Janet Planet

Online ticket sales end at 5:00 pm on September 11. Tickets will be sold at the door starting at 7:30.

In rural Western Massachusetts, 11-year-old Lacy spends the summer of 1991 at home, enthralled by her own imagination and the attention of her mother, Janet. As the months pass, three visitors enter their orbit, all captivated by Janet and her spellbinding nature. In her solitary moments, Lacy inhabits an inner world so extraordinarily detailed that it begins to seep into the outside world. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker captures a child’s experience of time passing, and the ineffability of a daughter falling out of love with her mother, in this singularly sublime film debut. 2024, USA, 113 minutes, PG-13.

A discussion after the film will be moderated by Dr. Kenneth Silvestri, a New York State Licenced Family Therapist, Psychotherapist and certified Classical Homeopath practicing in Montclari, NJ, and Nyack, NY.

“Janet Planet is a phenomenal debut by Annie Baker, a MacArthur genius grant-winning playwright who has notched so many theater prizes that she may have grabbed a camera just for the challenge.” – Washington Post

“Janet Planet is a tiny masterpiece, and it’s so carefully constructed, so loaded with details and emotions and gentle comedy, that it’s impossible to shake once it gets under your skin …  The genius of Janet Planet, Baker’s debut as a feature writer-director, is how flawlessly it renders what it’s like to spend the summer being 11 at your home in the woods, when your mother is your whole world and you wish you could just have her to yourself.” Critic’s Pick
– The New York Times

“A passionate and finely nuanced view of the tense and powerful bond between a mother and a daughter who are living together in relative isolation.” – The New Yorker

“Janet Planet may leave you not quite knowing what to think—about Lacy’s future, about how she might view her mother when she reaches her mother’s age, about whether or not she’ll need loads of therapy. But this small, anxious being follows you even after the screen goes dark. She’s not just tugging at Janet. She’s tugging at us.” – TIME

“Janet Planet is a brilliant debut for Baker, who doesn’t so much translate her artistry to the screen as discover a whole new frontier for her singular sensibility.” – Los Angeles Times

“Janet Planet unfolds at a dreamy murmur, using soft strokes to paint a picture of a liminal time in childhood —the period of dawning awareness of a parent’s individual humanity.” – Vanity Fair

“Like another accomplished playwright who made a graceful transition into films this year, Celine Song with Past Lives, Baker shows no signs of being a neophyte in the medium. Her approach feels closer, however, in tone, humor and sharp-edged poignancy to another beautifully acted recent work from a woman filmmaker, Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up.” – Hollywood Reporter