Coming Attractions Trailer Program: Winter 2016

The end of the year film landscape is ramping up with anticipated releases and a variety of awards contenders too numerous to count. Preview the trailers of these films at the Washington, DC Film Society’s twice-annual program, “COMING ATTRACTIONS TRAILER NIGHT, WINTER 2016.” We’ll highlight a wide range of upcoming films being released over the next few months.

DC Film Society Director Michael Kyrioglou announced the date for COMING ATTRACTIONS will be Tuesday, November 29, 2016. Join us at Landmark’s E Street Cinema (E Street, NW between 10th & 11th) from 7:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m.

DC Film Critics Tim Gordon and Travis Hopson will bring the movie buzz and lead discussion on the trailers. You, the audience, get to vote on the movies you want to see (or escape from); we’ll pass this information on to the studios.

Some of the 30 trailers we’ll be showing may include the Robert Zemekis war thriller Allied with Brad Pitt and Marion Cottilard, Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Onassis in Jackie, the next Star Wars film Rogue One, Jamie Foxx in Sleepless, Warren Beatty’s return with Rules Don’t Apply, Hidden Figures, animated offerings Sing and Moana, August Wilson’s Fences from director and actor Denzel Washington, A Monster Calls, sci-fi offerings The Space Between Us and Passengers, Glenn Close, Owen Wilson and Ed Helms in Bastards, Assassin’s Creed, Patriots Day, The Founder about McDonald’s founder Ray Croc, the thriller Kidnap with Halle Berry, Lasse Hallstrom’s A Dog’s Purpose, action and horror films The Lake, The Bye Bye Man, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Split starring James McAvoy, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, and much more.

Tickets are only $3 for DC Film Society Basic Members, FREE to Gold Members and $5.00 for the general public. We’ll also have movie promotional items, movie posters, and raffle prizes, including DVDs and movie tickets.

An updated trailer list will be posted when it becomes available, so check back soon.

The 21st Arabian Sights Film Festival Awards

The Arabian Sights Film Festival awards:

The Audience Award winner is Hepta, The Last Lecture (Hadi El Bagoury) from Egypt.

The Cultural Ambassador Prize winner is Good Luck Algeria (Farid Bentoumi) from France/Belgium.

Thanks to everyone who voted.

The Cinema Lounge

Elle: Q&A with Director Paul Verhoeven

By Ron Gordner, DC Film Society Member

Paul Verhoeven answered a brief question and answer session after a public screening of Elle in September 2016 at the Toronto International Film Festival. Michele (Isabelle Huppert) is a successful videogame company executive and is raped in her home by a masked intruder. The incident changes her life but she reacts in a strange way. In Elle her normal life is uprooted when she is raped but the film also should be seen as one story, not a composite of most women’s reactions to rape which has made the film sometimes controversial to critics and viewers. It also deals with the aging woman’s sexuality and her vulnerability, but also a very successful business woman.

There is some movement to have her nominated for an Oscar in a very tough best actress field this year. This is France’s submission for best foreign language Oscar and will be distributed by Sony Picture Classics on November 18 in the DC metro area.



TIFF Moderator: Paul, can you speak to what about the book or story compelled you to make the film?
Paul Verhoeven: Some producers sent me the book to read and wanted to know if I was interested in directing it. I thought it was different than anything else I have done. I thought the novel was also. I said yes and originally it was to be an American movie, transferred to the American culture. We had the script done and translated to English. We then went out and looked for A-level American actresses and the answer from all of them was a resounding No. So after realizing this would not be made in the U.S. and was considered too controversial or the moral level of the movie was not pleasing to many viewers. So we went back to Paris. Months before, Isabelle Huppert had read the script and wanted to do the movie before we had wanted to make it an American film. She was still very interested in doing it.

TIFF Moderator: Can you briefly cover doing your first film in French also?
Paul Verhoeven: Yes I was concerned at first. I am Dutch and French is not even my first or second language-English is. When I was 17 years old my father had sent me to Paris to study and learn French since he thought it was the most cultured country in the world. Sixty years later my French was somewhat gone. I took a crash course and found I did still know some French but it was suppressed. We only spoke French on the set and I and the cast and staff survived. I had a headache at first due to stress but later it became much easier.

Audience Question: Can you address the many changes in intensity in the film?
Paul Verhoeven: Well it is a thriller about a rape and who did it. It is also about the bourgeoisie and the opening is a very violent beginning. Her intensity about punishing the rapist and other thoughts also had to be intense. Is the movie about rape or about a woman who refuses to have her life be ruled by the rape? She refuses to be the victim. It is not really a revenge movie as many others are. The movie never addresses a possible sado-masochism in her background and we didn’t want to go there. That is up to the audience to fill in those gaps.

TIFF Moderator: Isabelle mentioned yesterday how she prepared for the role. Can you talk about that a little?
Paul Verhoeven: Of course, I never really noticed. We didn’t discuss it in great detail other than some scenes. We didn’t try to explain the character. I felt that her female intuition and her changes to the script and her authenticity of acting was the best. In the morning I would talk about the scenes of the day and order and discuss her dresses but with very little discussion. Isabelle Huppert is amazing. I can’t imagine anyone else doing it, including an American actress.
TIFF Moderator: She has made 130 films believe it or not.

Audience Question: Did you or the scriptwriter make major changes to the book?
Paul Verhoeven: Not really. One area is the end when Rebecca, the wife of the rapist, was aware of some of her husband’s actions. This is not in the novel and was added by the American script writer. The Roman Catholic level is also in the book but we added more about the mass and present the wife as a believer but that she also knew.

Audience Question: What were the first conversations Paul had with Isabelle before the film and thoughts about it after the completion of the film?
Paul Verhoeven: Yes, the arc of changes in the character. Many have trouble believing it, but our early conversations were more about how much nudity there would be. This was the only really in-depth conversation we had and deals that we agreed to. It is odd that there are also many comic moments in the film so she doesn’t let the rape define her life.

Huppert has also said: “It’s difficult for me to talk about ‘a story’ or ‘a character,’ it is something that I thought has never existed before in fiction. This woman, you certainly don’t meet her walking in the subway. She’s a new type of a woman, and I thought that was exciting to bring life to her.” “I don’t think she’s that mysterious, it’s more that she’s an unknown character, in that sense, yes, she’s mysterious.” “She’s what I would call almost like a post-feminist character, building her own behavior and space. She doesn’t want to be a victim, that’s for sure, but she doesn’t even fall into the caricature of the revenge avenger. She called her a post-feminist character. It is a woman’s film but defined somewhat by the failed or mediocre men around her also.”

Desierto: Q&A with Director Jonás Cuarón

By Ron Gordner, DC Film Society Member

Desierto (Mexico/France, 2015) was screened at the 2015 BFI London Film Festival in October 2015 and also later at the AFI Silver Latin American Film Festival in September 2016 with the director in attendance. This is a discussion with the director from the BFI London Film Festival. Desierto is a dramatic feature about people trying to cross the border from Mexico to the United States and how they are treated on both sides of the border and by self-appointed vigilante and official border control personnel. Gael García Bernal is Moises, one of the Mexicans trying to cross the desert to the United States. The film won the International Critics Award or FIPRESCI Award at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, opened in the DC metro area October 21 and is still showing as of November 1.


Director Jonás Cuarón and Actor Gael Garcia Bernal at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival

Festival Moderator: Jonás can you tell me how you came to be interested in this project?
Jonás Cuarón: I was interested in the subject of migration and immigration at the time and heard about these news stories and anecdotes of people crossing into the United States. I was in Arizona and was hearing about bad policies I thought were being created about immigration and also about the problems on the Mexican side also. I like action and thrilling films and thought this kind of genre would be a new way to show the personal plight of those trying to cross the border into the U.S.

Festival Moderator: How did you develop the script? The title implies that the desert is a main character in a way also. Did you visit the desert or write the script first?
Jonás Cuarón: I did a first draft of the story and then visited and mapped the journey in the desert. I spent three years looking for the desert or part of the desert I wanted, but never really found; but in the process I found that I would rewrite the script for the landscape of the desert I had found.

Festival Moderator: You also wrote the script for Gravity so do you like stories where man is trapped or confronted by things in nature?
Jonás Cuarón: Actually I wrote a rough draft for this about six years ago and talked to my DP and we discussed making movies like this, very minimalist, where the audience connects more sometimes than using their brain to understand or relate to the story. One of our discussions that night was, what if we do something similar in space and that was the beginning of Gravity and why I took a hiatus on this film again until two years ago.

Festival Moderator: Mention the casting since you have two great actors, Gael Garcia Bernal and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Sam.
Jonás Cuarón: I needed the one character you identify with and his journey and I really admire Gael and his work. He also produced and acted in a number of documentaries or films about immigration or migrants. He was already prepared for this character and read and accepted the script and job thankfully.

Festival Moderator: How easy was it to get Jeffrey Morgan?
Jonás Cuarón: I needed to have a human villain. Someone who does horrible things but also has a human side too. When I met him he had a rifle and his pickup truck and dogs and I just knew I had to pick him.

Audience Question: We learned very little about the back story of the hunter. Did you have a reason or back story yourself about what drove his behavior in that way?
Jonás Cuarón: We did film some back story and more stories also of the migrants, but when I was in the editing room I realized a back story could not justify his actions in the massacre scenes so I took them out. The same with the migrants' stories. I just wanted the images and action to talk and tell the story.

Festival Moderator: Do we know if this was the first time hunter Sam did this action?
Jonás Cuarón: When I spoke to Jeffrey about the role we assumed it was his first time of really doing this extreme behavior as a turning point.

Audience Question: I noticed much of the filming was done in a dynamic hand-held manner. Was that planned and because of the restraints and challenges of filming in the desert or how you really wanted to tell the story?
Jonás Cuarón: When I met with the cinematographer, yes we wanted a very dynamic look and it's important to have those fast handheld shots to maintain the tension. The producers also later thanked me since we had to drive two hours into the desert and then hike another 30 minutes to our location shoot. Using film and cranes etc would have been very problematic.

Audience Question: Tracker (the dog) had great chemistry with Jeffrey Dean. Did he have to audition or did you know about him before the filming? (audience laughter)
Jonás Cuarón: I had discussions with producers and relatives that it’s not smart to have about 50% of the scenes involving a dog. I spent about two years looking in the U.S., Mexico and elsewhere to find this dog. I finally found a trainer in Mexico and when I visited him and his dogs I rewrote the script because these dogs could do more than I had originally written. It was actually easier working with the dogs than the actors (laughter).

Audience Question: How did Woodkid get involved in the music in the film?
Jonás Cuarón: On our trips I would listen to the radio and I really like Run Boy Run by Woodkid and I liked the mixture of strong percussive sound with the beautiful other music to reflect the difference of the violence of some scenes with the beauty of the desert landscape. When I was done shooting I contacted Juan and he was a great collaborator and really created a great sonar landscape for the movie.

Audience Question: What do you want the audience to learn from the film and about migration or is it just an emotional instinctive drama?
Jonás Cuarón: I want to highlight the subject but really just immerse the viewer into an instinctive, action thriller movie. It’s up to each individual to take or make what they can from the film. I hope they see the whole absurdity of what’s happening. I lived for some time in the U.S. There have been some murders on the border but I saw this more as the hatred and rhetoric I was finding creating this metaphor to see the migrants as the others or swarm of people, not the individual person. But you should make your own impressions.

Audience Question: How was it working alongside your father?
Jonás Cuarón: I started writing just out of high school and I always ask for his feedback whether he gets a producer credit or not. He is sometimes critical or cruel which is needed also with his feedback but doesn’t impose it.

Festival Moderator: What was some of his advice on this film?
Jonás Cuarón: Don’t work with dogs (laughter).

Audience Question: Why did you edit it yourself?
Jonás Cuarón: I have been writing or working on movies for the last seven years and I love storytelling and the constant rewriting process and you still do that in postproduction. I am possessive I guess and so want to edit also until it’s done.

Audience Question: Have you shown the film to U.S. Presidential candidates since there is much dialog about immigration there?
Jonás Cuarón: I invited them in Toronto but no one showed up (laughter). It’s funny this is still a major focus in politics but I wrote most of this six years ago, so little has really changed. I’m asked about the Confederate flag issue also but that is in the U.S. Also you are mentioning the U.S. but you have your own immigration and discourse issues here in England in Europe overall. The film is about the U.S./Mexican border but it could be an archetype and be located elsewhere.

Audience Question: I found it a very powerful film. The part where the border guard really oks his action hit me about we who also sit back and do nothing was that intentional?
Jonás Cuarón: As mentioned Sam is the villain but also human and the focus of this discourse but also a metaphor for the blind eye society gives this issue. Obviously we don’t know about massacres of this proportion, but every time one migrant is killed it means there is a blind eye to the situation. It can be dying because you have to cross a desert or an ocean to get somewhere else safe or with opportunities. We should stop seeing the migrants as the problem and look at the root problem of what is causing them to migrate.

Festival Moderator: Is there a particular reason for the title "Desierto"?
Jonás Cuarón: Well, the Desert is one of the most important character and about survival. Also the arbitrariness of our seeing physical or other borders and differences in individuals or groups. In scouting the locations, I would be told, oh we just crossed the desert into the U.S. but it looked the same. So the Desert as a charcter does not see any differences. Both the migrant Gael and the American hunter are at the mercy of nature and the desert climate.

Audience Question: Did you always plan that Gael would come back for the girl?
Jonás Cuarón: Yes I wanted to make him more human but really the moment he left her behind was also very human. He has his own interests. Maybe he has not first taken on the actions of a hero. I did want the ending to be somewhat optimistic. I only wanted it to look hopeful, but they still have to survive living in the U.S.

Audience Question: Has the film been shown in Mexico yet?
Jonás Cuarón: No, we had a world premiere in Toronto and you have seen it here in London so not yet in Mexico. I am happy that both festival audiences seemed to have a very visceral connection to the film. I hope it does well in the Mexico and the U.S. You know we have our own migrants from Central America who cross Mexico whom we also treat horribly. I also am interested in reactions in England and Europe or elsewhere because this is a universal issue close to home for many areas.

Aquarius: Q&A with Actress Sonia Braga

By Ron Gordner DC Film Society Member

Aquarius (Brazil/France, 2016) was directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho and stars renowned Brazilian actress Sonia Braga as Clara, the last tenant in a high-rise planned for urban renewal in Recife, Brazil. She refuses to sell her apartment after everyone else has sold theirs and is impeding the old building’s destruction to make way for modern buildings.

In 2013 Kleber Mendonca Filho made the critically acclaimed film Neighboring Sounds which also played in AFI Silver’s Latin American Film Festival that year. The screening of Aquarius was held in the large AFI Silver theatre on October 20, 2016. Following the screening, a discussion with Sonia Braga was held. She received a standing ovation from the sold out crowd. The film opened recently in the DC metro area. Todd Hitchcock, AFI Film Programmer, moderated the discussion.



Todd Hitchcock: Congratulations on your wonderful performance in this great film and for coming to AFI Silver.
Sonia Braga: I love this beautiful inspiring theatre which is so rare now. Thank you for coming.

Todd Hitchcock: When you were first presented the screenplay by Kleber what were your thoughts?
Sonia Braga: Kleber is sorry not to be here tonight. I haven’t done a movie in Portuguese in about 20 years. First I saw his other movie Neighboring Sounds and I loved that feeling of entering another dimension with the silence used in the film. When I read this new screenplay I remember that Clara was giving me back even my mother tongue. I found so many metaphors for my feelings and with a collaborative dimension with this Clara character and I gave her my body.

Todd Hitchcock: It really is a role of a lifetime.
Sonia Braga: It really is, like a remembrance of when you were born.

Todd Hitchcock: The film premiered in Cannes in May and other film festivals including Toronto. It opened in Brazil in September. How have the audiences in Brazil reacted?
Sonia Braga: They have loved it. At this time Brazil is really divided and this film has so many colors. It is not just black and white. Even young women have related to Clara since not those many characters like her exist in films now. One person told me when he left the theatre he was overwrought with feelings and was so full of emotion he didn’t think he would even fit in the cab (laughter). It has gotten wonderful reviews also. It was just so honest.
Todd Hitchcock: It will be in DC starting tomorrow and also later here at the AFI Silver Theatre.

Audience Question: Did you know the city Recife before making the film?
Sonia Braga: No I only remember when I was young being in the play or musical Hair so I was busy and don’t remember a great deal about it then, but the people are the city for me. Kleber has a great ability to get collaboration from local cast and crew. There are some ugly towers in Recife that Kleber cleverly took out of the landscape and when the audiences saw these awful buildings were in the film there was great adulation from the audience. I went to the ocean and the real building--they said just don’t turn left where the poor section is. So of course I went left and met great people there.

Todd Hitchcock: You also had the screening in a large older beautiful screen in Recife also.
Sonia Braga: Yes it is a wonderful theatre also and Kleber introduced all the crew and cast at the screening.

Audience Question: This seems to be a political and social allegory in the film. How do you think the Brazilian audience or society should react?
Sonia Braga: Many people responded when the present government took over illegally. Many artists and others want democracy and are participating in the movements to reclaim our very young democracy. It is a coup but not a military coup. The first thing done was to remove the Ministry of Culture so there was a huge outcry.

Audience Question: Were there real instances that inspired the story of the film? Was this influenced by a similar Spanish film?
Sonia Braga: Kleber would need to answer these questions. Corruption unfortunately exists even in Brazil. Kleber wrote this film in two years. The new government is so right-wing and moralist that it is even difficult to describe. We hope that our movie takes a small story that could go outside the apartment and a force born in Clara that goes further. The film is about feelings and relationships, including his mother. This is one of the smaller apartment buildings left where all these tall black fingered buildings go up, some illegally and cover the sun and the sand.

Audience Question: What do you want to do next?
Sonia Braga: I don’t know what I will do next. It could be another wonderful character or just walking and enjoying life or fighting for something important as a 66 year old woman.
Todd Hitchcock: You can also see Sonia in the series Luke Cage.

Audience Question: Who chose the music?
Sonia Braga: When I read the screenplay the music was already in place, it was already perfect. Each time Clara chose a record and a song she found a memory. She sees the Clara that is coming in her nephew’s girlfriend and the song that she played and Clara reacted to the charms of Diego (Humberto Carrao). Kleber has a great connection with the music, he is an archeologist finding a treasure and keeps looking for more. The film uses the music and silence like a concert itself.

Audience Question: Did the nudity or sexual scenes in the movie bother you?
Sonia Braga: No it is part of life, our sexual life. This older woman in the shower enjoying her life even despite her cancer and changes in her body. When all the girlfriends and Clara are together they are like young teenagers. The young lifeguard also she plays with and says, "Are you hitting on me?" I think sexuality belongs to the human body at any age. (applause)

Audience Question: I found the young salesman or project manager an interesting villain.
Sonia Braga: Yes. Kleber said, "I don’t want a mean villain." We have what seems to be a very pleasant kind man who then even gets to Clara’s daughter. I did meet the people who lived in these apartments and at one time half the building was gone.

Audience Question: How did you deal with Clara’s cancer in the film?
Sonia Braga: We had to make Clara’s body believable and we wanted to make it an important part of her story. I feel women have still a way to go for equality in Brazil and elsewhere about their rights and their bodies.

Audience Question: Was this film considered for the foreign language nominee?
Sonia Braga: We heard that, but maybe because the cast and crew had signs at Cannes denouncing the new government that colored the decision. Aquarius has not been chosen as Brazil’s nominee for this year.

The 41st Toronto International Film Festival

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