In This World

PRIVATE
March 29 and 31

An often effective vérité slash of agitprop, Saverio Costanzo's DV suspenser is set in a West Bank Palestinian house (shot in Italy), where a contentious family of seven (led by a proud patriarch) get their usual daily turmoil ripped to shreds by an occupying force of no-nonsense Israeli soldiers. The handheld vibe is frequently contrived (the hairiest sequences involve the lights going out), and the script runs out of raw material, but this Desperate Hours-style standoff is acted with fierce conviction, and the pseudo-home-movie syntax is congenitally tense. The Israeli soldiers are given vulnerabilities and ambivalences, but make no mistake: It's a passionate critique of Israel's systematic human rights abuses. ATKINSON

photo: FSLC

Stoically despondent: Darwin's Nightmare

Details

New Directors/New Films
March 23 through April 3
MOMA, Alice Tully Hall, Walter Reade

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• Asia (Band)
• Michael Atkinson
• Dennis Lim
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Shorts

This year's ND/NF offers a few spirited defenses of the ever beleaguered short format, none better than Chris Landreth's Oscar-winning Ryan(screening with Agnes and His Brothers, April 2 and 3, and also in the Oscar-nominated shorts program at Cinema Village this week). Another highlight is John Harden's deadpan La Jetée parody, La Vie d'un Chien (with Mila From Mars), in which a scientist develops a chromosome-altering drug that transforms humans into dogs, a breakthrough possibly motivated by the desire to consummate his forbidden love for pet canine Sylvie. Also of interest: Keith Bearden's The Raftman's Razor (with Duck Season), about two teenagers' obsession with an enigmatic anti-superhero comic book, and Michelange Quay's The Gospel of the Creole Pig (with Young Rebels), a powerfully associative meditation on the legacy of slavery in Haiti that encompasses religious rituals, stock market reports, and live pig slaughters, before culminating in a majestic three-minute crane shot of the Queensboro Bridge. JOSHUA LAND

ND/NF coverage continues next week.