I had the opportunity to see the wonderful new documentary It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley while I was in Copenhagen for the CPH: DOX festival, scouting for Doctober films: it played to a packed house there, with many audience members weeping by the end, myself included. And while we Doctober programmers were disappointed not to be able to include the doc in our October festival selections, having the chance to play it this summer theatrically is the next best thing. 

Superbly directed by Amy Berg, the film offers a moving telling of Buckley's life, his immense talent, and his tragic early death. As Chris Barsanti writes for Slant, the film shows "Jeff Buckley's meteoric rise and early death in the 1990s through the adoring and wounded voices of his family, friends, and bandmates[, and] Berg leavens their wistful memories with personal and concert footage, along with Buckley's notebook jottings, ramblingly funny and emotional voicemails, and jagged animations that are meant to simulate his manic and at times self-destructive mindset." 

It's ultimately a complex and poignant portrait, and I'm delighted to say that this theatrical version of the film also includes bonus material that will not be available anywhere but in theaters: 26 additional minutes of previously unreleased and remastered footage of Buckley in a solo performance concert in 1994 in Cambridge, MA. 

As an independent theater, we sometimes get the opportunity to play very special independent films that do not have a wide release, and this week comes with just such an opportunity with What We Hide, written and directed by Dan Kay and produced by Tony Stopperan (who was also a production executive for Pig, the Nic Cage film). What We Hide tells the story of two sisters whose mother tragically dies of an overdose, and they decide to cover up the death and pretend their mother is still alive so as not to be split up in the foster care system. It's got terrific performances from the two young actresses who play the sisters: Mckenna Grace (who was most recently in the Ghostbusters films, but also in Captain Marvel and Handmaid's Tale series) and JoJo Regina (Where the Crawdads Sing). The film is about the failures of the system and about kids getting caught up in those failures, but it is also tenderly focused on the individual lives of the two girls, making it an emotionally resonant story, quite lyrically and beautifully filmed. 

I'm also delighted to say that Tony Stopperan will be here for a Q&A after two of the film's showings: tonight's 7:25 pm showing and Monday's 5:45 pm showing. It's a rare opportunity that we get to peek behind the curtain and get insights into how a film is made, so what a pleasure that Tony will be here to share some production secrets with us!  

Many of you might have joined us last year during our Cinema East series for the electrifying Cure or you may have joined us in years' past for Tokyo Sonata, another Cinema East selection. If you were at either of those masterful films, you'll be all the more eager to catch up with Kiyoshi Kurosawa's superb, newest film, Cloud.  More in the vein of Cure than Tokyo Sonata, Cloud is a thriller that follows the story of Ryosuke Yoshii, an independent online merchant who buys products in bulk and then resells them for exorbitantly high prices. It's a career dependent upon the exploitation of others -- those from whom he buys and those to whom he sells -- and it's an increasingly antisocial life, one mediated by impersonal screens and one that he seems content to lead until threatening messages and frightening physical encounters begin to indicate others are not so content with his callous business practices. 

Kurosawa, a master of dread and suspense, offers a terrifically entertaining film, but it comes with a thematic richness, too, that is both intellectually thrilling and typical of Kurosawa's work. As Justin Chang, writing about Cloud for the New Yorker eloquently explains, 

"That tension between modes [of realism and online fantasy] gives Cloud tremendous visceral and intellectual force, plus a persistent air of moral inquiry. Kurosawa poses a connection between the brutish intimacy of physical violence and the callous detachment of online violence. He wants to cut through the dull, anesthetizing membrane of the internet and resensitize us to the specific, personal human realities—names, faces, emotions, histories, struggles—that lurk behind every username. But he also leaves us with a far more unsettling conclusion: namely, that a culture of quick-click gratification has so thoroughly stripped away the veneer of civilized society, and exposed and exacerbated such vast inequities of class and money, that a will to annihilate our chosen nemeses might be the only honest human impulse we have left. The final estimation of Cloud, as chilling as it is hard to refute, is that the internet hasn't created an empathy deficit but merely exposed one that's been there all along."