Join Us at The Lyric May 2 for our Annual International Film Festival.
We are featuring three critically acclaimed films from Chile, Italy, and South Korea. $7.00 tickets for individual movies are available or buy a $15 pass to see all three.
CHILE
NO
NO
In 1988, international pressure comes to bear on Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, forcing him to call a referendum on his presidency. The country will vote either yes or no on extending Pinochet’s rule for another eight years. Leaders of the “no” movement recruit Rene Saavedra (Gael García Bernal), a young advertising executive, to spearhead their campaign. With few resources and constant scrutiny by the dictator’s minions, Saavedra and his team hatch a bold plan to win the election.
“It’s clear that the language of advertising has become universal, and that political commodities can be sold like soap. But toppling a dictatorship? Now there’s a story.”
– Marjorie Baumgarten
Austin Chronicle
“NO reminds us that wherever “freedom” must be sold to the public, a history of complacency, violence, and terror has to be overcome.”
– Nicolas Rapold
Film Comment Magazine
“A political drama, a personal drama, a sharp-eyed study of how the media manipulate us from all sides, NO reels and ricochets with emotional force.”
– Steven Rea
Philadelphia Inquirer
ITALY
The Eight Mountains
The Eight Mountains
An epic journey of friendship and self-discovery set in the breathtaking Italian Alps, The Eight Mountains follows over four decades the profound, complex relationship between Pietro and Bruno. After meeting as children over a series of summers in the Italian Alps, Pietro (Luca Marinelli) and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) reunite as adults to build a mountainside cottage which becomes a site of both reflection and reconciliation.
“Wildly beautiful and tender, so infused with unspoken emotion that it’s a tearful watch even in its most idyllic moments.”
– David Sexton
New Statesman
“The Eight Mountains is in no rush to tell its story, but the time is well spent, allowing us to soak up the sweeping natural beauty of those mountains.”
– Randy Myers
San Jose Mercury News
“Watching Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s vivid, sweeping film about male friendship is like reading a satisfying novel… The film’s narrative turns may get a bit grandiose toward the end, but what precedes that is rich and moving.”
– Richard Lawson
Vanity Fair
SOUTH KOREA
No Other Choice
No Other Choice
After being laid off by the paper company where he has worked tirelessly for many years, and humiliated by a ruthless job market, a veteran paper mill manager grows increasingly desperate in his job hunt. He descends into violence by eliminating the competition in a desperate bid to reclaim his dignity.
“No other living filmmaker could so elegantly dance the line between bleak, absurd, devastating and slapstick like Park Chan-wook does in his 10th feature film and latest masterpiece.”
– Katie Walsh
Tribune News Service
“For all its dark comedy, the movie is most cutting when it moves away from the big set pieces and, instead, examines the small ways that employees lose their humanity to a capitalist system that’s out to destroy them.”
– Tim Grierson
Los Angeles Times
“As ever with Park Chan-wook, there are tasty bits of bright and bleak to noodle on in this stinging satire of AI and capitalism, but with a rigorous fix on the growing dehumanization infecting our world. One of the year’s best.”
– Peter Travers
The Travers Take
