Cinéma Laika (2023)

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus

"Ars longa, vita brevis" – art is long, life is short. This is one of Japanese music icon Ryuichi Sakamoto's favorite quotes, and the message that he leaves for viewers at the end of his final concert film, shot before he succumbed to cancer in March 2023. Consisting of only Sakamoto and his piano, Opus features the final live performances of 20 songs that Sakamoto meticulously curated to encapsulate his distinguished 40-year career.

The Home

A troubled man starts working at a retirement home and realizes its residents and caretakers harbor sinister secrets. As he investigates the building and its forbidden fourth floor, he starts to uncover connections to his own past and upbringing as a foster child.

Re-Kill

Five years after a zombie outbreak, the men and women of R-Division hunt down and destroy the undead. When they see signs of a second outbreak, they fear humanity may not survive.

The Play House

After waking from the dream of a theater peopled entirely by numerous Buster Keatons, a lowly stage hand causes havoc everywhere he works.

Vera and the Pleasure of Others

Seventeen-year-old Vera earns money by secretly renting out an apartment to teenagers seeking privacy, all while eavesdropping from behind a closed door. As she listens, her own desires awaken.

Laid to Rest

A young girl wakes up in a casket with a head injury and no memory of her identity. She quickly realizes she was abducted by a serial killer and she must fight to survive.

Through the Olive Trees

When the actor in a scene for his film Life And Nothing More… has to quit, a film director casts another man for the part. However, complications arise since the man and the woman who was cast for the scene know each other.

Black Sabbath

Three tales of supernatural horror include a woman plagued by threatening phone calls, a family targeted by vampiric monsters, and a deceased medium who wreaks havoc upon the living.

Humanité

In a quiet little French town, two detectives are tasked with investigating the brutal rape and murder of a preteen girl.

3:10 to Yuma

Dan Evans, a small time farmer, is hired to escort Ben Wade, a dangerous outlaw, to Yuma. As Evans and Wade wait for the 3:10 train to Yuma, Wade's gang is racing to free him.

An Average Little Man

A middle-aged government accountant is determined to secure a stable job for his son before retiring, willing to go to great lengths to achieve his goal.

Drifting Clouds

The ever-poker-faced Ilona loses her job as a restaurant hostess, as her tram driver husband, Lauri, also finds himself out of work. Together they must hit the streets of Helsinki, facing up to hardship and humiliation in their quest for survival, guided through the gloom by a ray of hope.

White Hunter, Black Heart

Renowned filmmaker John Wilson travels to Africa to direct a new movie, but constantly leaves to hunt elephants and other game, to the dismay of his cast and crew. He eventually becomes obsessed with hunting down and killing one specific elephant.

Freaky Tales

In 1987 Oakland, a mysterious force guides The Town's underdogs in four interconnected tales: teen punks defend their turf against Nazi skinheads, a rap duo battles for hip-hop immortality, a weary henchman gets a shot at redemption, and an NBA All-Star settles the score.

Sovereign

Struggling single father Jerry indoctrinates his son Joe into the sovereign citizen movement, teaching him that laws are mere illusions and freedom is something you take. But, as Jerry’s ideology consumes them, they are set on a collision course with a police chief who has spent his life upholding the rules that Jerry has spent his tearing down.

Smiles of a Summer Night

Early in the 20th century, middle-aged lawyer Fredrik Egerman and his young wife, Anne, have still not consummated their marriage, while Fredrik's son finds himself increasingly attracted to his new stepmother. To make matters worse, Fredrik's old flame Desiree makes a public bet that she can seduce him at a romantic weekend retreat where four couples convene, swapping partners and pairing off in unexpected ways.

Cries and Whispers

As Agnes slowly dies of cancer, her sisters are so immersed in their own psychic pains that they are unable to offer her the support she needs.

Initiation Love

Set in Shizuoka and Tokyo, Japan in the late 1980's. Takkun is a university student in Shizuoka attempting to find a job. Mayu is a dental hygienist. They meet through a blind date and begin to date, but Takkun finds a job in Tokyo and goes there. They begin a long distance relationship, but their relationship breaks down.

The Man in My Basement

Down on his luck, Charles Blakey agrees to rent his basement to a mysterious stranger, unaware he may be letting in a force much darker than he imagined.

Freakier Friday

Years after Tess and Anna endured an identity crisis, Anna now has a daughter of her own and a soon-to-be stepdaughter. As they navigate the myriad challenges that come when two families merge, Tess and Anna discover lightning might indeed strike twice.

The Isle

Mute Hee-Jin is working as a clerk in a fishing resort in the Korean wilderness; selling baits, food and occasionally her body to the fishing tourists. One day she falls in love with Hyun-Shik, who is on the run from the police, and rescues him with a fish hook when he tries to commit suicide.

Satan

A group of young people leave a disco and bump into a shepherd who is ready to spend his night worshipping Satan.

Amish Grace

When a gunman killed five Amish children and injured five others in a Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania schoolhouse shooting in October of 2006, the world media attention rapidly turned from the tragic events to the extraordinary forgiveness demonstrated by the Amish community.

HIM

After suffering a potentially career-ending brain trauma, Cameron Cade receives a lifeline when his hero, legendary eight-time Championship quarterback and cultural megastar Isaiah White, offers to train Cam at Isaiah's isolated compound that he shares with his celebrity influencer wife. But as Cam's training accelerates, Isaiah's charisma begins to curdle into something darker.

The Man Without a Past

Arriving in Helsinki, a nameless man is beaten within an inch of his life by thugs, miraculously recovering only to find that he has completely lost his memory. Back on the streets, he attempts to begin again from zero, befriending a moody dog and becoming besotted with a Salvation Army volunteer.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance

Official Shogunate executioner Ogami Itto has been framed for disloyalty to the Shogunate by the Yagyu clan, against whom he now is waging a one-man war, along with his infant son, Daigoro.

The Hill

North Africa, World War II. British soldiers on the brink of collapse push beyond endurance to struggle up a brutal incline. It's not a military objective. It's The Hill, a manmade instrument of torture, a tower of sand seared by a white-hot sun. And the troops' tormentors are not the enemy, but their own comrades-at-arms.

A Line of Fire

After working as a secret agent in the FBI for ten years, Jack 'Cash' Conry left it all behind after his wife passed in order to dedicate himself to his two daughters. Despite a fulfilling life at home, Cash misses the chance to make an impact and has been considering a return to the force. The decision is made for him when his old partner’s niece Jamie calls him for help, launching Cash right back into a world of danger, corruption and intrigue.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

The wife of an abusive criminal finds solace in the arms of a kind regular guest in her husband's restaurant.

Dude Bro Party Massacre III

In the wake of two back-to-back mass murders on Chico's frat row, loner Brent Chirino must infiltrate the ranks of a popular fraternity to investigate his twin brother's murder at the hands of the serial killer known as "Motherface."

Laura

A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he's investigating.

Hallow Road

Two parents enter a race against time when they receive a distressing late-night phone call from their daughter after she caused a tragic car accident.

Vacancy 2: The First Cut

Three young people check into the Meadow View Inn for a night's rest, fully unaware of the inn's sick-minded employees and their nefarious intentions.

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

When the American Chicken Bunker, a military themed fast food restaurant, builds its latest chain restaurant on the site of an ancient Native American burial ground, the displaced spirits take revenge on unsuspecting diners and transform them into chicken zombies! Now, it’s up to a dimwitted counter boy, his collegiate lesbian ex-girlfriend and a burqa-wearing fry cook to put an end to the foul feathered menace once and for all.

The Man from Laramie

Will Lockhart arrives in Coronado, an isolated town in New Mexico, in search of someone who sells rifles to the Apache tribe, finding himself unwillingly drawn into the convoluted life of a local ranching family whose members seem to have a lot to hide.

Monkey Business

Four stowaways get mixed up with gangsters while running riot on an ocean liner.

My Friends Act III

This time the "amici" (friends) are just four: Necchi, Meandri, Mascetti and Sassaroli. Nevertheless they are older they still love to spend their time mainly organizing irresistible jokes to everyone in every kind of situation. Mascetti is hospitalized in a geriatric clinic. Of course the place become immediately the main stage for all their jokes. After some jokes they decided to place an ultimate incredible and farcical joke to the clinic guests.

A Tale of Autumn

Magali, forty-something, is a winemaker and a widow: she loves her work but feels lonely. Her friends Rosine and Isabelle both want secretly to find a husband for Magali.

The Gauntlet

Phoenix cop Ben Shockley is well on his way to becoming a derelict when he is assigned to transport a witness from Las Vegas. The witness turns out to be a belligerent prostitute with mob ties—and incriminating information regarding a high-ranking official.

Swiped

Whitney Wolfe uses extraordinary grit and ingenuity to break into the male-dominated tech industry.

King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen

A feature-length documentary focusing on the acclaimed work and eclectic career of maverick filmmaker Larry Cohen, writer-director of "Black Caesar," "It's Alive," "God Told Me To," "Q," "The Stuff," and many more.

I Am Alfred Hitchcock

Interviews and archival footage weave together to tell the story of the Master of Suspense, one of the most influential and studied filmmakers in the history of cinema.

Les dents de la mer: Un succès monstre

In the summer of 1975, the young director Steven Spielberg set new standards for cinema worldwide with an oversized shark bite, a plastic shark fin and an unmistakable two-note main theme composed by John Williams. With the horror from the deep, a man-eating, gigantic great white shark, the film of the same name became a similarly traumatic reference as Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho": it triggered lasting primal fears across generations. On the beaches of the world, there was clearly a "before" and an "after". Steven Spielberg, who was only 28 at the time, not only set new standards for the thriller genre, but also hid his biting criticism of US capitalism in the 1970s behind it.

Narrowsburg

The stranger-than-fiction story of a French film producer and her mafioso-turned-actor husband who attempt to turn a tiny town into the “Sundance of the East.”

Sous le soleil de Pialat

In just ten films, Maurice Pialat painfully rose to the top of the cinema, draining into his legend a mad demand for truth as much as memorable fury to achieve it. With "L'Enfance nue", his first feature film at the age of 43, the filmmaker immediately made his mark, this "art of making things authentic", according to Chabrol. But throughout an unclassifiable filmography in the form of an autobiography, from a break-up to his fatherhood in wonder, through the agony of his mother, the filmmaker does not get rid of the feeling of being misunderstood, despite international recognition.

Scala!!!

This feature-length big screen documentary tells the riotous inside story of the infamous sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll repertory cinema which inspired a generation during Britain's turbulent Thatcher years.

My Best Fiend

A film that describes the love-hate relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, the deep trust between the director and the actor, and their independently and simultaneously hatched plans to murder one another.

Verstörung - und eine Art von Poesie. Die Filmlegende Bernhard Wicki

Documentary about film director and actor Bernhard Wicki.

Altman

Robert Altman's life and career contained multitudes. This father of American independent cinema left an indelible mark, not merely on the evolution of his art form, but also on the western zeitgeist. With its use of rare interviews, representative film clips, archival images, and musings from his family and most recognizable collaborators, Altman is a dynamic and heartfelt mediation on an artist whose expression, passion and appetite knew few bounds.

Spellbound

This documentary follows 8 teens and pre-teens as they work their way toward the finals of the Scripps Howard national spelling bee championship in Washington D.C.

Prime Farmland

This documentary film follows farmers and activists fighting together to stop the Indiana Enterprise Center, a mega-sized industrial park planned west of South Bend, Indiana

The Balcony Movie

Composed from the conversations that the director holds with people passing by in the street under his Warsaw apartment, each story in 'The Balcony Movie' is unique and deals with the way we try to cope with life as individuals. All together, they create a self-portrait of contemporary human life, and the passers-by present a composite picture of today's world.

Marqueetown

Through booms and busts, Delft Theatres and its innovative gem The Nordic endured in Marquette, Michigan for almost 100 years. Bernie Rosendahl’s crusade to restore the historic arthouse to its former glory reveals a hidden cinema empire in the Upper Peninsula.

Welcome to Lynchland

Creator of absolute freedom, David Lynch constructed his work as an enigma to be deciphered between dream and reality. A cult director from his first films ("Eraserhead", "Elephant Man", "Blue Velvet"), Lynch forever changed the world of television with his series "Twin Peaks", before tackling the lies of Hollywood in "Mulholland Drive". Tracing the life of the most influential filmmaker of his generation, this documentary explores the hidden meaning of a relentlessly consistent filmography and delves beneath the dark, teeming surface of the American Dream.

Entretien en six temps avec Gilles Groulx

This feature-length documentary brings together six of the rare television interviews given by Gilles Groulx between 1966 and 1983. Through these interviews, the filmmaker's ethical and aesthetic concerns are revealed. A striking coherence emerges in his thinking regarding his conception of cinema and the role the filmmaker should play in his culture and society.

The Mythology of Star Wars

George Lucas discusses how Joseph Campbell and his concept of the Monomyth (aka the Hero's Journey) and other concepts from mythology and religion shaped the Star Wars saga.

Vernon, Florida

Early Errol Morris documentary intersplices random chatter he captured on film of the genuinely eccentric residents of Vernon, Florida. A few examples? The preacher giving a sermon on the definition of the word "Therefore," and the obsessive turkey hunter who speaks reverentially of the "gobblers" he likes to track down and kill.

Compañero Fernando

This documentary is a portrait made in Mexico by a group of Argentine exiles, directed by the painter Nicolás Amoroso.

Kubrick by Kubrick

A rare and transcendent journey into the life and films of the legendary Stanley Kubrick like we've never seen before, featuring a treasure trove of unearthed interview recordings from the master himself.

Fellini of the Spirits

2020 marks 100 years since the birth of Federico Fellini, the most prominent Italian director and one of the symbols of the insuperable cinematic heyday of mid-20th century. Fellini had always been a mysterious director, not only in his cryptic symbolism but also in his idiosyncratic, excessive mixture of psychoanalysis, Catholicism and faith in the mysterious. In this documentary, his relationship with the paranormal, luck and fate, alongside the coexistence of organized discourse and transcendence to the imaginary, is examined via friends, collaborators and distinguished fans (Friedkin, Gilliam, Chazelle). A great testimony to why rationalists and ideologists have a hard time with his work, ‘Fellini and the Spirits’ is an appropriate yet unexpected tribute.

The Making of 'Rocky vs. Drago'

Fight alongside Sylvester Stallone as he creates a brand-new director's cut of Rocky IV: ROCKY VS. DRAGO. This feature-length documentary offers a personal and uncompromising look into the editing process, captured by Sly's longtime friend and fellow filmmaker John Herzfeld.

God's Country

In 1979, Louis Malle films the thriving lives of a Minnesota farming community, but returns six years later to document its drastic economic decline, offering a poignant look at the impact of political changes.

The Cowboy Capital

Bandera, Texas (THE COWBOY CAPITAL OF THE WORLD) is a captivating documentary that explores the vibrant history, unique culture, and enduring values of the small town of Bandera, Texas.

The People vs. George Lucas

The passion the original Star Wars trilogy inspires in its fans is unparalleled; but when it comes to George Lucas himself, many have found their ardor has cooled into a complicated love-hate relationship. This hilarious, heartfelt documentary delves deep into Lucas’s cultural legacy, asking all the tough questions. Has Lucas betrayed his masterwork? Should he just have left the original trilogy alone? Is The Phantom Menace so bad it should carry a health warning? Utilizing interviews taken from over 600 hours of footage, and peppered with extraordinary Star Wars and Indiana Jones recreations lovingly immortalized in song, needlepoint, Lego, claymation, puppets and paper-mâché, above all this film asks the question: who truly owns that galaxy far, far away—the man who created it, or the fans who worship it?

Yellow Door: '90s Lo-fi Film Club

This intimate documentary explores a bygone era of cinematic passion and the emergence of young film enthusiasts in South Korea, including Bong Joon Ho.

Under the Stars

Paying tribute to some of America's only surviving drive-ins – and those who keep them running – this heartfelt documentary captures efforts to preserve these nostalgic theaters in small-towns across the country.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?

Clint Eastwood: Hollywood Outlaw

Film clips and interviews with biographers and colleagues chart the prolific, six-decade career of maverick actor-director Clint Eastwood.

Welcome to Leith

In September 2012, the tiny prairie town of Leith, North Dakota, sees its population of 24 grow by one. As the new resident's behavior becomes more threatening, tensions soar, and the residents desperately look for ways to expel their unwanted neighbor.

Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story

Chronicles the last great American showman, filmmaker William Castle, a master of ballyhoo who became a brand name in movie horror with his outrageous audience participation gimmicks.

It's Tough to Be a Bird

Part cartoon and part documentary, this film offers a humorous look at birds and the ways people perceive them.

The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan

Everyone has a skeleton or two in his or her closet, but what about the director behind some of the most successful thrillers ever to hit the silver screen? Could M. Night Shyamalan be hiding a deep, dark secret that drives his macabre cinematic vision? Now viewers will be able to find out firsthand what fuels The Sixth Sense director's seemingly supernatural creativity as filmmakers interview Shyamalan as well as the cast and crew members who have worked most closely with him over the years. Discover the early events that shaped the mind of a future master of suspense in a documentary that is as fascinating as it is revealing.