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  Special Screenings

  

  An Army of Women (2024)

  If you were a regular Chronicle reader in the late 2010s and early 2020s, then you already know about the city’s shameful rape kit backlog and the subsequent class action lawsuit filed by 15 rape survivors against the city, county, and criminal justice system. What director Julie Lunde Lillesæter and her team do so effectively is distill that yearslong process into a 84-minute documentary with an intimate lens on the survivors and lawyers at the heart of the case. Following Saturday’s screening will be a panel conversation with three of the plaintiffs and the head of APD’s Sex Crimes and Domestic Violence units. – Kimberley Jones

  May 8 & 10-11

  AFS Cinema

• Film

  Special Screenings

  

  Hereditary (2018)

  Ari Aster’s directorial debut set off a reinvigoration of arthouse horror and catapulted A24 to fame as the most relevant production company of the last decade. It also gave me an entirely sleepless night upon first viewing. Toni Collette’s performance as both a terrifying and deeply sympathetic grieving mother steals the show, but Milly Shapiro and Alex Wolff as her creepy children anchor the real horror of this family drama-turned-supernatural nightmare. The sharp, cacophonous saxophone score will linger in your ear, and one chilling scene will have you checking the corners of your ceiling long after the film ends. A true modern horror classic, it deserves to be seen in the theatre for the collective shock it elicits from first-time viewers. – Lina Fisher Read a full review of Hereditary.

  May 9-14

  Alamo Drafthouse Mueller, Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, Alamo Drafthouse Village, Alamo Drafthouse Lakeline, Alamo Drafthouse Slaughter Lane

• Film

  Special Screenings

  

  Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

  Many were surprised at the 2022 Sight and Sound critics’ poll topper, which beat out Hitchcock’s blonde mindbender Vertigo and capitalist cautionary tale Citizen Kane to be crowned the “greatest film of all time.” Yet Belgian director Chantal Akerman’s film captures the cruel tedium of the misogynistic world without once letting up: presenting on film life exactly as it is. Yes, the world of widowed housewife Jeanne is one built from boredom – you’ve never seen so many potatoes cooked for such a spoiled adult son – but that is how women are expected to live, even now. Silent and constant, Jeanne moves through her life as less its owner than a worker in its machinery. She simmers in that sexist soup as the viewer does until, at last, neither you nor Jeanne can bear it any longer. – James Scott

  Sat., May 10

  Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar

• Film

  Special Screenings

  

  No Other Land (2024)

  The Israeli assault on Gaza didn’t start on Oct. 7, 2023. The brutal policy of forcing Palestinians off their own land has been ongoing for decades but was rarely shown on the screen. Palestinian activist Basel Adra had been gathering footage for years and teamed up with Israeli investigative journalist Yuval Abraham (as well as Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal and Israeli cinematographer Rachel Szor) to create this Oscar-winning documentary about the endless assaults upon the people of the tiny farming community of Masafer Yatta. But it’s also the story of their friendship, a beacon of hope in these terrible times. – Richard Whittaker Read a full review of No Other Land.

  May 8 & 10

  AFS Cinema

• Film

  Special Screenings

  

  Hell Drivers (1967)

  As Quentin Tarantino correctly observed, “British guys fucking love Hell Drivers.” Dubbed the English Wages of Fear, Cy Endfield’s gritty masterpiece opens up AFS Cinema’s new series, This Nation’s Saving Grace, highlighting soot-covered gems from the 1950s and early 1960s UK, including Teddy Boy classic Beat Girl, Soho strip club crawl The Small World of Sammy Lee, and All Night Long, a reenvisioning of Othello in London’s jazz scene. But with an all-star cast of postwar British cinema, including comedy legends Alfie Bass and Sid James, Herbert Lom, Patrick McGoohan, a never-better Stanley Baker, and a very young Sean Connery, and a high-stakes plot about corruption and disposable employees, Hell Drivers puts the “essential” in AFS’s Essential Cinema. – Richard Whittaker

  May 6 & 10

  AFS Cinema