The following are a few of the films of note that will be shown at Albuquerque’s Guild Cinema in February.
From Feb. 4-6 at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., the Guild will screen “From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza.” The film gathers work from 22 different Palestinian filmmakers, documenting their experiences living through the 2023 Israel-Hamas war. “From Ground Zero” was Palestine’s submission for the 2025 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, making the category’s shortlist in December 2024, but failing to receive an Oscar nod when nominations were announced in January.
The individual short films cover a wide range of styles and genres, including animation, documentary and fiction.
French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop’s new documentary “Dahomey” depicts the process of reclaiming artifacts that originated from the titular African kingdom, returning them from museums in Paris to museums in Benin, the present-day country located where the Kingdom of Dahomey once was.
The documentary won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2024, which is the festival’s top prize. “Dahomey” is an unconventional documentary: Diop personifies the statues, masks and other artifacts at the heart of the story, allowing them to speak through voiceover, forcing viewers to reflect on the impact colonialism has had on countless cultures across the world.
The Guild will present “Dahomey” as part of their Black History Month programming from Feb. 7-10 at 6 p.m.
As a part of the Guild’s recurring Arthouse Classics series, it will present two 1990s films starring indie favorite Lili Taylor. The films were part of the decade’s wave of low-budget films capturing the lives of women in honest and refreshing ways.
Both have been rescued from obscurity and newly restored. Feb. 8-9 at 1 p.m., Jim McKay’s 1996 film “Girls Town” can be seen. A coming-of-age narrative centering on a group of teenage girls that are faced with the daunting task of becoming adults, the film has been lauded for its raw look at urban girlhood at the dawn of a new millennium.
Renowned indie filmmaker Nancy Savoca’s 1993 film “Household Saints” depicts three generations of an eccentric Italian-American family in New York City. There is particular focus on Taylor’s character Teresa, a devout Catholic teenage girl. Savoca’s film will be shown Feb. 22-23 at 12:30 p.m.
“Hard Truths,” the latest from English director Mike Leigh — an Oscar-nominated chronicler of the lives of working-class Brits — will run at the Guild from Feb. 21-24 at 4:30 p.m. Leigh regular Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, an anxious and angry middle-aged woman who struggles to get along with her family and seeks a new outlook on life from her laid-back sister Chantelle, played by Michele Austin.
Jean-Baptiste’s gutsy, vulnerable performance has received immense critical acclaim, including Best Actress awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics. Leigh’s bleakly humorous rendering of a 21st-century Black British family is sure to be a rough yet ultimately heartwarming cinematic experience.
For her role in Walter Salles’ new film “I’m Still Here,” Fernanda Torres has become the second Brazilian woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for “Best Actress” — after her mother Fernanda Montenegro — according to Cinema Tropical. The film is a biopic about Eunice Paiva, a Brazilian lawyer who became an outspoken activist against Brazil’s military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985, after the forced disappearance of her husband Rubens, a politician, in 1971.
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Torres has been garnering unanimous acclaim for her performance since the film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2024. She won the Golden Globe for “Best Actress in a Motion Picture — Drama” in January and has now become a strong contender for the Oscar. “I’m Still Here” shines a light on an overlooked period in 20th-century history and can be seen at the Guild from Feb. 21-24 at 7 p.m.
“No Other Land” is a documentary made by a group of Israeli and Palestinian activists: Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. It depicts the destruction of the West Bank region of Masafer Yatta and the forced displacement of the area’s residents. The documentary was filmed from 2019-23, according to the New Zealand International Film Festival.
The filmmakers also incorporated clips from Adra’s family’s “huge archive of videos that were filmed over the course of 20 years,” according to Variety. The film has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film. The footage shown in the documentary is a direct portrayal of the subjugation and violence faced by Palestinians for not only the past several years, but for decades.
“No Other Land” can be seen from Feb. 25-27 at 3:45 p.m. and 8:15 p.m.
Elijah Ritch is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. They can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @dailylobo
