Opens January 4
Metrograph In Theater
Weekend NY Theatrical EngagementA DIFFERENT MAN
Aaron Schimberg’s Widely Lauded Darkly Comedic New York Indie, Featuring Career Topping Perfomances from Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson

Winner of Best Feature at the 2024 Gotham Awards, Schimberg’s mordantly funny, sui generis satire stars Sebastian Stan as Edward, an aspiring actor with severe facial disfigurement resulting from neurofibromatosis, who starts a new life under a new name after his looks are radically altered by an experimental medical procedure. His changed appearance gives Edward—now going by “Guy”—the confidence to pursue romance with playwright ex-neighbor Renate Reinsve, who is producing a play based on the life of the presumed-dead Edward, but as rehearsals begin, the appearance of Oswald (an excellent Adam Pearson), an upbeat and gregarious man who also happens to have neurofibromatosis, threatens to upend Guy’s belief in his fairy tale post-transformation life. An A24 release.

Opens January 17 Metrograph In Theater Exclusive Weekend NY Theatrical Engagement BYE BYE LOVE Newly Re-Discovered & Restored, Fujisawa Isao’s Pioneering Queer Japanese Indie has US Theatrical Premiere at MetrographOne of the most audacious and individualistic features to emerge from Japan’s jishu eiga (self-produced film) movement and a landmark of Japanese queer cinema, after 50 years—a period during which it was long believed lost forever—Fujisawa’s surreal road movie Bye Bye Love has found its audience. Surly nihilist Utamaro (Tamura Ren) and partner-in-crime Giko (Ichijo Miyabi)—female presenting, but genderfluid and with male genitalia—light out up the Honshu coast towards Aomori after a run-in with the cops, their journey marked by psycho-sexual tension, psychedelic interludes, and outbursts of angry anti-Americanism. It was discovered in 2018 and rescued from oblivion by producer Suzuki Akihiro and shown at Japan’s Underground Cinema Festival in 2022. Fujisawa’s singular, surly feat of resourceful renegade filmmaking comes to us across the decades a transcendently transgressive knockout, making its US theatrical premiere.The new restoration of Bye Bye Love screens as part of Bye Bye Love: Fujisawa and the Japanese New Wave alongside two films Fujisawa made as assistant director to Hiroshi Teshigahara: Woman in the Dunes and Face of Another, both showing on 35mm.

Opens January 31
Metrograph In Theater
Exclusive Weekend NY Theatrical Engagement
THIS WOMAN

Alan Zhang’s Directorial Debut, a Deeply Personal Docufiction Examination of the Role of Women in Contemporary Chinese Society 

Feminist activist and multihyphenate artist Zhang’s directorial debut is a raw, often revelatory docufiction experiment that follows Beibei (Li Hehe), a recently unemployed 35-year-old woman who, in the early months of the pandemic, finds solace from an unfulfilling marriage—or at least attempts to—in various affairs, in the process coming to question the social forces that have led her to this point of malaise and undertake a total overhaul of the key relationships in her life. “I was thrilled to have the chance to shoot a film that features the life of my friend. This is an experiment for both of us, two women who are enthusiastic about films and always fascinated by the topics of marriage, family, love, intimacy, and self-exploration.” —Alan Zhang

February 7
Metrograph In Theater
Special Advance Preview Screening
GAZER
A Cannes Directors’ Fornite Breakout, a Striking New Jersey Neo-Noir From First-Time Filmmakers Ryan J. Sloan and Ariella Mastroianni
 

“The kind of debut that should restore your lost faith in independent cinema” [IndieWire], Sloan’s immersively paranoiac, drum-tight noir thriller stars Ariella Mastroianni (also the film’s co-writer) as Frankie, a single mother living outside Newark, New Jersey, who, suffering from worsening dyschronometria—a mental condition that makes it increasingly difficult for her to accurately perceive the passage of time—and isolated from her daughter by the state and her in-law, takes on a seemingly innocuous “heist” assignment out of desperation, only to find herself playing patsy, tangled in a web of intrigue with wide reaching implications. Richly atmospheric and shot on glorious 16mm, Gazer represents indie ingenuity at its finest. A Metrograph Pictures release.

Co-writer/director Ryan J. Sloan and co-writer/lead Ariella Mastroianni in attendance.

Accompanying Metrograph’s special advance preview screening of New York writer-director Ryan J. Sloan debut Gazer, the filmmaker and and co-writer Ariella Mastroianni selects three films to share that influenced their riveting first feature in the program Ryan J. Sloan and Ariella Mastroianni Select: Blow-Up, The Conversation, and Blow Out.