A remarkable debut for writer-director Colm Bairéad, “The Quiet Girl” offers a deceptively simple reminder that the smallest stories can leave a large emotional impact. The film opens March 17 at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center.
Continuing is “No Bears.”
“The Quiet Girl” is set in rural Ireland and 1981. Nine-year-old Cait is sent away from her overcrowded, dysfunctional family to live with foster parents for the summer. Quietly struggling at school and at home, Cait has learned to hide in plain sight from those around her. She blossoms in their care, but in this house, where there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers one painful truth.
“The Quiet Girl,” rated PG-13, is showing through March 30.
“No Bears” tells the story of one of the world’s great cinematic artists, Jafar Panahi, who has been carefully crafting self-reflexive works about artistic, personal and political freedom for the past three decades, despite his oppression at the hands of the Iranian government. Now, as the international film community vehemently denounces his summer 2022 arrest and continued imprisonment for his vocal support of a fellow artist’s independence, Panahi has gifted us all with a new virtuosic sleight-of-hand. In “No Bears,” as in many of his recent titles, Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself, in this case relocated to a rural border town to remotely direct a new film in nearby Turkey — the story of which comes to sharply mirror disturbing events that begin to occur around him. As he struggles to complete his film, Panahi finds himself thrust in the middle of a local scandal, confronting the opposing pulls of tradition and progress, city and country, belief and evidence, and the universal desire to reject oppression.
“No Bears” is showing through March 23.
Learn more about the films, including showtimes and ticket availability.
