2020 Academy Awards® Best International Feature Film – Official Selection of Colombia
Feb 27 – Monos
2019 Colombia 1hr 43min
Rated R (for language, some violence and sexual content)
In Spanish with English Subtitles
MONOS, Alejandro Landes’ awe-inspiring third feature, is a breathtaking survivalist saga set on a remote mountain in Latin America. The film tracks a young group of soldiers and rebels — bearing names like Rambo, Smurf, Bigfoot, Wolf and Boom-Boom — who keep watch over an American hostage, Doctora (Julianne Nicholson). The teenage commandos perform military training exercises by day and indulge in youthful hedonism by night, an unconventional family bound together under a shadowy force known only as The Organization. After an ambush drives the squadron into the jungle, both the mission and the intricate bonds between the group begin to disintegrate. Order descends into chaos and within MONOS the strong begin to prey on the weak in this vivid, cautionary fever-dream.
“Violent, beautiful and powerfully watchable” – Washington Post
“Something between Apocalypse Now, Lord of the Flies and Embrace of the Serpent.” – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
Fresh and Fabulous is open for your dining pleasure until 6:30pm
SCREENING – PLAZA CINEMAS 14, 255 WEST 5TH STREET, OXNARD, CA 93030
March 2 – Tel Aviv on Fire
2019 Luxemborg 1hr 37min
Comedy/Drama NR
In Arabic and Hebrew with English Subtitles
2020 Academy Awards® Best International Feature Film – Official Selection of Luxemborg
Israel / Palestine, today. Salam, a charming 30-year-old Palestinian living in Jerusalem, works as a trainee on the Palestinian popular soap opera “Tel Aviv on Fire”, produced in Ramallah. Every day, to reach the TV studios, Salam has to go through a rather difficult Israeli checkpoint. There he meets the commander of the checkpoint, Assi, whose wife is a big fan of the soap opera. In order to please him, Assi puts pressure on Salam to change the end of the show. Salam quickly realizes that Assi’s ideas could be promoted to him as a screenwriter. Salam’s creative career is suddenly boiling, until Assi and the soap opera producers and financiers disagree on how it should end. Stuck between an army colonel and Arab support, Salam can solve his problems with a final master stroke.
“[A] delicious investigation of the tightrope he walks between the Israeli army and his Palestinian colleagues as well as his dilemma of needing to write and not knowing the first thing about it.” – Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
The Museum of Ventura County is excited to be co-sponsor with the Oxnard Film Society in a special screening of Dolores and its
upcoming exhibit: Huelga! Photographs from the Frontlines by Jorge Corralejo
March 9 Dolores
2018 USA 1hr 38min
Documentary NR
In English and Spanish with English Subtitles
Dolores Huerta is among the most important, yet least known, activists in American history. An equal partner in co-founding the first farm workers unions with Cesar Chavez, her enormous contributions have gone largely unrecognized. Dolores tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Chavez, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the twentieth century-and she continues the fight to this day, at 87. With intimate and unprecedented access to this intensely private mother to eleven, the film reveals the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one’s life to social change. Directed by Peter Bratt.
This screening is in collaboration with the Museum’s upcoming exhibit:
Huelga! Photographs from the Frontlines by Jorge Corralejo will be on display from March 14, 2020—April 26, 2020 at the Museum of Ventura County and from March 20, 2020-August 2, 2020 the Agriculture Museum in Santa Paula.An opening reception will be held in Ventura on Saturday, March 14 from 2:00-4:00 PM. The cost to attend is $0 for members and $5 for nonmembers.
On March 19, 2020 the Museum will be honored to host Dolores Huerta for a talk about her years working with the UFW, her work building community and organizing for change. The talk will take place in the Smith Pavilion at 6:30 PM with an opportunity to tour the Huelga exhibit both before and after the talk.
2020 Academy Awards® Best International Feature Film – Official Selection of Russia
In post-WWII Leningrad, two women, Iya and Masha (astonishing newcomers Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina), intensely bonded after fighting side by side as anti-aircraft gunners, attempt to readjust to a haunted world. As the film begins, Iya, long and slender and towering over everyone-hence the film’s title-works as a nurse in a shell-shocked hospital, presiding over traumatized soldiers. A shocking accident brings them closer and also seals their fates. The 28-year-old Russian director Kantemir Balagov won Un Certain Regard’s Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for this richly burnished, occasionally harrowing rendering of the persistent scars of war.
“Five stars! Brilliant… Balagov is a fiercely individual and quite staggeringly accomplished talent.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
François Ozon’s gripping drama follows three men who band together to dismantle the code of silence that continues to protect a priest who abused them decades ago. Based on events from the 2019 conviction of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon for concealing the conduct of Father Bernard Preynat, BY THE GRACE OF GOD compassionately illustrates the varying effects of trauma on survivors and their families in this urgent portrait of resistance, the power of mobilization, and the mysteries of faith.
“A rarity: An important film that’s also utterly inspired … [Ozon] crafts a film that is engrossing from the start, while building to something greater and more emotionally encompassing.”
– Glenn Kenny, New York Times Critic’s Pick
“One of the most powerful movies in Ozon’s filmography … A great film that will stick with you long after it ends.”