Staff Picks

Staff Picks

Newly updated! Favorites from the staff at OVID.

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Staff Picks
  • Time Regained (Raúl Ruiz, w/ Catherine Deneuve & Emmanuelle Béart)

    Directed by Raúl Ruiz • Drama • With Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, Vincent Perez • 2018 • 163 minutes

    Raúl Ruiz’s most ambitious literary adaptation and considered his greatest cinematic achievement.  An Official Selection at both the Cannes and New York Film Festivals and starring an out...

  • Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)

    Directed by Jem Cohen • Drama • With Mary Margaret O’Hara, Robert “Bobby” Sommer, Ela Piplits • 2012 • 106 minutes

    When a Vienna museum guard befriends an enigmatic visitor, the grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum becomes a mysterious crossroads which sparks explorations of their lives, the city,...

  • A Man on his Knees

    Movie

    Mistaken as a witness to a crime, Nino (Giuliano Gemma, The Iron Prefect), learns from a friend he has been put on a Mafia hit list and is being stalked by an assassin (Michele Placido, Romanzo Criminale). A man with a troubled past, Nino knows only too well what he faces and uses all his strengt...

  • Niki
    Movie

    Niki

    Movie

    The debut feature of actor-turned-director Céline Sallette, Niki is a vibrant portrait of French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (Charlotte Le Bon, star of The White Lotus), one of the most iconoclastic figures of the contemporary art world.

    Fleeing the oppressive atmosphere of post-war Ame...

  • Christmas, Again

    Directed by Charles Poekel • Drama • With Kentucker Audley, Hannah Gross • 2015 • 80 minutes

    For a fifth consecutive December, a heartbroken Noel returns to New York City to work the night shift at a sidewalk Christmas tree lot. Devoid of any holiday spirit, he struggles to stay awake during the...

  • Who By Fire

    Movie

    A getaway at a secluded log cabin in the forest becomes the site of escalating, multigenerational tensions and anxieties in this disquieting, impeccably mounted coming-of-age drama from Quebecois filmmaker Philippe Lesage. Ostensibly a merry reunion between well-known film director Blake Cadieux ...

  • The Dmitriev Affair (Jessica Gorter)

    Directed by Jessica Gorter • Documentary • 2024 • 96 minutes

    Yuri Dmitriev exhumes what the Russian rulers would rather forget. After years of searching the pine forests of Karelia in northwestern Russia, he discovers a mass grave containing thousands of people who were secretly executed during ...

  • Leila (Dariush Mehrjui, w/ Leila Hatami)

    Directed by Dariush Mehrjui • Drama • With Leila Hatami, Ali Mosaffa • 1999 • 125 minutes

    Reza and Leila, an attractive and affluent young couple deeply in love and recently married, discover that Leila is unable to conceive. Invoking tradition, Reza's mother convinces her daughter-in-law that R...

  • Beautiful Losers

    Directed by Aaron Rose, Joshua Leonard • Documentary • With Thomas Campbell, Harmony Korine, Shepard Fairy, Jo Jackson, Chris Johanson, Mike Mills, Steve Espo Powers • 2009 • 90 minutes

    BEAUTIFUL LOSERS celebrates the spirit behind one of the most influential cultural moments of a generation. In...

  • The 317th Platoon

    Directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer • Drama • With Jacques Perrin, Bruno Cremer, Pierre Fabre • 1965 • 95 minutes

    1954. The dying days of the French war in Indochina. As the battle of Diên Biên Phu rages, the 317th platoon of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps are ordered to destroy their bas...

  • The Plains

    Directed by David Easteal • Drama • With Andrew Rakowski, David Easteal • 2022 • 180 minutes

    Every evening a man in his late 50s commutes home at the end of the working day in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. As the seasons pass in gentle rhythm we observe dramatic events of his life as well as m...

  • Full Time (w/ Laure Calamy)

    Directed by Éric Gravel • Drama • With Laure Calamy • 2023 • 88 minutes

    Julie (Laure Calamy) can’t catch a break. For a single mother raising two children in the suburbs of Paris but working in the city, the commuter train is a lifeline–and it’s suddenly been severed during the latest transit st...

  • El Mar La Mar

    Directed by Joshua Bonnetta & J.P. Sniadecki • Documentary • 2017 • 94 minutes

    An immersive and enthralling journey through the Sonoran Desert on the U.S.-Mexico border, EL MAR LA MAR weaves together harrowing oral histories from the area with hand-processed 16mm images of flora, fauna and items...

  • Bless Their Little Hearts

    Directed by Billy Woodberry • Drama • With Nate Hardman, Kaycee Moore • 1983 • 80 minutes

    Searching for steady work, Charlie (Nate Hardman) views his chronic unemployment as a kind of spiritual trial. But selling a few catfish can’t sustain a family of five while his wife, Andais (Kaycee Moore)...

  • The Botanical Avatar of Mademoiselle Flora

    Directed by Jeanne Barbillon • Drama • With Bernadette Lafont, Louis Mesuret • 1965 • 15 minutes

    In a small French town, Flora (Bernadette Lafont) has a six-week fling with a soldier. But this is no passionate affair. Her lover, the cartoonish Charles (Louis Mesuret), ignores her advances, insis...

  • Geographies of Solitude

    Directed by Jacquelyn Mills • Documentary • 2022 • 103 minutes

    An immersion into the rich ecosystem of Sable Island, a remote sliver of land in the Northwest Atlantic, the film follows Zoe Lucas, a naturalist and environmentalist who has lived there for over 40 years collecting, cleaning and doc...

  • Dark Days

    Directed by Marc Singer • Documentary • 2000 • 82 minutes

    For years, a homeless community took root in a train tunnel beneath New York City, braving dangerous conditions and perpetual night. DARK DAYS explores this surprisingly domestic subterranean world, unearthing a way of life unimaginable t...

  • The Hole (Tsai Ming-liang)

    Directed by Tsai Ming-liang • Drama • With Lee Kang-Sheng; Yang Kuei-Mei • 1998 • 89 minutes

    Set just prior to the start of the 21st century, this vaguely futuristic story follows two residents of a quickly crumbling building who refuse to leave their homes in spite of a virus that has forced th...

  • Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi & Abbas Kiarostami)

    Directed by Jafar Panahi • Written by Abbas Kiarostami * Drama • With Hossain Emadeddin • 2003 • 95 minutes

    Two master filmmakers, Abbas Kiarostami (A Taste of Cherry) and Jafar Panahi (The Circle, Taxi) team up as writer and director, respectively, on Crimson Gold, a subtle tragedy on class con...

  • Fool's Mate (Le Coup du Berger)

    Directed by Jacques Rivette • Drama • With Virginie Vitry, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze • 1957 • 27 minutes

    An early film from the six-decade career of hugely influential French director and critic Jacques Rivette.

    Claire (Virginie Vitry) is given a gorgeous fur coat by her lover...

  • From What Is Before (Lav Diaz)

    Directed by Lav Diaz • Drama • With Perry Dizon, Roeder Camanag, Hazel Orencio • 2014 • 338 minutes

    Winner of five prizes at the Locarno Film Festival, including the Golden Leopard for Best Film, Lav Diaz’s follow up to his acclaimed Norte, The End of History is an extraordinary five-and-a-half-...

  • Battaglia

    Directed by Daniela Zanzotto • Documentary • 2002 • 58 minutes

    At almost 40 years old, Sicilian photographer Letizia Battaglia decided that being a mother and wife, the thing that she was meant to do according to the society she lived in, just wasn’t enough anymore. With great inner strength, sh...

  • The Woodmans

    Directed by C. Scott Willis • Documentary • With Betty Woodman, Francesca Woodman, Charles Woodman George Woodman • 2010 • 83 minutes

    The Woodmans are a family of well-known artists bonded in their belief of art-making as the highest form of expression. But for their daughter Francesca — one of ...

  • I am Secretly an Important Man

    Directed by Peter Sillen • Documentary • With Jesse Bernstein • 2012 • 89 minutes

    'I Am Secretly an Important Man' is a portrait of writer and poet Steven J. Bernstein (aka Jesse Bernstein), one of Seattle's most celebrated and troubled voices. His angry, surprisingly fresh and lyrical writings ...