The Movies That Missed Us

Every Wednesday in June at 7:00pm
Curated by Brit Withey, Artistic Director, Starz Denver Film Festival

It’s no easy task pulling together a program of 175-plus films every year for the 11-day cinematic blowout that is the Starz Denver Film Festival. Sometimes, amid the planning and programming, the screenings and selections, a film gets left behind. There are myriad reasons for the omissions: other film festivals’ premiere policies come into play; a single print gets booked elsewhere for the dates we want to screen it; distributors devise complex roll-out strategies that don’t match our festival dates; the list goes on. The Movies That Missed Us presents four films I deeply loved but was unable to book at the time of their release. To the best of my knowledge, these films have never screened in Denver—until now.

Films and Events in Program...

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  Movies That Missed Us: Benjamin Smoke

  USA , 2000 , 72 min.
  Director: Jem Cohen , Peter Sillen An incredible depiction of one of the best bands you’ve never heard of, Benjamin Smoke winds its way through stunning performances by Smoke and insightful, hilarious, sometimes devastating interviews with its lead singer Benjamin via gorgeous 16mm cinematography that beautifully captures the... more
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  Movies That Missed Us: The Isle

  South Korea , 2000 , 90 min.
  Director: Kim Ki-duk In The Isle, one of South Korea’s best filmmakers, Kim Ki-duk, began to develop the themes and styles that we recognize from many of his films since: locations surrounded by water, silent women who live morally ambiguous lives, and scenes that are punctuated by severe and shocking violence. <... more
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  Movies That Missed Us: Witnesses

  Croatia , 2003 , 90 min.
  Director: Vinko Bresan A wonderfully complex Croatian thriller, Witnesses examines the difficulty, in times of war, of separating sanctioned killing from homicide. Moving back and forth in time to reexamine the same events from different characters’ points of view, Witnesses was nominated for and won several awards durin... more
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  Taxidermia

  Hungary , 2006 , 91 min.
  Director: György Pálfi MUST END September 17 TAXIDERMIA contains three generational stories, about a grandfather, a father, and a son, linked together by recurring motifs. The dim grandfather, an orderly during World War Two, lives in his bizarre fantasies; he desires love. The huge father seeks success as a top a... more