Film Schedule

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The confessional is, for many faithful, a sacred place to lay bare one's sins and seek forgiveness. For the quartet of devout and enterprising teens in director Piotr Domalewski's clever coming-of-age dramedy, it also becomes a lucrative vehicle for social justice. After discovering that their local archdiocese has been lining its pockets with monies donated ... more

Buffalo, New York, is a union town first, a coffee town second. In 2021, when local Starbucks baristas had had enough of low wages, insufficient health insurance, and other workplace inequities, the call was "No contract, no coffee." The fight for the right to unionize Starbucks has now spread nationally to some 600 stores, led not by union bosses but by brave ... more

Nearly 30 years after his Chacun Cherche Son Chat screened at the festival, award-winning director Cédric Klapisch returns to Filmfest DC with this delightful time-tripping romantic dramedy that masterfully captures the lavish wonder of la Belle Epoque and the invigorating energy pulsing through a society stepping into a new cultural era. In 1895, Adèle ... more

Although opening titles say it's a "mostly true story," Comandante Fritz is a rom-com for the Cold War era. Simultaneously stylish, serious, and darkly funny, the film opens in 1959 at a swank Cuban hotel nightclub where singer Lola Morales (Yany Prado) is about to go onstage, but Castro's revolutionaries interrupt the fun. The action jumps to 1972, as East ... more

Director Gianni Di Gregorio (The Salt of Life, Mid-August Lunch) returns to Filmfest DC with his latest comedy-drama, in which he also takes on the lead role. In this charming film, Di Gregorio stars as a retired professor whose peaceful, perfectly predictable life is upended by the unexpected arrival of his daughter (Greta Scarano), who's taken her two children—teenaged ... more

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When Sting admits that he "stole" the arrangement from the singer who recorded what is likely the definitive version of his own song Fields of Gold, he's referring to a world-class artist. The Essence of Eva is a revealing portrait of Bowie, Maryland's own Eva Cassidy, who left this world too soon. The picture that emerges through home movies and interviews ... more

This Sundance award-winning documentary about ordinary citizens spontaneously uniting to resist a hostile immigration raid could hardly be timelier here. May 13, 2021, happened to be Eid, an important holiday for the diverse Glasgow neighborhood of Pollokshields, yet that was the day the Home Office chose to execute a surprise dawn arrest of two men who had ... more

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Sarah Goher's acclaimed debut feature is a tour (de force) of modern-day Cairo, from its upper-class enclaves, to its streets teeming with motor scooters and life, to the beautifully observed world of 8-year-old Toha and her loving family of fisherwomen. As Toha dons a scarf for a day's work as an upper-class family's maid, she asks her "friend" Nelly, "What ... more

Andrius Blaževičius took home the Best Director award in the World Cinema Dramatic competition at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival for this insightful social commentary. Centered around a marriage that ends just as Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine begins, the drama follows newly separated exes Marija (Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė) and Vytas (Marius Repšys), who ... more

Beneath Baghdad's bridges and bustling streets, 9-year-old orphan and dreamer Chum-Chum and 13-year-old rebel Moody navigate the city's unforgiving reality with youthful determination. Inspired by the legend of Gilgamesh, Chum-Chum (Youssef Husham Al-Thahabi) clings to the belief that he will be reunited with his beloved parents in the blue-black waters of ... more

The deep ache of desire is at the core of this gorgeously shot romantic drama set in 1980s' post-war Saigon. In the same vein as Wong Kar Wai's classic In the Mood for Love, this rich and dreamy film revolves around translator Khang (Liên Bỉnh Phát), who's moved to the city to work for the new regime, and the intense relationship he slowly develops with his ... more

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Denis Podalydès is a fine addition to the many Detective Maigrets who have appeared onscreen and in novels since 1930. His Maigret is a man of precision. Director Pascal Bonitzer has set this latest adventure in early 2000s Paris, where the ever-cautious Chief Inspector (André Marcon) summons Maigret to investigate the murder of a renowned former ... more

The ninth edition of our popular programs of films from the vibrant, creative community of filmmakers in DC and the immediate Metro area. Members of filmmaking teams from all the films are expected in person. Featuring Sudakas, Kaju Katli, A Poem, A Poet in Self-Exile: James A. Emanuel, Paralysis By Analysis, and From the Hill to the Horizon.... more

The ninth edition of our popular programs of films from the vibrant, creative community of filmmakers in DC and the immediate Metro area. Members of filmmaking teams from all the films are expected in person. Featuring Words of Power: Mastering the Art of Calligraphy, Sin Luces, Highly Visible, The Magical World of Joan Danziger, Work From Home, Hill Boy, ... more

The Negotiator creates such an edge-of-your-seat feeling that when you realize the film is based on actual people and events, the story hits even harder. Amid the bleak chaos of the Iraq war in 2005, an Italian journalist (Sonia Bergamasco) has just been kidnapped. Among other consequences, this interrupts veteran Italian secret service agent Nicola Calipari's ... more

In 2007 Gaza, Yahya works at his friend's falafel shop—a storefront that secretly doubles as a hub for drug dealing. Drawn into the operation, he witnesses a brutal crime that will haunt him for years. Years later, Yahya is selected to star in a TV series celebrating martyrs and heroes of the resistance. As tensions simmer and conflict looms, the line between ... more

"I cannot vote today. Ask me why," reads the homemade sandwich board sign that D.C. native Lisa Rice wears on election day. Passing voters ask, and this good-natured election reformer has answers and petitions to sign. Like the fastest-growing contingent of voting Americans, Lisa is a registered Independent and therefore unable to vote in party primaries—that ... more

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"Education does not change the world. Education changes people. People change the world," said Paulo Freire. Featuring newly unearthed archival footage of Brazil in the 1960s, this fascinating excursion into Freire's early work shows how he implemented the ideas of democratic, non-hierarchical education that made him an internationally revered education philosopher. ... more

Real threat or a strange delusion? With an impressive world premiere at the Cannes International Film Festival, Yann Gozlan's psychological drama explores the colliding worlds of rigid artificial intelligence and vibrant human creation. Set in the near future, the film follows novelist Clarissa (César winner Cécile de France), a novelist suffering from writer's ... more

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Lebanon's official submission for the 98th Academy Awards® for Best International Feature Film, A Sad and Beautiful World spans three decades of passion, loss, and hope. It centers on the magnetic bond between Nino and Yasmina, born on the same day amid a tragic massacre in Beirut, their lives bound by fate from childhood. United by hardship—Nino's loss of ... more

A kaleidoscopic lens on our world today. Featuring Carmela, Ludmilla, Black Boys Being Beautiful, As I Lay Dying, The Muse, Beast of the Seine, For My Ela, and Candy Bar.... more

A kaleidoscopic lens on our world today. Featuring Happy Anniversary, Table 12, Somewhere To Be, The Diva, My Grandma and Me, The Truth About Space, Remembrance, Too Far, Too Late, Rolling Film, Rocking History: Al Maysles Captures the Beatles, The Gun Machine, and Hugs.... more

Acclaimed actress Hiam Abbass shines in this comedy about a young chef named Medhi, who is struggling to launch a restaurant with Léa, his French girlfriend, while dealing with his long-suffering mother's attempts to set him up with a proper Algerian wife. Adding to the tension is the fact that Léa has yet to meet Medhi's mother, although her parents are putting ... more

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"The role of a revolutionary artist is to make revolution irresistible," Toni Cade Bambara (1939–1995) was known for saying. She was a novelist, filmmaker, professor, and editor of the groundbreaking 1970 literary anthology The Black Woman, but none of these accomplishments defined her; she referred to herself simply as a "culture worker." "She swept into ... more

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