Monday Night Foreign Film Series
VIRTUAL CINEMA
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Since we are unable to screen films at the Plaza Cinemas due to COVID-19 pandemic for the next few months, the Oxnard Film Society has partnered with distributors to provide STREAMING of our films to you at home for $12/$9.99 per film. You can watch each film as many times as you want over a 72 hours period. Films will be available for at least 30 days. If you have any questions you can email at [email protected] or call 805.798.0830.
George J. Sandoval, Executive Director
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NOW STREAMING
Corpus Christi
(Boze Cialo)
2019 Poland 1hr 54min
Drama NR
In Polish with English Subtitles
2020 Academy Awards® Best International Feature Film – Official Selection of Poland
After spending years in a Warsaw prison for a violent crime, 20-year-old Daniel is released and sent to a remote village to work as a manual laborer. The job is designed to keep the ex-con busy, but Daniel has a higher calling. Over the course of his incarceration he has found Christ, and aspires to join the clergy – but his criminal record means no seminary will accept him. When Daniel arrives in town, one quick lie allows him to be mistaken for the town’s new priest, and he sets about leading his newfound flock. Though he has no training, his passion and charisma inspire the community. At the same time, his unconventional sermons and unpriestly behavior raise suspicions among some of the townsfolk – even more so as he edges towards a dark secret that the community hasn’t revealed in the confessional booth.
Film Sponsor: Keith Powell and Michela Feli
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Critic Review for Corpus Christi:
“Directed by Jan Komasa in only his third feature and starring a complexly compelling Bartosz Bielenia, this is a blistering drama, intense, disturbing and inescapably thought-provoking, a film that gets its power from a merging of potent opposites.”
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NOW STREAMING
Vitalina Varela
2020 Portugal 2hr 4min
Drama NR
In Portuguese/Cape Verdean Creole with English Subtitles
A film of deeply concentrated beauty, acclaimed filmmaker Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela stars nonprofessional actor Vitalina Varela in an extraordinary performance based on her own life. Vitalina plays a Cape Verdean woman who has travelled to Lisbon to reunite with her husband, after two decades of separation, only to arrive mere days after his funeral. Alone in a strange forbidding land, she perseveres and begins to establish a new life. Winner of the Golden Leopard for Best Film and Best Actress at the Locarno Film Festival, as well as an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival, Vitalina Varela is a film of shadow and whisper, a profoundly moving and visually ravishing masterpiece.
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Critic Reviews for Vitalina Varela
“IT’S ESSENTIAL CINEMA. Socially conscious, but dreamlike, elegiac. Stunning pictorialism. In the opening shots of this film, one thinks of Goya and Velasquez; the clouds in the night sky evoke El Greco. Critic’s Pick.”— Glenn Kenny, The New York Times
“Having seen it a second time myself at home, I can attest that not only does the spell still take hold, but also that there is a strange solace, even refuge, to be found in its labyrinth of shadows. Dim the lights, cast your distractions aside and let Costa’s dark rooms merge with your own.”— Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times
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NOW STREAMING
Incitement
2020 Israel 2hr 3min
Drama/Thriller NR
In Hebrew with English Subtitles
2020 Academy Awards® Best International Feature Film – Official Selection of Israel –
Ophir Award Winner for Best Picture (Israel’s Academy Award)
In September 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin announces the Oslo Accords, which aim to achieve a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians after decades of violence. Yigal Amir, a law student and a devoted Orthodox Jew, cannot believe that his country’s leader will cede territory that he and many others believe is rightfully – by the word of God – theirs. As the prospect of a peaceful compromise approaches, Amir turns from a hot-headed political activist to a dangerous extremist. Consumed by anger and delusions of grandeur, he recruits fighters and steals weapons to form an underground militia intent on killing Palestinians. After his longtime girlfriend leaves him, Amir becomes even more isolated, disillusioned, and bitter. He soon learns of an ancient Jewish law, the Law of the Pursuer, that he believes gives him the right to murder Yitzhak Rabin. Convinced he must stop the signing of the peace treaty in order to fulfill his destiny and bring salvation to his people, Amir’s warped mind sees only one way forward.
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Critci Review for Incitement:
“A chilling portrait of how fanaticism can grow and be enabled, this is a matter-of-fact film that moves with an awful inexorability toward its foregone conclusion.” – Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
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NOW STREAMING
The Whistlers
2020 Romania 1hr 37min
Drama/Thriller/Comedy NR (brief nudity)
In Romanian with English Subtitles
The Whistlers, not everything is as it seems for Cristi, a police inspector in Bucharest who plays both sides of the law. Embarking with the beautiful Gilda on a high-stakes heist, both will have to navigate the twists and turns of corruption, treachery and deception. A trip to the Canary Islands to learn a secret whistling language might just be what they need to pull it off.
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Critic Review for The Whistlers:
“It’s a lot of fun – and often quite funny – while it lasts, though I could have used less gunplay and more whistling, an element that, more than anything else here, speaks to Porumboiu’s gift for deadpan absurdity.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times
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NOW STREAMING
Once Were Brothers
Robbie Robertson and the Band
2020 USA 1hr 42min
Documentary R (for some language and drug references)
In English
Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band is a confessional, cautionary, and occasionally humorous tale of Robertson’s young life and the creation of one of the most enduring groups in the history of popular music, The Band. The film is a moving story of Robertson’s personal journey, overcoming adversity and finding camaraderie alongside the four other men who would become his brothers in music, together making their mark on music history. Once Were Brothers blends rare archival footage, photography, iconic songs and interviews with Robertson’s friends and collaborators including Martin Scorsese, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, and more.
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Critic Review for Once Were Brothers:
Even at its most painful, the Band’s story captures something golden, incendiary and wistfully beautiful – “so beautiful,” Robertson reflects, “that it went up in flames.” – Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
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George J. Sandoval, Executive Director
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The Oxnard Film Society is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. (#20-5734347)
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