MUN Cinema Series

By now you are well aware of the critical acclaim this film has garnered. We are proud to be showcasing one of the finest dramas of 2025. Stellan Skarsgård has been racking up awards for his brilliant performance as a dad with two estranged daughters. He is a director and his daughters are actresses, and so the film is as much about performance, fiction, and art as it is about strained family dynamics. What really grips audiences is the subtlety with which Trier represents emotional life. The film conveys the truth of human experience by indirection. It’s an astonishing achievement, reminiscent of Bergman (see the poster: iykyk).

Hawke is another actor we love who has been lauded for this remarkable performance as famous musical composer Lorenz Hart--of Rodgers and Hart. Even if you’re too young to know them you know some of their many enduring hits—“My Funny Valentine,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” and, of course, “Blue Moon.” This is the first of two Linklater films in our series, and both are about art and artists. Hart was a drunk, a witty, sometimes charming one, whose break late in his career from his partner played by the reliably superb Andrew Scott launches the narrative of this film. Hart is at once tormented by their separation and terribly lonely, intellectually commanding and needy. It’s opening night of Rodger’s smash hit Oklahoma and Hart, drinking at the bar, is a cynical predictor of its massive crowd-pleasing success. All else follows.

Words can’t really capture the achievement of this film, especially when you consider what is happening in Iran right now. Jafar Panahi is widely recognized as a hero for defying his country’s prohibitive rulers, boldly bringing this film to Cannes where it earned laurels and became the focus of everyone’s admiration. Having himself been imprisoned and banned from making films, Panahi nonetheless creates here an almost comic vision of memory, trauma, revenge, and moral duty. When Vahid and his wife and child “accidentally” hit a dog with their van, what follows is one damn thing after another in a chain of absurdity that starts to make sense. You really must see this, arguably the finest and most timely film of our times.

How could we not program this wonderful film about music, choirs, and the expressive power of singing in a town like ours? Set in a Yorkshire village during WWI, the film shows us that the only men around are too young or too old to fight. Those left behind are compelled to sing. When their well-loved choral director goes off to fight, Dr. Guthrie shows up to lead their annual production of a Bach classic. But Guthrie, openly a fan of German composers, has other ideas and boldly suggests they perform a less well-known Elgar piece, scandalizing the townspeople with his more than obvious homosexual orientation. Acclaimed British playwright Alan Bennett wrote the script and so you know it’s next-level good, carried to even greater heights by Fiennes’ compelling performance. This is the kind of British film we all love.

We are huge admirers of director Reichardt’s work and have screened as many as we could. Here we have another well-paced study of action in character. The always interesting Josh O’Connor plays the title figure as a thief, James Mooney, an enigma of a man who loves art and plots to steal some of it. One might say this film turns the heist movie genre on its head, taking its time to put the pieces together, working slowly to tell a dramatic story instead of revving itself up into a frenzy. That’s Reichardt’s style—deliberate, pensive, even meditative. The time is the Seventies, and the Viet Nam War is happening somewhere remote, far from the Massachusetts setting of the film, but it has a way of providing context for the dominant storyline. As always, Reichardt wants us to pay attention, so sit back and enjoy.

Here’s the other Linklater film in our series, an elegant homage to the French New Wave that will resonate with those who know their film history and inspire those first learning about it. It’s the Paris of 1959 and chain-smoking force of nature Jean-Luc Godard is making BREATHLESS (A BOUT DE SOUFFLE), the jumpy black and white film that would influence generations of filmmakers. “All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun,” Godard famously said, and so it was that Breathless honoured that maxim, but in a way that only the genius of Godard could unpack. No self-respecting film lover should miss this film about the making of a film.

This film, an award-winner at Cannes, audaciously shows the world through the eyes of a nine-year-old girl during the Gulf War. Lamia’s innocence is the perfect canvas for a story of how the war encroached on the lives of Iraqi citizens, at times reducing life to a desperate struggle for survival. Assigned at school to bake a cake in honour of Sadam Hussein’s birthday, Lamia boldly goes in search of the ingredients in a country deprived of basic goods. Her journey to the big city to fulfill her goal offers the opportunity to witness a world breaking down in real time, an ominous reminder of present-day global politics. The child’s point of view helps to lighten what would otherwise be a much darker slice of life. This is the first Iraqi film to play at Cannes, a hit everywhere but in Baghdad, as you might imagine.