35 Shots of Rum

Director: Claire Denis

2008 / 100min / 35mm

Drawing inspiration from Yasujiro Ozu’s 1949 masterpiece Late Spring, Denis’s film about a single, working-class Afro-French father and the college-age daughter he’s slowly learning to let go of—the pair are played by Alex Descas and Mati Diop—is a rich, achingly melancholy domestic drama of telling gestures and glances, its depiction of a crowded café moving in time to the Commodores’ “Night Shift” one of the single greatest scenes of 21st-century cinema.

“I remember being completely mesmerized the first time I saw this film. It’s such a lovely depiction of the melancholy inherent in all change. It has my favorite onscreen father/daughter relationship, an achingly romantic and heartbreaking dancing sequence, and the truest portrayal of the rituals of cohabitation—cooking, eating, laundry—I’ve ever seen.” —India Donaldson

Introduction by India Donaldson on Thursday, August 8th