In a city of young filmmakers and movie lovers, an exciting slate of 14 upcoming films are coming to the Brattle Theatre from Oct. 31 to Nov. 3. For the last 10 years, The Boston Independent Film Festival (IFFBoston) has been debuting new and innovative films with their Fall Focus program, including Oscar-winning movies such as “Moonlight,” “Ladybird,” and “Women Talking.”
Although IFFBoston has been going for 10 years in the fall, the spring lineup has been going since 2003. The main difference between the two is that the spring festival houses more independent films without many distributors and short films. For the fall, however, we can expect more suspected Oscar contenders as well as documentaries.
This year, the 14 films premiering at IFFBoston Fall Focus are “A Real Pain” by Jessie Eisenburg, “All We Imagine As Light” by Payal Kabadi, “Bird” by Andrea Arnold, “Devo” by Chris Smith, “Eephus” by Carson Lund, “Flow” by Gints Zilbalodis, “Gaucho Gaucho” by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, “Hard Truths” by Mike Leigh, “It’s Not Me” by Leos Carax, “Nickel Boys” by RaMell Ross, “Nightbitch” by Marielle Heller, “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” by Rungano Nyoni, “The Brutalist” by Brady Corbet, and “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” by Mohammad Rasoulof.
These are all movies that are either soon to be released or have been released this fall, and are going to be movies that will be on many people’s top 10 lists for 2024, according to Executive Director Brian Tamm.
“The hope is that this is a way to highlight films that are worth seeing at the end of the year,” Tamm said.
“The Brutalist” will be the one movie not being shown at the Brattle—instead, it will be screened at the Somerville Theatre, since it has to be shown on 70mm film.
“We are always thinking about how these movies fit together,” Tamm said.
From distributors such as A24, Searchlight Pictures, and NEON, Tamm as well as the team have hand-picked movies from various festivals and movies they have had their eyes on throughout the year.
“It’s all a matter of working with the distributors and seeing where and when they want their films to be screened,” Tamm said. For example, “‘The Brutalist’ was a movie that we inquired about from A24, but Eephus was a movie we have had an eye on for a long time.”
The primary reason that studios are interested in showing these movies is because of the younger audience in Boston. Film students at Emerson and Boston University represent a new generation of filmmakers, and releasing these up-and-coming movies at IFFBoston gives the films positive exposure. Between word of mouth and social media, college students are a great way to increase publicity when it comes to upcoming films.
“The cool thing about this festival is that it’s all at the Brattle, so it creates a community,” Tamm said.