Living in New York is a cinephile’s dream. Not only is there an overabundance of repertory theaters (including Metrograph where Los Sures began its successful rebirth after three decades as a little-seen doc) but there’s an embarrassment of riches when it comes to film festivals. And so, while we may be suffering from Cannes FOMO right now, us New Yorkers have a couple of summer festivals coming our way, including the Brooklyn Film Festival.
With over 100 films from 31 different countries being screened, we wanted to make sure you knew which ones to keep an eye out for. First off, you surely don’t want to miss Lightningface which stars everyone’s fave, Oscar Isaac. He plays Basil Stitt, a guy who is losing it — like, throwing up and trashing his place and leaving breakup voicemails losing it — in Brian Petsos’s darkly comic short film. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s also the guy behind another Isaac short film, 2014’s Ticky Tacky.
From the looks of it men losing their shit is a common theme across the shorts being offered. Joe Rendón’s Suck it, Boss (Huevos, jefe) is a darkly comic take on workplace frustration. When Hernandez senses he’s about to get fired, he decides he can’t let that happen. Gun in hand, he’s ready to negotiate.
Adding to the ever-burgeoning list of “American feature films shot in Cuba” (see also: Papa Hemingway in Cuba and Sin Alas) Art Jones’s Forbidden Cuba was shot guerrilla-style on the Caribbean island back in 2012. The hope was, in Jones’s words “to open eyes, break down walls and reveal the truth of a rapidly changing Cuba.” The project follows Gil, an American businessman sent to the island who gets swallowed up in the unknowns of Havana. If nothing else, the film promises to showcase beautiful vistas and pockets of Cuban life that we rarely see on screen.
Elsewhere, the program contains experimental films from Mexican and Brazilian directors, an animated film set in the Mexican Revolution in 1913, and a documentary short following the journey of a handmade scarf made by a weaver in a rural village in Peru. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of a wide-ranging series of flicks being shown all around the New York City borough.
The Brooklyn Film Festival runs June 3-12, 2016.