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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Fall 2025 Film Schedule
Friday, September 5, 2025
Familiar Touch
Directed by Sarah Friedland (USA, 90 min., 2024)
Synopsis: An octogenarian woman transitions to life in assisted living as she contends with her conflicting relationship to herself and her caregivers amidst her shifting memory, age identity, and desires.
Friday, September12, 2025
Caught by the Tides
Directed by Jia Zhangke (China, Chinese with English Subtitles, 111 min., 2024)
Synopsis: In 2001, Qiaoqiao makes a small living as a singer and nightclub dancer in Datong, an industrial city in China. When her lover Bin leaves Datong without a word in search of a better life, Qiaoqiao begins a decades-long search that spans the whole nation along its profound social transformations.
Friday, September 19, 2025
Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted
Directed by Isaac Gale, Ryan Olson, David McMurry (USA, 95 min., 2025)
Synopsis: Cult musician Swamp Dogg and housemates Moogstar and Guitar Shorty have turned their suburban LA home into an artistic haven. They journey through the turbulent music business, forming a special friendship transcending eras.
Friday, September 26, 2025
Kill the Jockey
Directed by Luis Ortega (Argentina, Spanish with English Subtitles, 96 min., 2024)
Synopsis: Once-renowned jockey Remo Manfredi (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) has run out of track. Perpetually inebriated, hopped up on horse drugs, and in hock to a minor mafioso, Remo seems to have a death wish. His girlfriend and fellow jockey Abril (Úrsula Corberó) is pregnant, but more invested in the libidinous equestrian underworld than in their drab domestic existence. Remo’s only hope of getting out of debt and starting a new life is riding on Mishima, a thoroughbred specially imported from Japan for his next big race. When Mishima leaps over the fence, Remo winds up in the hospital with a life-threatening concussion. Hunted by the mob and replaced in Abril’s bed by the alluring Ana (Mariana Di Girolamo), Remo dons a disguise and finds himself as herself, wandering the streets of Buenos Aires in a striking mink coat and going by the name Dolores. A wild and surreal crime comedy from Luis Ortega (El Angel), Kill the Jockey explores the fluidity of identity, desire, and animal magnetism in a wholly original and unpredictable register.
Friday, October 3, 2025
2025 Sundance Film Festival Shorts Tour
Directed by Various Directors (Various Countries & Languages with English Subtitles, 100 min., 2025)
Synopsis: The 2025 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour is a dynamic showcase of seven standout short films from this year’s Festival, including two Festival Award–winning titles. A 100-minute program curated for theatrical audiences, the tour is a special opportunity to discover a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and animated shorts, and offers an eclectic mix of storytelling that highlights bold voices and fresh perspectives.
Friday, October 17, 2025
Mistress Dispeller
Directed by Elizabeth Lo (China/USA, Chinese with English Subtitles, 94 min., 2024)
Synopsis: Desperate to save her marriage, a woman in China hires a professional to go undercover and break up her husband’s affair. With strikingly intimate access, this juicy and captivating documentary follows the unfolding family drama from all corners of a love triangle.
Friday, October 24, 2025
Folktales
Directed by Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady (Norway/USA, English and Norwegian with English Subtitles, 106 min., 2025)
Synopsis: On the precipice of adulthood, teenagers converge at a traditional folk high school in Arctic Norway. Dropped at the edge of the world, they must rely on only themselves, one another, and a loyal pack of sled dogs as they all grow in unexpected directions.
Friday, October 31, 2025
The Shrouds
Directed by David Cronenberg (Canada, English, 119 min., 2024)
Synopsis: In an eerie, deceptively placid near-future, a techno-entrepreneur named Karsh (Vincent Cassel) has developed a new software that will allow the bereaved to bear witness to the gradual decay of loved ones dead and buried in the earth. While Karsh is still reeling from the loss of his wife (Diane Kruger) from cancer—and falling into a peculiar sexual relationship with his wife’s sister (also Kruger)—a spate of vandalized graves utilizing his “shroud” technology begins to put his enterprise at risk, leading him to uncover a potentially vast conspiracy. Written following the death of the director’s wife, the new film from David Cronenberg is both a profoundly personal reckoning with grief and a descent into noir-tinged dystopia, set in an ominous world of self-driving cars, data theft, and A.I. personal assistants. Offering Cronenberg’s customary balance of malevolence and wit, The Shrouds is a sly and thought-provoking consideration of the corporeal and the digital, the mortal and the infinite.
Friday, November 7, 2025
Misericordia
Directed by Alain Guiraudie (France, French with English Subtitles, 103 min., 2024)
Synopsis: The teasingly entwined ambiguities of love and death continue to fascinate Alain Guiraudie (Stranger by the Lake, NYFF51), who returns with a sharp, sinister, yet slyly funny thriller. Set in an autumnal, woodsy village in his native region of Occitanie, his latest follows the meandering exploits of Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), an out-of-work baker who has drifted back to his hometown after the death of his beloved former boss, a bakery owner. Staying long after the funeral, the seemingly benign Jérémie begins to casually insinuate himself into his mentor’s family, including his kind-hearted widow (Catherine Frot) and venomously angry son (Jean-Baptiste Durand), while making an increasingly surprising—and ultimately beneficial—friendship with an oddly cheerful local priest (Jacques Develay). In Guiraudie’s quietly carnal world, violence and eroticism explode with little anticipation, and criminal behavior can seem like a natural extension of physical desire.
Friday, November 14, 2025
Viktor
Directed by Olivier Sarbil (Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russian with English Subtitles, 89 min., 2024)
Synopsis: A deeply personal audiovisual experience capturing a Deaf person’s navigation through the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its ensuing chaos.
Friday, November 21, 2025
It Was Just an Accident
Directed by Jafar Panahi, (Iran, Persian with English Subtitles, 105 min., 2025)
Synopsis: Vahid, an unassuming mechanic, has a chance encounter with Eghbal, a man he strongly suspects to be his former sadistic jailhouse captor. Panicked, Vahid gathers several former prisoners, all abused by that same captor, to try and confirm Eghbal’s identity. As the bickering group drives around Tehran with the captive, they must confront how far to take matters into their own hands with their presumed tormentor. From master filmmaker Jafar Panahi comes a searing moral thriller that engages with complex ideas about the uncertainty of the truth and the choice between revenge and mercy, as Panahi turns his personal dissonance into a profound and galvanizing work of art.
Friday, December 5, 2025
Sentimental Value
Directed by Joachim Trier (Norway, Norwegian & English with English Subtitles, 135 min., 2025)
Synopsis: Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star. Suddenly, the two sisters must navigate their complicated relationship with their father — and deal with an American star dropped right into the middle of their complex family dynamics.
