The International Cinema Series presents critically acclaimed and important films from around the world (including independent and artistic American films) almost every week. We show restorations of honored classics as well as contemporary films that have captured the attention of critics at recent film festivals.
Eckerd College is committed to creating inclusive and accessible events. If you need a reasonable accommodation, please contact the program coordinator at peschk@eckerd.edu. Requests must be made at least 48 hours ahead of the screening. We will attempt to implement late requests, but cannot guarantee they will be met.
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Spring 2025 Film Schedule
Friday, February 7, 2025
Let’s Get Lost
Directed by Bruce Weber (United States, 120 min, 1988)
Traveling with the elusive jazz vocalist and trumpeter Chet Baker, Bruce Weber weaves together the life story of a jazz great. The film uses excerpts from Italian B movies, rare performance footage, and candid interviews with Baker, musicians, friends, battling ex-wives, and his children in what turned out to be the last year of his life. Winner of the 1989 Critics Prize at the Venice Film Festival and nominated for an Academy Award, Let’s Get Lost has become an important document in the career of the filmmaker on the life of a jazz legend.
The screening will feature an introduction and discussion with Let’s Get Lost editor, Angelo Corrao, ACE.
Friday, February 14, 2025
Anora
Directed by Sean Baker (United States, 138 minutes, 2024)
Anora, a young sex worker from Brooklyn, gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as the parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled.
Academy Award nominee: Best Picture
Friday, February 21, 2025
Black Butterflies (Mariposas Negras)
Directed by David Baute (Spain / Panama, Spanish, Bangla, French, Arabic with English subtitles, 83 min, 2024
Lobuin, Vanesa and Soma are three women from very different parts of the world who face the same problem: climate change. They will lose everything because of the effects of global warming and they will be forced to emigrate to survive.
This film is presented in conjunction with the Visions of Nature/Voices of Nature Environmental Film Festival and will feature an introduction and discussion with Dr. Michael Burch (Political Science, Eckerd College).
Friday, February 28, 2025
Snow Leopard
Directed by Pema Tseden (China, Tibetan and Mandarin with English subtitles, 109 min, 2023)
A father and son argue over whether they should kill a snow leopard that broke into their stable and killed nine rams. A television crew arrives, eager to capture the conflict. While everyone waits for the Chinese authorities, a young Tibetan Monk seeks out the animal. Set in the Tibetan mountains, Snow Leopard explores the conflict between wildlife conservation and traditional land use and the complex relationship between humans and nature in a landscape fraught with national politics.
This film is presented in conjunction with the Visions of Nature/Voices of Nature Environmental Film Festival and will feature an introduction and discussion with Dr. Allison Quatrini (Political Sciences, Eckerd College).
Friday, March 7, 2025
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Directed by Mohammad Rasoulof (Germany / France / Iran, Farsi with English Subtitles, 168 min, 2024)
Shot entirely in secret, Mohammad Rasoulof’s award-winning thriller centers on a family thrust into the public eye when Iman is appointed as an investigating judge in Tehran. As political unrest erupts in the streets, Iman realizes that his job is even more dangerous than expected, making him increasingly paranoid and distrustful, even of his own wife Najmeh and daughters Sana and Rezvan.
Academy Award nominee: Best International Feature Film
Friday, March 28, 2025
Dahomey
Directed by Mati Diop (France / Senegal / Benin, French, Fon, and English with English subtitles, 67 min, 2024)
November 2021. 26 royal treasures of the Kingdom of Dahomey are about to leave Paris to return to their country of origin, the present-day Republic of Benin. Along with thousands of others, these artefacts were plundered by French colonial troops in 1892. But what attitude to adopt to these ancestors’ homecoming in a country that had to forge ahead in their absence? The debate rages among students at the University of Abomey-Calavi.
Friday, April 4, 2025
2024 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour
Various Directors (International, with English subtitles, 110 min, 2024)
The 2024 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour is a theatrical program of seven short films curated from the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, including three Festival Award–winning titles. The tour program is a sampling of Festival offerings and a testament to the unique storytelling potential that the format holds. Audiences can enjoy a mix of fiction, documentary, and animated shorts that are funny, sad, inspiring, and full of strong characters. Driven by innovation and experimentation, the Short Film Program seeks out filmmaking’s most original voices from around the world.
Friday, April 11, 2025
An Unfinished Film
Directed by Lou Ye (Singapore / Germany, Mandarin with English subtitles, 107 minutes, 2024)
January 2020. A film crew reunites near Wuhan to resume the shooting of a film halted ten years earlier, only to share the unexpected challenges as cities are placed under lockdown.
Friday, April 18, 2025
Bird
Directed by Andrea Arnold (United Kingdom, 119 min, 2023)
12 year-old Bailey lives with her single dad Bug and brother Hunter in a squat in North Kent. Bug doesn’t have much time for his kids and Bailey who is approaching puberty seeks attention and adventure elsewhere.
Friday, April 25, 2025
Orlando: My Political Biography
Directed by Paul B. Preciado (France, French with English Subtitles, 102 min, 2023
Taking Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography as its starting point, academic virtuoso turned filmmaker Paul B. Preciado has fashioned the award-winning documentary, Orlando: My Political Biography, as a personal essay, historical analysis, and social manifesto. For almost a century, Woolf’s eponymous hero/heroine has inspired readers for their gender fluidity across physical and spiritual metamorphoses over a 300-year lifetime. Preciado casts a diverse cross-section of more than twenty trans and non-binary individuals in the role of Orlando as they perform interpretations of scenes from the novel, weaving into Woolf’s narrative their own stories of identity and transition. Not content to simply update a seminal work, Preciado interrogates the relevance of Orlando in the continuing struggle against anti-trans ideologies and in the fight for global trans rights.
Friday, May 2, 2025
Cinema’s First Nasty Women: Gender Adventures
A screening of rarely-seen silent films about feminist protest, slapstick rebellion, and suggestive gender play. From the Old West to the (now not so) distant future, women take center stage and drive the action in this program of adventures.
Cinema’s First Nasty Women DVD set programmer Laura Horak (Associate Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University) will introduce the films and facilitate a discussion after the screening.
Meet the Coordinator
Katrin Pesch
Assistant Professor of Film Studies
Research assistance: Paige Norris ’28 and Sophie Schwartz ’28
