October 31-November 6, 2025 

Hello, friends, and happy Halloween!

This week at the Pickford, Frankenstein continues for one final week on Bay St.; its last day is November 6, so be sure to see it before then if you want to catch it on the big screen, where the visuals were meant to be experienced. Over on Grand Ave., One Battle After Another has a few more shows, and the warmly personal Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere and intensely immersive If I Had Legs I’d Kick You also continue their runs. 

New on Grand Ave. is what perhaps may be the Film of the Year: Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, which took the top prize at the Cannes Film festival, the coveted Palme d’Or. This prize alone would be an indication of the film’s must-see excellence: recent Palme d’Or winners have included such Oscar darlings as Parasite (Best Picture), Triangle of Sadness (Best Picture nominee), Anatomy of a Fall (Best Picture nominee), and Anora (Best Picture). 

But it isn’t just the prize that makes it one of the most significant films of the year: it’s who made it and what it’s about. Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, many of you may recall, has found himself in the crosshairs of an oppressive, authoritarian regime for many years: he was arrested and imprisoned in 2010, enduring mistreatment and threats against his family, and when he was released, he was placed under house arrest and banned from filmmaking for 20 years, a ban he refused to follow, continuing to make films in secret. He was re-arrested in 2022 before being released in 2023 after going on a hunger strike. Suffice it to say, Panahi has literally risked his life to make movies, and his extraordinary films over the years have not only exhibited a mastery over the artform but also reflected a brilliance in theme and narrative that make him one of the greatest living filmmakers. 

While under house arrest, Panahi made films that were a mix of documentary and drama, often including himself onscreen as a character and reflecting on the nature of filmmaking itself. It Was Just an Accident

represents Panahi’s return to narrative filmmaking, but it is no less personal. Here, the story follows Vahid, a mechanic who hears the squeak of a customer’s prosthetic leg and believes it to be the very same squeak he heard when he was a political prisoner: the sound of the leg of the brutal guard who tormented and tortured him while he was in prison. Vahid, keen on revenge and justice, kidnaps this man with the squeaky leg, intent on killing him, but then doubts begin to creep in: is this really the same man who tortured him? What follows is Vahid’s mission to discover the truth, gathering other people who were tormented by the same guard to determine if the man is, in fact, the torturer. 

I will not give away more and thus spoil the journey, but I remain in awe of Panahi’s absolute control over the film’s tone and his ability to bring exquisite nuance and moral and philosophical considerations to bear on profound questions of justice and revenge while putting his characters into genuinely hilarious and farcical situations, leading us as an audience from laughter in one scene to emotional devastation in another. 

Perhaps only someone like Panahi himself, an artist who experienced torment in prison and who has reflected on such experiences and moralities in such a deeply personal way, is the only filmmaker who could have made this film. I only know it is a film unlike any other, and it’s the film we need at this historical moment. 

Don’t miss it.

There is, perhaps, some kinship, however, between a film like Panahi’s, with its mix of deadly seriousness, humor, and socio-political pungence, and Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film Bugonia, a film that also swings from comedy to gravity and offers us a commentary on what it means to be human in the world we find ourselves in today, where those in power seem to be without a moral center and the masses seem to scrabble to find meaning. Lanthimos has, perhaps, a more bleakly cynical eye than Panahi; Panahi, I think, leaves us with more hope for the human condition, in spite of the horrors, than Lanthimos does. That does not mean, however, as grim as it is, that Bugonia is not also wildly entertaining. 

As I noted last week, I hesitate to say anything about the Bugonia storyline--it’s best experienced knowing as little about it as possible--but in the briefest of terms, it follows Teddy (Jesse Plemmons) and Don (Aidan Delbis), two working class conspiracy theorists who are convinced that Michelle (Emma Stone), the super-rich CEO of a pharmaceutical company, is an alien, and they need to do something about it in order to save the world. It’s a set-up that, as you might guess, involves extraordinary swings in audience sympathy, and who we root for from moment to moment takes such twists and turns that it’s a testament to Lanthimos’s narrative power as well as to the truly extraordinary performances from Plemmons, Stone, and newcomer Delbis.

It’s a film that will make an audience feels lots of things (and perhaps cover their eyes from time to time) and that will also ultimately have viewers come out talking about what they saw: the narrative, the characters, the themes, and the questions all offer much food for thought and in that regard, it’s one of my favorite experiences of the year. 

But if you need a more sturdily hopeful film after watching something like Bugonia, look no further than this year’s Doctober Audience Award winning film, Snow Leopard Sisters.

Returning for a one-time-only special Audience Award screening, Snow Leopard Sisters is a truly beautiful documentary, telling the story of a life-changing friendship and celebrating the breathtaking magnificence of the natural world: “Tshiring Lhama Lama has dedicated her life to saving the highly vulnerable population of snow leopards that call the Dolpo region home but are now on the brink of extinction. One of the biggest threats to the species is the goat herders in the region who slaughter the leopards in order to protect the flocks the community relies on. Tshiring, seeking an apprentice to carry on her work, forms an alliance with the teenaged Tenzin Bhuti Gurung, the daughter of one such goat herder who yearns to be free of a dreaded arranged marriage. Together, Tshiring and Tenzin, forge the bonds of sisterhood even as they bring hope, joy, and light to their community and show a way forward--a path to saving the leopards, protecting the flocks, and instilling in rural Nepalese women a new sense of dignity and independence.” 

Join us on Saturday, November 1 at 1:15 pm on Bay St! 

Finally, on Thursday at 7:45 on Grand Ave., we’re delighted to be screening Harold and Maude, the powerfully moving comedy-romance starring Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort and directed by the great Hal Ashby. Tickets are currently sold out (check back for openings or feel free to stop by the Grand to put your name on the wait list), but we are grateful to Ann Reinhart, who programmed the film for us as a part of our Film Futures investment fund. Thank you for this wonderful choice, Ann! 

See you at the movies, friends! 

Melissa