On Oct. 2, the Philadelphia Film Society announced its lineup for the 33rd Philadelphia Film Festival, hosting a diverse and exciting number of titles ranging from Palme d’Or winners to films made right here in Pennsylvania. This expansive lineup has been divided into blocks. The most prestigious and exciting new releases are highlighted in the Centerpieces category, which boasts arrivals fresh from the Venice Film Festival with star-studded casts and notable distributors such as NEON and A24 already grabbing for the highly anticipated titles.
Image: Still from “September 5th”, courtesy of PFF Media and Allied Marketing
The festival will be bookended with opening and closing night screenings. Opening night’s screening is “September 5th,” starring Peter Saarsgard and John Magaro, which follows a team of American sports journalists who are suddenly thrust into coverage of the hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Closing night’s screening will be “Blitz,” from director Steve McQueen (“Shame,” “12 Years a Slave”), which follows a group of Londoners (among them Saoirse Ronan, Harris Dickinson and Kathy Burke) struggling to survive in WWII-era London.
Image: Still from “Maria” starring Angelina Jolie, courtesy of PFF Media and Allied Marketing
The Centerpiece block offers the Festival’s highest profile titles. Among them are “Anora,” Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning love story, which stars Mikey Madison (“Scream,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) as a sex worker who falls into an impulsive whirlwind romance with a Russian Oligarch; “The Brutalist,” which stars Academy Award winner Adrian Brody as a Holocaust survivor emigrating in search of the American Dream; and “Maria,” Pablo Larraín’s (“Spencer,” “Jackie”) newest entry in his trilogy of iconic women, which stars Angelina Jolie as opera singer Maria Callas. Other titles in the section include “A Real Pain,” an Emma Stone-produced dramedy starring Kiernan Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg (co-writer and director), as cousins visiting Poland to honor their grandmother, and Gia Coppola’s “The Last Showgirl,” which stars Pamela Anderson as a Vegas dancer who must reassess her future when her show closes abruptly after a 30-year run.
Image: Still from “Audrey’s Children”, courtesy of PFF Media and Allied Marketing
While those films are the Festival’s Centerpiece screenings, they also want to shine a light on local cinema. Their Filmadelphia section aims to highlight the Philadelphia Film Society’s investment in the Greater Philadelphia area as a growing hub for film. Titles in this section include “Audrey’s Children,” a biographical drama about Dr. Audrey Evans, who created the pediatric oncology unit at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and revolutionized child cancer treatments, and “No One Died: The Wing-Bowl Story,” a documentary from Philly-based filmmaker Pat Taggart about the city’s 18-year-long competitive eating competition. 
Image: Still from “The Room Next Door”, courtesy of PFF Media and Allied Marketing
The global is just as important to this festival as the local. Prominent foreign entries being screened include “All We Imagine as Light,” the winner of this year’s Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival, and “The Room Next Door,” veteran director Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature. Other notable entries from globally lauded artists include “The Seed of The Sacred Fig” from Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, “A Traveler’s Needs” from South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo and “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” from Zambian filmmaker Rungano Nyoni.
The Festival’s Non/Fiction lineup includes a diverse list of documentaries, from “Apocalypse in the Tropics,” following the rise of evangelism and right-wing politics in Brazil, to “Grand Theft Hamlet,” following an attempt to stage a Shakespeare play within the “Grand Theft Auto” videogame. There’s also a host of documentary titles based around music in their Sight & Soundtrack section, including the experimental docu-biopic “Pavements,” which follows the iconic indie rock band Pavement through a combination of straight-forward documentary and “spoof” biopic, including Joe Keery of “Stranger Things” as frontman Stephen Malkmus.
The After Hours section is as mysterious and sinister as its name implies, carrying a lineup of strange, disturbing and otherwise unimaginable features and shorts. Among them are “Cloud” from acclaimed Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa and “Birdeater,” a debut feature from Australian director duo Jim Clark and Jim Weir about a bachelor party gone wrong in the Outback. The From the Vault section promises to be as exciting to the cinephile as the After Hours section is horrifying, including new 4k restorations of Wim Wenders’ iconic “Paris, Texas” and the surreally gorgeous Powell & Pressburger romance, “A Matter of Life and Death.”
The 33rd Annual Philadelphia Film Festival will run from Oct. 17 through Oct. 27. More information, including the full lineup of titles, their scheduled slot within the festival and which Philadelphia Film Society locale they will be premiering at, can be found on the Philadelphia Film Society’s website. Student Badges are currently on sale for $75, and individual tickets will be available for purchase for the general public on Monday, Oct. 7.
Elijah Fischer is a third-year English and Media & Culture major.