SPECIAL EVENT – ONE NIGHT ONLY – THURSDAY, AUGUST 29 AT 6 PM

THE CAT RESCUERS

Documentary – 2018 – USA – 87 Minutes – Unrated

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With over 500,000 streets cats struggling to survive in NYC, and the city unwilling to address the problem, spirited volunteers like Sassee, Claire, Stu and Tara have come to their aid. Their beat is Brooklyn, where the problem has exploded. Combing the borough’s alleys, backyards and housing projects, they trap the cats, get them fixed and returned to their colonies, or adopted.

THE CAT RESCUERS shows the skill, resilience, and humor these volunteer activists display in the face of such challenging work, and how their mission to reduce animal suffering—often at great sacrifice to themselves—makes a difference for the animals and the community, while changing the rescuers’ lives. THE CAT RESCUERS had its world premiere at the 2018 Hamptons International Film Festival, where it won the Zelda Penzel “Giving Voice to the Voiceless” Award.

Directed by Rob Fruchtman and Steven Lawrence

Music by Hahn Rowe

The Cat Rescuers is a sponsored project of IFP.

SPECIAL EVENT – ONE NIGHT ONLY – THURSDAY, AUGUST 29 AT 6 PM

OPENS FRIDAY, AUGUST 30

HONEYLAND

Documentary/Drama – 2019 – Republic of Macedonia – 87 Minutes – Neon – In Turkish with English Subtitles – Unrated

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Nestled in an isolated mountain region deep within the Balkans, Hatidze Muratova lives with her ailing mother in a village without roads, electricity or running water. She’s the last in a long line of Macedonian wild beekeepers, eking out a living farming honey in small batches to be sold in the closest city — a mere four hours’ walk away. Hatidze’s peaceful existence is thrown into upheaval by the arrival of an itinerant family, with their roaring engines, seven rambunctious children and herd of cattle. Hatidze optimistically meets the promise of change with an open heart, offering up her affections, her brandy and her tried-and-true beekeeping advice.It doesn’t take long however, before Hussein, the itinerant family’s patriarch, senses opportunity and develops an interest in selling his own honey. Hussein has seven young mouths to feed and nowhere to graze his cattle, and he soon casts Hatidze’s advice aside in his hunt for profit. This causes a breach in the natural order that provokes a conflict with Hatidze that exposes the fundamental tension between nature and humanity, harmony and discord, exploitation and sustainability. Even as the family provides a much-needed respite from Hatidze’s isolation and loneliness, her very means of survival are threatened.

Directed by Ljubomir Stefanov, Tamara Kotevska

The opening minutes of Honeyland are as astonishing — as sublime and strange and full of human and natural beauty — as anything I’ve ever seen in a movie…Stefanov and Kotevska have done more than record the rhythms and textures of rural life. They have shaped their observations… into a luminous neorealist fable, a sad and stirring tale of struggle, persistence and change. – New York Times

Honeyland is both an immersive experience and an undeniably gorgeous reflection on our relationship to nature. – RogerEbert.com

This lovely, heartrending movie leaves you marveling at her history and thinking anxiously for her future – and wondering, perhaps, why her example of basic decency has become so endangered. – Los Angeles Times

Honeyland swarms with difficult, ancient truths about parents, children, greed, respect, and the need for husbandry. – New Yorker

The opening frames of Honeyland are so rustically sumptuous that you wonder, for a second, if they’ve somehow been art-directed. – Variety

One of the best docs of the year, and perhaps the decade, this tale has the hallmark of a simple story that took on a life of its own. – It’s Just Movies

The kind of nonfiction film that gets at much bigger truths about the tragic ways in which any environment, no matter how remote, can be thrown off balance by greed. – The Atlantic

OPENS FRIDAY, AUGUST 30

New York Times Review: The Sting and the Sweetness – A documentary about a Macedonian beekeeper’s conflict with her neighbors becomes a lyrical environmental fable.

OPENS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13

BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON

Comedy/Drama – 2019 – USA – 103 Minutes – Amazon Studios – R

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Brittany Forgler is a hilarious, friendly, hot mess of a New Yorker who always knows how to have a good time, but at 27, her late-night adventures and early-morning walks-of-shame are starting to catch up to her. When she stops by a Yelp-recommended doctor’s office in an attempt to score some Adderall, she finds herself slapped with a prescription she never wanted. Forced to face reality for the first time in a long time, Brittany laces up her Converse and runs one sweaty block. The next day, she runs two. Soon she runs a mile. Brittany finally has direction–but is she on the right path?

Written & Directed by Paul Downs Colaizzo

Starring Jillian Bell, Jennifer Dundas, Patch Darragh, Michaela Watkins

This terrifically engaging debut feature by playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo is the best kind of “crowdpleaser”: one that earns every emotional beat that might seem formulaic in four out of five similar enterprises. – Variety

Colaizzo’s script weaves in enough detail to explain some of Brittany’s demons, but Bell sells the tough stuff too, doing more with a cautious look in the mirror and a slow smile than other performers can do with an Oscar-ready speech. The greatest trick of Colaizzo’s winning comedy: it doesn’t need that cheese factor to inspire plenty of tears and cheers. – IndieWire

“Brittany Runs a Marathon” is one of the more unexpected delights this year. – AwardsCircuit.com

Colaizzo successfully walks a fine line between inspiration and caution, never presenting Brittany as a patronizing role model for weight loss, nor a clichéd case of inner beauty. The film grasps the complex nature of Brittany’s self-image without ignoring its dark side. – Time Out

Where it surprises is in Bell’s fantastic performance and the fact it eventually stops becoming a laugh out loud comedy. It soon dives into much more of a heartwarming drama with a few random jokes thrown in. – The Playlist

A whip-smart comedy that manages to deliver genuinely funny uplift.  – Entertainment Weekly

OPENS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13