball‘s protagonists Monica Wright (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy McCall (Omar Epps) both play and in heaven when the movie’s pivotal moment turns out to be Wright taking a charge. It also features one of cinema’s great one-on-one games (along with Arthur Agee’s showdown with his father in my March, 2024 Drink & a Movie selection Hoop Dreams) followed by a heartwarming final scene celebrating the WNBA, which was still only in its third year of existence during shooting.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I wasn’t able to make it to Mickey 17 last week after all, so seeing it at Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall is my first order of business. My Loving Wife and I are also planning a “date night” (we’re probably actually going to hit a matinee) outing to Black Bag at one of those two theaters as well.

Also in Theaters: The best new film now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is Close Your Eyes, which screens at Cornell Cinema on Sunday. No Other Land, which continues its run at Cinemapolis, made my “Top Ten Movies of 2024” list too, and I recommend Best Picture Oscar winner Anora (Cinemapolis and the Regal) as well. I’m also intrigued by Toxic, which is at Cornell Cinema tonight, and am looking forward to selecting Paddington in Peru (Regal) and The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (Cinemapolis and the Regal) for Family (née Friday) Movie Night later this year. Noteworthy special events include an event called “Nosferatu x Radiohead: A Silents Synced Film” at Cornell Cinema and a free Pi Day screening of the documentary Counted Out at Cinemapolis tomorrow; a free “Family Classics Picture Show” screening of An American Tail at Cinemapolis on Sunday; and a free screening of Alien at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are Peeping Tom and The Red Shoes, which play Cornell Cinema tonight and Saturday respectively.

Home Video: It recently occurred to me that The Crowd, one of my favorite movies of all time, has now been in the public domain in the United States for more than a year. I was utterly shocked to discover that it nonetheless remains unavailable on a good R1 Blu-ray/DVD release. It can, however, be streamed on Watch TCM until March 21. Here’s what I wrote about it on Letterboxd after revisiting it there last week:

John Sims (James Murray) stars as a man who inherits the vision of exceptionalism his father (Warner Richmond) had for him and learns the hard way each time how to fall in love with first the mother (Eleanor Boardman) of his first child (Freddie Burke Frederick); then Mary, the actual flesh-and-blood woman who occupies that role; and finally the life they’ve been really living all the while he was dreaming, hopefully just in time to finally lay a foundation before the Great Depression that not even the filmmakers know is barreling down upon them hits. Mary’s brothers (Daniel G. Tomlinson and Dell Henderson) are perfectly dour avatars of bourgeoisie judgmentalism, and the depictions of the titular urban masses constitute all-time great cinema images which clearly inspired David Lynch, Jacques Tati, Orson Welles, and any number of other giants who followed.

The Welles film most commonly associated with this one is The Trial, but the Crazy House sequence in The Lady from Shanghai, which I wrote about in January, was clearly inspired by it as well. The works by Lynch and Tati I mainly have in mind are Twin Peaks: The Return and Playtime, which I wrote about in December.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I am excited to finally see Universal Language, which I heard great things about as it worked its way across the film festival circuit last year, at Cinemapolis! I am also going to try to catch Mickey 17 there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall on the only other evening I’m free.

Also in Theaters: Cornell Cinema has an absolutely killer lineup this week that my schedule doesn’t permit me to take advantage of, but you should if you can! If I was free on Saturday, I would definitely be going to the “unique Cornell version of Eno,” and if I was free tomorrow I’d probably prioritize Toxic ahead of Mickey 17 and Universal Language. They’re also screening Close Your Eyes, which landed at fifth place on my Top Ten Movies of 2024 list, tomorrow and my August, 2024 “Drink & a Movie” selection Black Narcissus on Sunday. Otherwise, the best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is newly-minted Best Documentary Feature Oscar winner No Other Land, which continues its run at Cinemapolis, as does this year’s Best International Feature Film I’m Still Here. Best Picture Oscar winner Anora is back in local theaters as well at both Cinemapolis and the Regal. Other noteworthy special events include “An Evening with John Cameron Mitchell” at Cornell’s Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts on Friday; free admission to the Streets Alive! Film Festival at Cinemapolis on Sunday, a free screening of Song Lang at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday, and a preview screening of The Friend at Cinemapolis that same evening. Finally, another repertory highlight is The Adventures of Prince Achmed at Cornell Cinema on Sunday.

Home Video: Speaking of my top ten list for 2024, the film that placed sixth on it, All We Imagine as Light, premieres live on the Criterion Channel at 9pm on Sunday! The first film from India to compete in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 30 years, it won the Grand Prix there and placed fourth in the IndieWire Critics Poll, which is definitely the list of this type that I put the most stock in. Looking back on the only “Ithaca Film Journal” post where I actually had occasion to recommend this movie, I realize I didn’t say anything about it because I assumed I already had! Anyway, it’s a sumptuously photographed tale of platonic and romantic love with a delightfully poetic “plot twist” and an outstanding final shot that features a kid absolutely rocking out to headphone music.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: As longtime readers of this blog know, I consider the “movie year” to begin and end on Oscar night. The Monkey, which I’m planning to catch at either Cinemapolis or the Regal Ithaca Mall, will therefore be my first theatrical screening of 2025. More about this when I publish my top ten list on Sunday!

Also in Theaters: No Other Land, the film I’ll be rooting for to win this year’s Best Documentary Feature Oscar, continues its run at Cinemapolis and remains the best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen. I also recommend Best Picture nominees I’m Still Here and The Substance, which are at Cinemapolis all week, and A Complete Unknown, which closes there today. This week’s special events are highlighted by the Ithaca Experimental Film Festival, which is at Cinemapolis on Saturday and Cornell Cinema on Sunday. There is also a free screening of local filmmaker Ira McKinley’s The Throwaways accompanied by excerpts from his new work A Tale of Two Journeys at Cinemapolis tonight and a free screening of the movie Lilting at Cornell Cinema on Wednesday. Finally, doors open for Cinemapolis’s annual Oscar night fundraising gala at 6:30pm on Sunday. On the repertory front, your best best bets are the screenings of Black Narcissus (which I wrote about last August) and The Annihilation of Fish, the rerelease of which Carlos Valladares recently called “the cinematic event of the year,” at Cornell Cinema on Friday and The Red Shoes on Saturday.

Home Video: If you want to see *all* of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts, you’ll need to head to Cinemapolis or (in the case of the documentaries) Cornell Cinema. The ones I’ll be rooting for are all available online, though! In the Best Animated Short Film category, my favorite is Wander to Wonder, a tale of survival starring characters from a creepy 70s/80s kids television program that uses Shakespearian quotation and engages with the idea of unfathomably (and therefore “indistinguishable from magic) advanced technology (here: VHS!) in a way that reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke’s classic science fiction novel Rendezvous with Rama. It is available for rental via Vimeo. My pick in the Best Live Action Short Film category is streaming on Vimeo for free: A Lien is a tense, effective Paul Greengrass-style shaky cam thriller about the despicable U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka ICE) practice of arresting people at their green card interviews. But the cream of the whole crop is Best Documentary Short Film nominee Incident, which uses stunningly complex and effective split-screen editing to recreate the cacophony and chaos of being on the scene of an “incident” (the almost completely unmotivated killing of a black man by a white police officer) that everyone knows never should have happened and fears will blow up into something even more horrible any second and debunks the proceduralist myth of infallible law enforcement professionalism in the process. It is available via The New Yorker. By way of an honorable mention I also recommend Instruments of a Beating Heart, which I described on Letterboxd as “the Muppet Babies version of Whiplash” and which is probably my second-favorite one of these movies overall. It is available via The New York Times.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I decided I didn’t want to risk missing out on No Other Land last week, so I still have one Oscar-nominated shorts program left to go: I’m planning to catch the live action shorts at Cornell Cinema on Saturday, but they’re also playing Cinemapolis all week.

Also in Theaters: No Other Land is a contender for my Movie Year 2024 top ten list (which I’ll publish on Oscar night like usual) and my top new film recommendation. It continues its run at Cinemapolis. Of the two Oscar-nominated shorts programs I’ve already seen, the documentaries are significantly better than the animated shorts. You can see the latter at Cornell Cinema tomorrow, and both are playing Cinemapolis all week. Other first run features I enjoyed include A Complete Unknown and I’m Still Here, both of which are at Cinemapolis. You also have one last chance to see The Brutalist and Nickel Boys, one of which (I still haven’t made up my mind) I’ll be rooting for to win this year’s Best Picture Oscar, there today. On the special events front, the highlights are free screenings of the documentaries The Bomb at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday and of Anonymous Sister and Free For All: The Public Library at Cinemapolis on Saturday and Tuesday respectively. Your best bets for repertory fare are The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Fantastic Mr. Fox, which are at Cornell Cinema tonight and Sunday respectively. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not also mention that Twilight, which is beloved of my favorite film scholar who graduated from Cornell Matt Strohl (class of 2003), is screening there on Saturday.

Home Video: Sometimes works of art feel like adaptations even when you know they aren’t. The best example of this for me might be the Beatles song “For No One,” which I always hear as retelling James Joyce’s short story “The Dead.” It is perhaps therefore appropriate that when I finally saw the movie Distant Voices, Still Lives for the first time a couple of weeks ago, the overwhelming impression I got was that it was director Terence Davies’ version of his fellow Liverpudlians’ “In My Life.” I’d have a lot more to say about this movie, which is commonly regarded as both the first and second volumes in a trilogy were it not for the fact that its conclusion, The Long Day Closes, is a straight-up masterpiece. Here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:

The Christmas dinner interior/exterior mash-up tableau is an all-time great movie image, although the exterior shot of the rowhouse with just the top of a Christmas tree with blinking lights visible through the windows as a drizzly rain falls which follows shortly afterward and the lengthy study of how an old carpet looks at different times of day might resonate with me even more for personal reasons. The opening and closing shots which derive power and meaning from a later string of overhead tracking shots connecting child’s play to cinema to church to school (where the lesson is about the forces of erosion) also rank among the great bookends in cinema history. Finally, if that wasn’t already enough, The Long Day Closes is the best argument I can conceive of for why some (to be clear: not all!) films definitely should have 85-minute runtimes that I can possibly imagine.

The Long Day Closes, which is now streaming on the Criterion Channel, is perfectly intelligible as a standalone work, but it’s totally worth ponying up $2.99 to rent Distant Voices, Still Lives on Prime Video so that you can watch the entire cycle.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I didn’t make it to I’m Still Here last week, so I’m going to try to catch it at Cinemapolis after work today, plus I hope to see all three of the Oscar-nominated shorts programs screening there and at Cornell Cinema before next Thursday!

Also in Theaters: I’m saving it for next week for scheduling reasons, but No Other Land is actually the new release opening in Ithaca (at Cinemapolis) today that I’m most looking forward to. The best first-run movies now playing locally that I’ve already seen are The Brutalist and Nickel Boys, both of which are at Cinemapolis as well. I also enjoyed Dahomey, which screens at Cornell Cinema tonight; A Complete Unknown, which continues its run at Cinemapolis; Moana 2, which is still going strong at the Regal Ithaca Mall; and two films which close at Cinemapolis today, Memoir of a Snail and The Seed of the Sacred Fig. This week’s special events are highlighted by the return of the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival to Cornell tomorrow and Saturday and a free screening of Benji at Cinemapolis on Sunday as part of their “Family Classics Picture Show” series. Your best bets for repertory fare are two 4k restorations at Cornell Cinema: The Annihilation of Fish screens there tonight, and Happy Together follows it tomorrow.

Home Video: If, like me, you were scared away from last Saturday’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’État screening at Cornell Cinema by the weather forecast, fear not! Current Cornell faculty, staff, and students can view this ambitious and stylish found footage documentary about the assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba on Kanopy thanks to a license paid for by the Library, and everyone else can rent it from a variety of streaming video platforms. It is edited to the sound and rhythm of the jazz musicians who were unwittingly being used as “cultural ambassadors” to the third world by the same American government that likely killed him until they got wise, and although at 150 minutes it runs a bit long, it’s frequently funny, sometimes shocking, and never dull.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, which plays Cornell Cinema on Saturday, and I’m Still Here, which opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow.

Also in Theaters: My favorite new release now playing Ithaca is once again All We Imagine as Light, which screens at Cornell Cinema tonight. The Brutalist, which is at Cinemapolis and the Regal Ithaca Mall, and Nickel Boys, which is at Cinemapolis, are contenders for my Movie Year 2024 top ten list too, and I also enjoyed A Complete Unknown (Cinemapolis + the Regal), Memoir of a Snail (Cinemapolis), Nosferatu (Cinemapolis + the Regal), and The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Cinemapolis). Noteworthy special events include free screenings of I Didn’t See You There (which is directed by Reid Davenport, whose new film Life After just debuted at Sundance to much acclaim) and Oppenheimer at Cornell Cinema on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively and a screening of Bisbee ’17 followed by a conversation with director Robert Greene there on Monday. Finally, your best bets for repertory fare are The Third Man, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which play Cornell Cinema Friday and Sunday respectively. You can also see Nosferatu the Vampyre there tonight.

Home Video: Speaking of my top ten list, I now know for sure that Evil Does Not Exist, which is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel, will be on it following a second viewing. Oft-described as an eco-fable or -parable, it is more broadly about the concept of balance: although the bare-bones plot revolves around a “glamping” concern descending on a rural farming community, the gutshot deer at the beginning of the film which was dead before they ever arrived demonstrates that the one at the end doesn’t have anything to do with it directly. Playmode (what a great awful name!) employee Takahashi (Ryûji Kosaka) is instead standing next to Hitoshi Omika’s Takumi when they encounter it because he has gotten absurdly carried away with an idea of who he *could* be, which only serves to reveal how little he knows about the man he actually is and the world he’s trying to shoehorn himself into. Evil Does (Not) Exist (which is how the font coloring of the title card suggests it maybe should be written) also features a satisfyingly crisp winter color palette and a frustrating community feedback meeting that I have been on both sides of the table of at least a hundred times in my life.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I am going with Hard Truths, which closes at the the Regal Ithaca Mall today but continues its run at Cinemapolis at least through next Thursday, and continuing my quest to see all of this year’s Oscar nominees before the ceremony on March 2, I’m also planning to see The Seed of the Sacred Fig sometime after it opens there tomorrow.

Also in Theaters: Speaking of the Oscars, Best Animated Feature Film nominee Memoir of a Snail (which I’m planning to see next week) also opens at Cinemapolis tomorrow. Other contenders you can see on local big screens include The Brutalist (Cinemapolis + Regal), A Complete Unknown (Cinemapolis + Regal), Nickel Boys (Cinemapolis), Nosferatu (Cinemapolis + Regal), and Wicked (Regal). My favorites are The Brutalist and Nickel Boys, but they’re all worth seeing. The very best new movie now playing Ithaca that I’ve already seen is All We Imagine as Light, which screens at Cornell Cinema Saturday evening. I also enjoyed Babygirl and Presence, both of which are at the Regal. This week’s special events are highlighted by the Ithaca Underground Music Video Festival, which is at Cinemapolis tonight. Your best bets for repertory fare are A Matter of Life and Death, which is at Cornell Cinema tomorrow, and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, which is there on Saturday. You can also see last week’s “Home Video” recommendation Mulholland Drive there tonight along with Eraserhead, which is of course also directed by the late, great David Lynch.

Home Video: Six films have basically already clinched spots on the top ten list for Movie Year 2024 I’ll publish in March. All We Imagine as Light is one of them. Another is Close Your Eyes, which recently started streaming on Mubi. I originally thought I was going to present it as tied with La Chimera and write them up together, but while they do have a lot in common thematically, Close Your Eyes has started to differentiate itself in my mind, so we’ll see. Anyway, here’s what I said about it on Letterboxd:

Close Your Eyes begins and ends with excerpts from one of my new favorite films within a film, an unfinished work called The Farewell Gaze, and contains both a diegetic rendition of “My Rife, My Pony and Me” and a load-bearing reference to Carl Theodor Dreyer, but it’s way more than mere cinephile catnip. Rather, like Movie Year 2024’s La Chimera, it’s a thorough and nuanced investigation of the question Is it possible for an aesthete to live a good life in the absence of art? Where that film’s Arthur (Josh O’Connor) is faced with a choice, though, this one’s protagonists Miguel Garay (Manolo Soto) and Julio Arenas (Jose Coronado) have that reality thrust upon them. Or do they? Doubling abounds–even the title is a reference to director Victor Erice’s 1973 magnum opus The Spirit of the Beehive.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: My Loving Wife and I are dropping the kids off at a playdate and seeing The Brutalist at Cinemapolis on Sunday, and I’m going to try to see Presence at the Regal Ithaca Mall as well.

Also in Theaters: Although we’re prioritizing The Brutalist for scheduling reasons, I’m actually more excited to see Hard Truths, which opens at both Cinemapolis and the Regal today. Soundtrack to a Coup d’État and Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, which screen at Cornell Cinema tonight and tomorrow respectively, have each appeared on at least 30 Best Movies of 2024 lists according to the website CriticsTop10. I fear that I’m going to have to give the latter a miss, but I’m planning to catch the former when it returns to town on February 8. My top recommendations among first-run options that I’ve already seen are Nickel Boys, a formally audacious requiem for those whom the arc of the moral universe didn’t bend fast enough toward justice to save that I anticipate will be my rooting interest for any number of Oscars which continues its run at Cinemapolis, and Flow, my favorite animated film of Movie Year 2024 which plays Cornell Cinema on Saturday and Sunday. Other new movies I enjoyed include Babygirl (the Regal), A Complete Unknown (Cinemapolis & the Regal), Nosferatu (Cinemapolis & the Regal), and The Room Next Door (Cinemapolis). Your best bet for repertory fare is Wild at Heart, which screens at Cinemapolis on Monday in memory of director David Lynch, who passed last Wednesday, but other great options include A Matter of Life and Death and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, which are at Cornell Cinema tomorrow and Sunday respectively.

Home Video: Speaking of David Lynch, My Loving Wife and I both chose to celebrate his life by finally watching movies directed by him which we’d never seen before. I was lucky enough to first encounterMulholland Drive at the Squirrel Hill Theater (RIP) during its original theatrical run with a bunch of other members of the University of Pittsburgh’s Twin Peaks Club , but she somehow never got around to it. Although Blue Velvet was my first love and Dune will always hold a special place in my heart, this is probably the David Lynch film I’d pick as my favorite. Meanwhile, I’d always understood The Straight Story to be a skippable aberration in his filmography, but this is not at all the case: for all of his weirdness, Lynch also valued sincerity, and this film is as pure a distillation of that aspect of his sensibility as the eighth episode of Twin Peaks: The Return is of another. Both are highly recommended, as is everything else Esther Zuckerman mentions in her New York Times article “12 Cryptic Titles From David Lynch and Where You Can Stream Them.”

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.

What I’m Seeing This Week: I am planning to see both Nickel Boys and The Room Next Door after they open at Cinemapolis tomorrow.

Also in Theaters: It’s officially awards season at the Regal Ithaca Mall! Oscar nominations were originally scheduled to be announced tomorrow, and although this has been pushed back to next Thursday because of the devastating wildfires in California, contenders have started to reappear on the Regal’s screens. My top recommendation among the first batch is Anora, which screens Friday-Saturday and Tuesday-Wednesday. Additional titles returning to town this week include Conclave, The Substance, and The Wild Robot. Other new movies that I enjoyed include Babygirl (Regal), Nosferatu (Cinemapolis + the Regal), and A Complete Unknown (Cinemapolis + the Regal) in that order. I also hear good things about Better Man, so hopefully it will stick around at the Regal for at least another week. You have one last chance to see The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at Cinemapolis this evening, and that definitely should be your highest priority for repertory fare, but there’s also a free screening of the Marx Brothers vehicle A Night at the Opera there on Sunday as part of their “Family Classics Picture Show” series. Another fine choice would be The Goonies, which has 40th anniversary (typing that made me feel SO old) screenings at the Regal on Sunday and Monday. On the special events front, there will be a free screening of the documentary Move When the Spirit Says Move at Cinemapolis on Monday followed by a panel discussion about subject Dorothy Foreman Cotton.

Home Video: Green Border, one of the candidates for my top ten list for Movie Year 2024 (which as always I’ll publish in March), is currently available on Kanopy to all current Cornell University faculty, students, and staff thanks to a license paid for by the library. As a multifaceted view of the Belarus-Poland border crisis which began in 2021 when the government of Belarus disingenuously began offering refugees free passage into the European Union, it is topical, but seeing it shortly after Come and See underscored for me the extent to which it, too, is an anti-war film. As I wrote on Letterboxd:

Although it tragically comes at the cost of thousands of innocent lives, the path out of Green Border‘s hellscape is littered with less and less bodies as it progresses. People who are not desperately fighting for their own survival retain the capacity to be shocked into action by exposure to violent acts that their citizenship makes them complicit in, whereas war inevitably breeds future conflicts: the earlier film’s Belarusian victims of Nazi atrocities are themselves the instigators of this one’s new cycle of dehumanization.

It also contains powerful individual moments like the image of a mother squeezing a meager harvest of water droplets from the branches of an evergreen into the mouth of her child and a sickening thud that you’ll recognize when you hear it which I won’t soon forget.

Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.