Aspen Film has announced a 10-movie lineup for the “Academy Screenings” festival, which starts a week from Tuesday at the Isis Theatre.
It’s a smaller program than recent years, but the festival will still offer a robust slate of domestic and international films, according to Aspen Film Executive Director Susan Wrubel. Several selections, including “The Zone of Interest,” from the United Kingdom, and “Perfect Days,” from Japan, are official Oscars submissions for “Best International Feature” at the 2024 awards.
“I grew up on international and foreign language film, so it's near and dear to my heart,” Wrubel said. “I often feel that some of the best cinema out there is foreign language film, … so this is really a special place to highlight some of the international language achievement.”
Many of the domestic movies in the lineup are generating Oscar buzz too: The festival opens with a musical adaptation of “The Color Purple,” and closes with a screening of “American Fiction,” a highly-anticipated satire about Black entertainment from director Cord Jefferson.
Other screenings at the festival include “Poor Things,” a Frankensteinish dark comedy from three-time Oscar nominee Yorgos Lanthimos, and “The Iron Claw,” a biopic about the Von Erich wrestling family.
Some other high-profile films, like the Leonard Bernstein biopic “Maestro,” didn’t make the Academy Screenings lineup this year in part due to timing, Wrubel said. That film has already had a wide release, and will screen over several days at the Isis Theater instead. Aspen Film aims to showcase “new and fresh” content during the festival that hasn’t yet been released to most movie theaters and streaming platforms, according to Wrubel.
The Academy Screenings festival runs Dec. 19-23, so film industry pros who vote on the Oscars and other awards can catch some of the contenders while they’re in Aspen for the holidays. Voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and similar institutions can request complimentary passes to the festival; tickets for the general public start at $25, with a discount for Aspen Film members.
