VTIFF Program Guide 2025 - Flipbook - Page 21
FILMS A TO Z
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PETER HUJAR’S DAY
A POET
Directed by Ira Sachs
U.S. | 2025 | Fiction | 76 min | English
Directed by Simón Mesa Soto
Colombia, Germany, Sweden | 2025 | Fiction | 120 min | Spanish w/subtitles
Sponsored by: Eleanor Lanahan
Sponsored by: Ryan Chartier and Jordan Redell
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18 | 2:30 PM | FH
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19 | 7 PM | FH
What did you do yesterday? On December 19, 1974, writer Linda Rosenkrantz posed this
question to her good friend Peter Hujar, a photographer and noted New York personality.
This taped conversation was meant to be just one in an anthology of daily routines of
cutting-edge Downtown artists. Instead, the transcript sat for 40 years before
publication. Director Ira Sachs’ (Passages) evocative restaging of the day-long
conversation takes the simple setup and makes it feel marvelously romantic. Of course,
most of us don’t spend our days chasing down checks from Vogue, partying with Glenn
O’Brien, or hobnobbing with Allen Ginsberg. This chamber piece stars Ben Whishaw as
Hujar, and he gives a transformative performance, making reams of meandering
dialogue feel spontaneous and lived. Rebecca Hall, as Rosenkrantz, plays off him
beautifully as a quietly receptive sounding board, gently shaping the dialogue in real
time. ~OO
Oscar Restrepo is an instantly indelible character, a pathetic creature prone to
combustible fits of self-pity, mouth-breathing quasi-Napoleon Dynamite blankness,
rapid-fire soliloquies, and genuine pathos. Ubeimar Rios’ gloriously rumpled, totally
unselfconscious performance anchors this bitter-pill tragicomedy, sneakily one of the
year’s funniest movies. Oscar’s obsession with poetry has brought him no glory in life,
and what little praise he received is far in the rearview. But when his family pushes him
into an ill-fated substitute teaching gig, he meets a young student with a raw talent for
prose and sees a way back into everyone’s good graces. A Poet turns the tried-and-true
prodigy-mentor tale on its ear, veering away from sentimentality at every turn. And if
you’re worried that a movie about poetry will be a dry affair, think again: with a soulful
jazz score, throwback film stock, restless handheld camerawork, and smash cuts galore,
A Poet has flash and wit to spare. ~OO
PROMISED SKY
Directed by Erige Sehiri
Tunisia, France, Senegal | 2025 | Fiction | 92 min | Arabic, French
w/subtitles
Sponsored by: Patricia Fontaine
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18 | 12:15 PM | BB
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22 | 4:30 PM | BB
Three women, three immigrant stories of flight from various
corners of Africa. They find refuge in one building on the outskirts
of Tunis, where they form a fragile alliance and a silent bond of
solidarity. But when an abandoned migrant child who has
survived a shipwreck appears in their lives, it changes not only the
atmosphere in their home but also the inner balance of each of
them. Director Erige Sehiri’s film examines the everyday lives of
people united by loss, uprootedness, and the need to find their
place and their purpose in a new reality. Highly empathetic, it
forces us to consider questions of community and personal
responsibility and to ask ourselves when it is time to take one’s
future into one’s own hands. ~SM
VTIFF.ORG | VERMONT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025
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