Specialty Preview

Indie releases from limited (Memoir of a Snail) to wide (Conclave) are testing an increasingly lively specialty box office heading into awards season with a handful of decorated documentaries this week including Dahomey, Black Box Diaries, My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock and Another Kind of Wilderness and some notable expansions. Also hitting theaters this weekend,
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Sing Sing, the powerful, poignant prison drama starring Colman Domingo, opens NY/LA, with indie love stories Dandelion and Touch debuting on hundreds of screens as distributors continue to tinker with release patterns. Martin Scorsese, eloquent as always, narrates (and executive produced) Made In England: The Films of Powell And Pressburger. Sorry/Not Sorry takes on comedian
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Gory Hindi action film Kill opens on 827 screens via Roadside Attractions this weekend. It’s the distributor’s first foray into Indian film, which is having another moment after two pics hit the top 10 in North America last week. This is a crowded theatrical market with wide releases piling in and some high-profile indie holdovers.
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The indie market is feeling pretty good. A big film from India Kalki 2898 AD may unseat RRR’s North American opening weekend. June Squibb-starrer Thelma is blowing through midweek shows and stands at $3.75 million heading into week 2 steady at 1,280 theaters. Searchlight Pictures Kinds Of Kindness by Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things) starring Emma
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The indie box office roared to life this weekend as Thelma from Magnolia Pictures saw a hefty $2.2 million on 1,280 screens and Searchlight Pictures’ Kinds of Kindness booked a stellar $70k per screen average at five theaters in LA and NY for $350k — the year’s highest per screen average and best overall limited
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. There’s been much speculation about distributors being wary about taking films critical of Donald Trump for fear he will sue – most recently Ali Abassi’s biopic The Apprentice, which premiered at Cannes to great reviews. The former president hates the movie and backer Dan Snyder has disavowed it. But if you love the guy,
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It’s a big weekend for critically acclaimed indies in limited release as well as a handful of moderate openings, including Richard Gere’s latest film Longing. The provenance of that is unusual as the film from Lionsgate/Grindstone is a Canada-set remake of a 2017 Israeli drama. The original was quite well received, but the film opening
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Few big new studio wide releases, yes, but Viggo Mortensen’s latest is on 700 screens, plus limited openings for Chris Wilcha’s Flipside, Judd Apatow EP, and Spanish animated, Oscar-nominated Robot Dreams from Neon. Bleecker Street’s family drama Ezra and IFC Films’ arthouse slasher In A Violent Nature are technically wide but both well under 1,500
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A searing historical drama set in mid-19th century Bologna, and a TIFF award winning coming-of-age story open in limited release. The fascination with female conductors continues in doc Maestra. Netflix starts a small run with Richard Linklater comedy Hit Man. A24’s I Saw TV Glow is steady on under 400 screens. Evil Does Not Exist
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It’s an indie grab bag and a fun one this weekend with the widely pummeled TIFF-premiering Poolman, (the people will decide), Jamie Foxx in comedy Not Another Church Movie, and Eric Bana’s Force of Nature: The Dry 2 sequel. Mubi and Strand Releasing are testing the market with limited openings Gasoline Rainbow and A Prince.
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It’s been a rough few weeks for indies but May is here with a handful of hopefuls looking to rev up the market — from A24’s buzzy I Saw The TV Glow to Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Venice award-winning Evil Does Not Exist. A documentary about Anita Pallenberg featuring Scarlett Johansson hits theaters, with a French animated
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There’s a nice trio of specialty films to highlight this weekend from Joanna Arnow, Uberto Pasolini and Caitlin Cronenberg‘s feature directorial debut. Joanna Arnow’s micro-budget comedy The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Past world-premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. It follows a 30-something New York woman as time passes in her long-term casual
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Sasquatch Sunset directors Nathan and David Zellner (Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter) always wondered what these hairy giants do when they’re not walking – the only Bigfoot footage available has been a minute of a supposed Sasquatch wandering in the northern California woods. They decided to flesh that out in unique dialogue-free comedic imagining of the
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Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker – which was pulled from TIFF in 2022 over “rights issues” — starts a theatrical debut today at the IFC Center, moving to LA’s Landmark’s Nuart next weekend and expanding thereafter with about 85 booking so far — a nice outcome for the mixed-media coming-of-age dark superhero parody that “had
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Q&A’s are a staple of indie opening weekends since they tend to sell tickets but Bob and Jeanne Berney’s Picturehouse has raised that bar, offering audiences seven-minute live burlesque revues before selected screenings of documentary Carol Doda Topless At The Condor. The ode to the woman, and to 1960s San Francisco where she broke out
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A trio of moderate releases – One Life, The American Society Of Magical Negroes and Knox Goes Away join Janus Films’ celebration of master musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, and César award winning The Animal Kingdom as the next wave of 2024 indie films rolls out post-Oscars. Focus Features’ American Society Of Magical Negroes, the feature directorial
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A24’s psychological thriller Love Lies Bleeding by director Rose Glass starring Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Jena Malone and Anna Baryshnikov, with Dave Franco and Ed Harris, opens in limited release on five screens in New York and LA , expanding next week. A reclusive gym manager Lou (Steward) falls hard for Jackie (O’Brian), an ambitious bodybuilder headed
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Two well-reviewed indies are taking a bow in limited release in the shadow of Dune, A24’s Problemista by Julio Torres, and Shayda from Sony Pictures Classics, the feature debut of Noora Niasari. Torres, the comedian, actor and writer, in his directorial debut, stars with Tilda Swinton as Problemista gets its release at last after being
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Italy’s Best International Feature Oscar-nominated Io Capitano starts its U.S. run today in ten market on 21 screens, a bit wider than usual for Cohen Media Group but with Academy final voting just started, reviews are gold for the odyssey that director Matteo Garrone calls “a movie about human rights. About the rights of everybody
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It’s a weekend of well-reviewed indie openings with Bleecker Street’s Out Of Darkness, The Monk And The Gun (from the directors of Lunana: A Yak In The Classroom) and limited openings for The Taste Of Things, Perfect Days (Best International Feature nominated), Anthony Chen’s Drift, Bas Devos’ Here and Ennio by Giuseppe Tornatore, which premiered
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A handful of indies bow or expand this weekend as Oscar hopefuls from Poor Things to The Holdovers and American Fiction crowd theaters after nominations earlier this week. Anatomy Of A Fall is getting a big bump. Oppenheimer is back on Imax. New specialty releases include Daisy Ridley-starring Sometimes I Think About Dying by Rachel
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In a lull for specialty openings early in the new year, three foreign-language films are taking a shot. The Settlers, winner of the Cannes Un Certain Regard FIPRESCI Prize, and Inshallah A Boy are Cannes alumns and Oscar submissions from, respectively, Chile and Jordan (neither short-listed in a competitive field). Driving Madeleine is a crowd
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