If you can believe it, the Independent Film Festival Boston (IFFBoston for short) – the city’s premiere event for all cinephiles looking to know what’s what in the coming months and to engage with our film community at large – is turning 20 this year. That means it’s only another year away from finally using all those drink tickets they’ve been stocking up, but the two-decade mark is one hell of a milestone, especially with all of the chaos thrown there way over the last three years. IFFB is one of Boston’s true treasures: it’s a celebration of cinema and the inventiveness, masterful storytelling, and boundless creativity within the films selected, a chance for moviegoers of all stripes to come together, no matter if you’re based in Davis Square or Mattapan; and it’s also an excellent reflection of how fantastic it really is to be live in a city with institutions like the Brattle, Somerville, and Coolidge theaters as active forces in our cultural lives.
This year’s festival, which runs from Thursday (April 27) through Wednesday (May 3), is honestly just too damn jam-packed for us to try and cover everything, so we’ve compiled a list of six films you should make time for. We’ve been lucky enough to see some of them in advance, but others we’re looking forward to just as much as we hope you will be. For information on tickets, showtimes and other specifics, check out the festival’s website, or download the schedule pdf.
Master Gardener
The last time Paul Schrader – vaunted writer of Taxi Driver as well as the director of such classics as Rolling Thunder, Mishima, Light Sleeper and countless others – came to IFFBoston, he brought with him First Reformed, as well as a crazy anecdote about how his eyes were full of blood from a surgery he’d just had. This time, he’s here with a thriller about a horticulturist and groundskeeper (Joel Edgerton), who is asked by his employer (Sigourney Weaver) to take her great-niece under his wing. If you know anything about the kind of protagonists Schrader writes about, well, you’ll likely know that there’ll be a whole lot of journaling, whiskey-drinking, and jaunts into the depths of hell itself. We cannot fucking wait.
‘MASTER GARDENER’ :: Thursday, April 27 at The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St. in Cambridge, MA :: 7 p.m. , $15 :: Screening info and tickets
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
We saw David Guggenheim’s life-spanning biographical portrait of the face of the ’80s back at Sundance, and we were surprised at its depth, both in its construction and in its subject’s brevity and candor. It’s a great documentary that charts Fox’s rise from under-sized Canadian TV star to his super-sized status after Back to the Future to his diagnosis with Parkinson’s and his courage and activism in the aftermath, even as the disease slowly began to progress. Bring tissues along with your self-lacing Nikes and hoverboard.
‘STILL: A MICHAEL J. FOX MOVIE’ :: Friday, April 28 at The Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square in Somerville, MA :: 7:45 p.m., $15 :: Screening info and tickets
birth/rebirth
If you’re a horror fan, you absolutely – and we mean absoluely – have to check out Laura Moss’s fabulous riff on the Frankenstein tale, which is one of the most unnerving and bitterly funny films we’ve seen this year. birth/rebirth is about an unorthodox scientist and a caring mother coming together to try and bring the latter’s young daughter back to life, and boy howdy does it go to some genuinely shocking places. The film’s scheduled to hit Shudder later this year, which means this may be your only chance to hear the audience around you squirm with palpable discomfort, and why would you miss out on that experience?
‘BIRTH/REBIRTH’ :: Saturday, April 29 at The Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square in Somerville, MA :: 8:45 p.m., $15 :: Screening info and tickets
The Pod Generation
Normally, we can’t stand films about anesthetized futures – you know, the After Yang type of manicured world which feel more alien than something like Dune even though they ostensibly take place in a realistic vision of Things To Come. Yet Sophie Barthes’ dramedy (review here) about two parents (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Emilia Clarke) trying to have a child in a future in which all kids are gestated in egg-shaped pods is a big exception to the rule. The Pod Generation leverages its world of convenience to ends both witheringly funny and bitter, and winds up being precipitously meaningful in the process. Just don’t ask Siri to buy you a ticket, because you’re just asking to spark the AI Apocalypse once she finds out what you’re going to see.
‘THE POD GENERATION’ :: Sunday, April 30 at The Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square in Somerville, MA :: 7 p.m., $15 :: Screening info and tickets
Blackberry
On the lighter side of tech-dystopia, Matt Johnson’s film about the nerdy group of engineers and tech workers behind the rise of the first PDA has garnered rave reviews out of SXSW. Ever wonder where the “Crackberry” came from? Well, join Johnson and stars Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton for this comedic deep dive into the origins of the digital world. Hell, it’ll make you long for the days when Nerds were Nerds, and not just people with YouTube channels about the MCU.
‘BLACKBERRY’ :: Tuesday, May 2 at The Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square in Somerville, MA :: 7 p.m., $15 :: Screening info and tickets
Past Lives
This A24 release serves as this year’s closing night film, which feels pretty appropriate: It’s a sweeping love story, just perfectly positioned to make you cry in the Coolidge’s palatial Moviehouse 1. Playwright-turned-filmmaker Celine Song’s tale of childhood romance and adult yearning, which spans decades and continents, was a major hit at Sundance this year, and boasts great performances from the likes of Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, and John Magaro. Let’s just hope you’re in the mood for love when you see this one.
‘PAST LIVES’ :: Wednesday, May 3 at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St. in Brookline, MA :: 8 p.m., no tickets available :: Screening info