AFTERSUN

ONLINE TICKET SALES END AT 5:00. Remaining tickets will be sold at the door starting at 7:30. At a fading vacation resort, an 11-year-old treasures rare time together with her loving and idealistic father. As a world of adolescence creeps into view, beyond her eye her father struggles under the weight of life outside of fatherhood. Twenty years later, Sophie’s tender recollections of joy and private melancholy on this final holiday together become a powerful and heartrending portrait of their relationship, as memories real and imagined fill in the gaps and she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn’t. She watches the events of that holiday replay through Polaroids, camcorder footage, and the fog of her own adult life, yearning to form a true picture from the broken puzzle. The outlines are clear: a too-young, emotionally struggling father full of love and playfulness but also haunting sadness; and a girl on the cusp of adolescence, sensing she is changing, but still just childlike enough to wish to be her father’s friend. Yet inside those lines, everything Sophie can’t know about that trip, about Calum, swirls and spins, defying clarity. For no matter how heartstoppingly narrow the gap between lost time and her perpetual longing, Sophie cannot cross it. UK/USA, 2022, 102 minutes, Rated R for some bad words and tough situations.

Wearing a mask at Aftersun is required. The Covid-19 Community Level in Rockland County is now High. Because many members of our audience are over 65 and at high risk of serious illness, we are requiring everyone to wear a mask at the screening of Aftersun. We know this is uncomfortable for many of you, but we ask for your participation so that everyone can enjoy the film while feeling safe and secure.

After the film, stay for a discussion to be led by two time Academy Award nominee (once for Picture, once for Art Direction), Kristi Zea.

“A father-daughter vacation in a resort town on the Turkish coast, with snorkeling excursions, hotel buffets and lazy hours by the pool — that ends in tears. Your tears.” (NYT Critic’s Pick) – A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“I’ve been thinking about “Aftersun” since its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Now it’s in theaters where no excuses will be accepted for you missing it. This is the best film of the year by a first time writer-director.” – Peter Travers, ABC News

“A heart-stopping, unforgettable movie” – Indiewire

“A sharply moving exploration of the bond between parent and child” – Variety

“The best film of the year so far. You won’t walk away the same person.” – The Wrap

“With “Aftersun,” every moment, every snippet of dialogue, every detail down to the smallest role or the tiniest detail in the background feels like a vibrant slice of real life. From the opening scene that is filtered through the hazy, grainy lens of a camcorder (remember camcorders?) to the closing credits, this feels real — and yet somewhat dreamlike throughout, like an extended memory.” – Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times

“Though any honest summation can’t do it justice, Charlotte Wells’s tender feature debut is the kind of revelation that movie fans dream of finding: not a wow so much as a guaranteed piece of emotional ravishment. Aftersun aches with a feeling that’s hard to pin down, but when you finally do, it clicks together like nothing else you’ll see this year.” ­– Joshua Rothcamp, Entertainment Weekly

“A film that could have settled for being a masterclass in technique, but instead goes deeper, exploring questions of artistry, authorship, legacy.” NPR

“Had The Christophers just been a cross-generational punch-up, the sort of flinty showdown designed to throw off pleasurable sparks, you’d still walk away content. It remains a conduit for two of the best performances you’ll see all year.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone

“The Christophers is largely a comedy, but it’s also about all that we gain and lose with age, and about how we sometimes need young people to bring us back to ourselves.” – Stephanie Zacharek, TIME

“Having lost the inspiration that guided him to greatness, Julian is an artist who can no longer paint, and Lori is an artist who has lost all confidence in there being a place for her work in the larger world. For all the undercurrents about fame, commodification, and reputation that flow through The Christophers, at its core is a more plaintive lament about what it feels like to love something that doesn’t love you back.” – Alison Willmore, Vulture

“Go see The Christophers. Show up, and support a tiny, talky experiment that has no relationship to IP or sequels or box-office projection. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s also never, as Lori grudgingly notes about Julian’s work, uninteresting. And in this cultural moment, that’s an authentic win.” – Elizabeth Weitzman, Time Out

“The Christophers is a work of criticism that deftly distinguishes different approaches to criticism.” ­– Justin Chang, The New Yorker 

“Brims with hilarious dialogue, lightly satirical observations of a culture that treats art as a commodity, and satisfying payoffs to a number of story elements planted early on.” – Seth Katz, Slant Magazine

“In the end, this film about artists becomes a work of art in its own right. The more you look at it, the more its many components reveal themselves to you.” – Chase Hutchinson, The Wrap

“Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, a sardonic art legend who meets his intellectual match in frank preservationist Lori Butler (Michaela Coel). In a test of wits and wills held mostly in a single-setting, Soderbergh pushes both characters to return to their former passions through philosophical conversations that reflect his own career.” – Robert Daniels, Screen International

“It bats about ideas pertaining to art, commerce, ownership and legacy with dexterous aplomb and boasts two equally superb leads who make the material crackle.” – David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“The Christophers is a talky, at times incredibly funny, comedy drama with plot reversals that make it feel like it’s on the verge of a thriller. It doesn’t end up there, at least not strictly, but it’s unpredictable enough to never make us entirely sure just where it’s heading.” – Benjamin Lee, Guardian

“There’s no room for anything shy of genius in The Christophers, a crackling original drama about artistic legacy in all its facets, directed by Steven Soderbergh , from a script by Ed Solomon (No Sudden Move) and starring two top-notch English actors of wildly different backgrounds and styles, Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel, at the top of their respective games.” – Peter Debruge, Variety

“With Ian McKellen in superbly crotchety form and Michaela Coel exuding chilly cunning, it’s further proof that Soderbergh remains one of American Cinema’s most inimitable, and adventurous, auteurs. – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast