Tribute: James Gray

TRIBUTE: JAMES GRAY ARMAGEDDON TIME

Acclaimed writer-director James Gray fashions his own family memories into a wistful, exquisitely performed character study, taking on race, class, and the American Dream. Banks Repeta stars as Paul, a white kid living in Queens in the early 1980s, hoping to break free of his parents’ working-class suburban life and become an artist. But when he befriends Black classmate Johnny (Jaylin Webb), Paul gets a very different education. The filmmaker behind devastatingly intimate dramas such as Two Lovers works with perhaps his finest ensemble—Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong play Paul’s weary parents, with Anthony Hopkins as his affable grandfather—to excavate our current affairs. Many directors look back at their childhoods with honeyed nostalgia; Gray spits in the eye of such rose-tinged reminiscences, exploring our shared culpability in creating a nation whose dreams of a better tomorrow seem to drift ever out of reach. —Tim Grierson

PROGRAM + RECEPTION: $70 Member / $55 General PROGRAM ONLY: $40 Member / $45 General DIRECTOR James Gray US 2022 115 min IN PERSON James Gray

SECTION World Cinema

SPONSOR Wareham Development Nancy P. and Richard K. Robbins Family Foundation