The Academy Award-nominated French drama “Two Days, One Night” opens Feb. 13 at UNL’s Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center. Also continuing for a second week is the Australian horror film, “The Babadook,” and Academy Award nominee “Boyhood.”
All three films play through Feb. 19.
In “Two Days, One Night,” Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne team up with a major international star Marion Cotillard to craft a universal story about working-class people living on the edges of society.
Cotillard, nominated for an Academy Award for her performance, plays Sandra, a worker who returns to her job after a serious bout with depression. Realizing that the company can operate with one less employee, management tells Sandra she is to be let go. After learning that her co-workers will vote to decide her fate on Monday morning, Sandra races against time over the course of the weekend, often with the help of her husband, to convince each of her fellow employees to sacrifice their much-needed bonuses so she can keep her job. With each encounter, Sandra is brought into a different world with unexpected.
“Two Days, One Night” is rated PG-13.
In “The Babadook,” Amelia, six years after the violent death of her husband, is at a loss. She struggles to discipline her “out of control” 6-year-old son, Samuel, a son she finds impossible to love.
Samuel’s dreams are plagued by a monster he believes is coming to kill them. When a disturbing storybook called “The Babadook” turns up at their house, Samuel is convinced that the babadook is the creature he’s been dreaming about. His hallucinations spiral out of control and he becomes more unpredictable and violent. Amelia, genuinely frightened by her son’s behavior, is forced to medicate him. But when Amelia begins to see glimpses of a sinister presence all around her, it slowly dawns on her that the thing Samuel has been warning her about may be real.
“The Babadook” is not rated.
“Boyhood,” which is filmed over the course of more than 12 years with the same cast, tells the story of growing up through the eyes of a child named Mason.
Starring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as Mason’s parents, “Boyhood” charts the rocky terrain of childhood like no other film has before. Snapshots of adolescence from road trips and family dinners to birthdays and graduations become transcendent.
The film is set to a soundtrack spanning the years, from Coldplay’s “Yellow” to Arcade Fire’s “Deep Blue.” “Boyhood” is both a nostalgic time capsule of the recent past and an ode to growing up and parenting.
“Boyhood” is rated R.
For more information on films at the Ross, go to http://www.theross.org or call 402-472-5353.
