MoMA’s Department of Film and Filmmaker Magazine have joined forces for the fifth year in a row to sponsor the “Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You” award. Though the winner won’t be announced until Monday, November 30th, at IFP’s Gotham Awards, this weekend is even more important for those lucky nominees, as MoMA holds multiple screenings of all five films. It shames me to say that I’ve only seen two of the selections, but that just gives me more of a reason to visit MoMA this weekend and see them all in one fell swoop.

Be sure to read my conversations with both Frazer Bradshaw (Everything Strange And New) and Ry Russo-Young (You Won’t Miss Me), as well as my review of You Won’t Miss Me, which is one of the year’s strongest American narratives. Everything Strange and New is also very strong, though in a stylistically different way. Whereas Russo-Young brings an underground NYC-art aesthetic to her kaleidoscopic portrait of Shelly Brown (played with ferocious intensity by Stella Schnabel), Bradshaw’s stately compositions have a decidedly European feel. A truly gifted cinematographer, Bradshaw uses his camera to illustrate the numb inner condition of his main character. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give Bradshaw is that his film made me feel like I had swallowed a pill of my own. Not many filmmakers have the tools to pull this off, but Bradshaw does it with an assurance that is all too rare these days.

Other films in the running:

Guy and Madeleine On A Park Bench (directed by Damien Chazelle)

October Country (directed by Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher) — Read Pamela Cohn’s HTN review.

Zero Bridge (directed by Tariq Tapa)

Go here for screening details and to read descriptions of each film, then be sure to see some/all of them.

— Michael Tully

Tags: Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You, Damien Chazelle, Donal Mosher, Everything Strange and New, Filmmaker Magazine, Frazer Bradshaw, Gotham Awards, Guy and Madeleine On a Park Bench, IFP, Michael Palmieri, Michael Tully, MoMA's Department of Film, October Country, Pamela Cohn, Ry Russo-Young, Shelly Brown, Stella Schnabel, Tariq Tapa, You Won't Miss Me, Zero Bridge