The Athens International Film and Video Festival was founded in 1974, and since then has presented independent films from around the world. The Festival is sponsored by the Athens Center for Film and Video, a project of the College of Fine Arts at Ohio University.
This year’s festival will take place April 3-9, 2017.
Watch Trailer
Director: Michael Moore
Writer(s): Michael Moore, Krista Kiuru, Tim Walker
To learn what the USA can learn from other nations, Michael Moore playfully “invades” them to see what they have to offer.
“a crazy-like-a-fox documentary hellbent on seeing the best in people. Other people. Not us Americans. Turns out we suck at practicing what we preach. It’s classic Michael Moore.” -Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
“[Moore has] made his most enjoyable film in years and also his most inspiring, the antidote to prevailing global doom and gloom.” -Peter Howell, Toronto Star
120 MIN
Watch Trailer
Director: Kent Jones
Writer(s): Kent Jones, Serge Toubiana
Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Wes Anderson, Peter Bogdanovich
In 1962, Alfred Hitchcock and a 30-year-old François Truffaut sequestered themselves in a windowless Hollywood office for a weeklong conversation. The result: the seminal book “Hitchcock/Truffaut,” published a half century ago, dissecting every film Hitchcock had made until then, illuminating his masterful techniques, making the case for the popular director as an artist, and influencing generations of filmmakers. Kent Jones brings “the Bible of Cinema” to invigorating life. He interviews filmmakers whose work has been profoundly influenced by Hitchcock: Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Richard Linklater, Olivier Assayas, and many others.
“Kent Jones’ doc on the groundbreaking interview book gets you drunk on Hitchcock’s films again. Nirvana for movie lovers.” – Peter Travers, The Rolling Stone
“This is a jewel box of a movie for anyone who loves either Hitchcock or Truffaut – or better yet, both.” – Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine
79 MIN
Watch Trailer
Director: Robert Eggers
Writer(s): Robert Eggers
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie
Awards: Sundance - Best Director (Drama)
A family in 1630s New England is torn apart by the forces of witchcraft, black magic and possession.
“The Witch immediately joins the pantheon of great horror movies…” -Scott Tobias, NPR
“For fans of horror at its most sinister, The Witch is not to be missed. It casts a spell that lingers long after its most disquieting mists have cleared.” -Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
92 MIN
Watch Trailer
Director: Sandy McLeod
Language: English
77 MIN
Watch Trailer
Director: Erica Tremblay
Language: English
113 MIN
Watch Trailer
Director: Charles Burnett
Writer(s): Charles Burnett
Cast: Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, and Charles Bracy
Burnett’s first film, Killer of Sheep, was shot on 16 mm for his master’s thesis at UCLA. The film was largely ignored until a re release garnered the attention of the Guggenheim Foundation. In the years following the re release it won many awards including the FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival and has been celebrated worldwide.
Killer of Sheep examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse. Frustrated by money problems, he finds respite in moments of simple beauty: the warmth of a coffee cup against his cheek, slow dancing with his wife in the living room, holding his daughter. The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life — sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humor.
“Killer of Sheep caught the lives of the children with a fidelity to how kids really do fight, play, and cry — and how they can sometimes be cruel simply because they’re so scared.” — Rodger Ebert
83 MIN
Watch Trailer
Director: Charles Burnett
Writer(s): Charles Burnett
Cast: Danny Glover, Paul Butler, and DeVaughn Nixon
The life of a middle-class black family in Los Angeles is disrupted by the arrival of an old friend from back South in this layered drama. Initially a charming reminder of their past, the visitor soon comes to seems increasingly sinister as the strained household heads towards an inevitable conflict.
Starring Danny Glover as a Southern trickster who overstays his welcome with family. The National Society of Film Critics honored Burnett for best screenplay for this film, making him the first African American to win this category. The film was a critical success but was not widely distributed. This was Burnett’s second film to be added to the National Film Registry.
102 MIN
Watch Trailer
Director: Ciro Guerra
Writer(s): Ciro Guerra and Theodor Koch-Grunberg (based on the diary by)
Cast: Nilbio Torres, Jan Bijvoet and Antonio Bolivar
At once blistering and poetic, the ravages of colonialism cast a dark shadow over the South American landscape in EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT, the third feature by Ciro Guerra. Filmed in stunning black-and-white, SERPENT centers on Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people, and the two scientists who, over the course of 40 years, build a friendship with him. The film was inspired by the real-life journals of two explorers (Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Richard Evans Schultes) who traveled through the Colombian Amazon during the last century in search of the sacred and difficult-to-find psychedelic Yakruna plant.
In conjunction with the film there will be a talk with Ohio University Associate Professor of Environmental and Plant Biology, Arthur Trese.
Science on Screen℠ is a project of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and The Coolidge Corner Theater. The Science on Screen program pairs with a short talk with a scientist or technology expert. The free Science on Screen events are fun and engaging and offer dynamic speakers an unexpected jumping point to teach their field of expertise in a way that is accessible to a diverse audience.
125 MIN
Watch Trailer
Director: Marc Abraham
Writer(s): Marc Abraham and Colin Escott (book)
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Olsen, Maddie Hasson and Bradley Whitford
Tom Hiddleston stars as Hank Williams in this biopic about the legendary country western singer who in his brief life created one of the greatest bodies of work in American music. The film chronicles his meteoric rise to fame and its ultimately tragic effect on his health and personal life.
“Hiddleston’s performance is gutsy and heartfelt, as playful and soulful as the best of Williams’s songs.” -Tom Huddleston, Time Out
123 MIN
Southeast Ohio's Premier
Art House Theater
Est. 1915