Leave it up to the experts.
That’s exactly the point behind Curators’ Choice, which is at the Museum of the Moving Image in December.
This annual series screens the year’s best films as chosen by MoMI Senior Curator of Film Eric Hynes and Associate Curator of Film Edo Choi with contributions from Curator of Science and Technology Sonia Epstein, Associate Director of Special Programs Sarah Luciano, and Editorial Director Michael Koresky.
The lineup includes documentaries, TV/streaming works, art-house favorites, and pop cultural hits. General admission is $15.
Click here for the schedule or read the details below.
Sunday, Dec. 1
Director Oksana Karpovych’s Intercepted at 12:30 pm. In Russian and Ukrainian with English subtitles, this documentary shares intercepted phone calls Russian soldiers made from the battlefield to their families over two years of Russia’s war against Ukraine. They’re juxtaposed with footage of Ukraine in the aftermath of destruction shot with cinematographer Christopher Nunn in 2023.
Directors Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor’s No Other Land at 2 pm. In Arabic, English, and Hebrew with English subtitles, this documentary is a collaboration between Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers and activists. They capture the Israeli military’s destruction of Masafer Yatta, an act that displaces Palestinian inhabitants for a military training ground.
Director Shiori Itō is in person for Black Box Diaries at 4 pm. In Japanese and English with English subtitles, this documentary follows Itō as she publicly accuses a prominent media executive (and associate of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe) of rape in 2017.
Directors Stephen Maing and Brett Story are in person for Union at 6 pm. This documentary provides a behind-the-scenes look at unionizing efforts by Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island.
Friday, Dec. 6
Director India Donaldson is in person for Good One at 7:15 pm. Lily Collias plays a wise teenager who goes on a weekend camping trip in upstate New York with her divorced dad and his best friend. Tensions rise, causing unhealed wounds to surface and new fractures to erupt.
Saturday, Dec. 7
Director Johan Grimonprez’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat at 2 pm. In French, English, Dutch, and Russian with English subtitles, this essay film reanimates a moment when African politics and American Jazz collided in 1960. Musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the United Nations Security Council, and Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe. The U.S. State Department swings into action, sending Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from a coup.
Sunday, Dec. 8
Director Lance Oppenheim is in person for Ren Faire at 2 pm. For half a century, George Coulam, known to his employees as “King George,” has reigned with an iron fist over the Texas Renaissance Festival. As he turns 86, it’s time to find a successor.
Director Lance Oppenheim is in person for FX’s Spermworld at 5:30 pm. This documentary depicts the new Wild West of fertility—unregulated encounters between freelance sperm donors and hopeful parents. Meet longtime serial donors, retired men looking to make themselves useful, parents who can’t afford – or don’t trust – fertility treatments, and women who fail to qualify for such assistance.
Friday, Dec. 13
Director Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera at 6:45 pm. In Italian with English subtitles, this fairy tale follows a thief who gets out of prison and rejoins his roving band of graverobbers.
Saturday, Dec. 14
Directors Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau’s Direct Action at 4 pm. In French, English, and Arabic with English subtitles, this experimental work looks at a French political eco-activist group. Set in a Notre-Dame-des-Landes commune in western France, the collective plans and carries out its mission to disrupt and discourage corporations and state entities from building on and destroying land.
Director Jane Schoenbrun is in person for I Saw the TV Glow at 6 pm. Justice Smith plays an outsider teen who is forever transformed after a new friend at school (Brigette Lundy-Paine) introduces him to the late-night pleasures and pains of a mysterious TV series.
Sunday, Dec. 15
Director Phạm Thiên Ân’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell at 1 pm. In Vietnamese with English subtitles, this film follows a young man who finds a five-year-old in his care. Returning to his rural hometown, he confronts his past, his longings, and his religious faith.
Director Kazik Radwanski’s Matt and Mara at 4:30 pm. Old flames Matt, a well-known author, and Mara, an ambivalently married poetry professor, rekindle their romance over a series of anxious, halting, tentative rendezvous.
Director Nathan Silver and screenwriter Chris Wells are in person for Between the Temples at 6 pm. This comic drama depicts a cantor in a crisis of faith after his grade-school music teacher re-enters his life as his new adult bat mitzvah student.
Friday, Dec. 20
Director Bill Morrison is in person for Last Things + Incident at 7 pm. This scientific endeavor imagines evolution and extinction from the point of view of the rocks and minerals. It’s preceded by Morrison’s 30-minute Incident, a composite montage of images from surveillance and security footage and police bodycams.
Saturday, Dec. 21
Director Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point at 2 pm and 4:30 pm. Generational tensions arise during an eccentric Italian-American family’s Christmas Eve get-together. One of the teenagers sneaks out with her friend to claim the wintry suburb for her own.
Sunday, Dec. 22
Director Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point at 2 pm and 4:30 pm. Generational tensions arise during an eccentric Italian American family’s Christmas Eve get-together. One of the teenagers sneaks out with a friend to claim the wintry suburb for her own.
Thursday, Dec. 26, to Sunday, Dec. 29
Director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two (in 70mm) is a sci-fi narrative. Paul Atreides and his mother, Lady Jessica, plot to secure their alliance with indigenous Fremen against a corrupt emperor and the rapacious Harkonnens. Screens on Dec. 26 at 3:30 pm, Dec. 27 at 6 pm, Dec. 28 at 2:30 pm, and Dec. 29 at 4 pm.
Friday, Dec. 27
Director Bas Devos’s Here at 7 pm. In Dutch, French, Romanian, and Mandarin with English subtitles, this film follows a construction worker wandering through his final days in Brussels before returning to visit his mother in Romania. His preparations are interrupted when he meets a Belgian Chinese bryologist studying local moss.
Sunday, Dec. 29
Director Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka at 5 pm. In English, Portuguese, and Lakota with English subtitles, this triptych shifts from a surreal western to a documentary-like depiction of an indigenous police-woman’s patrol to a mystical visit to the jungles of 1970s Brazil.
All screenings take place in MoMI’s Sumner M. Redstone Theater or Celeste and Armand Bartos Screen Room. Both are at 36-01 35th Ave. in Astoria’s Kaufman Arts District.
Editor’s note: This article describes Part I of Curators’ Choice. Part II will take place in January 2025.
Image: Rob MacKay