With summer in full swing and a heat wave crashing over us all, there’s no better time than now to pop by your local movie theater.
We scoured New York’s independent theaters to find the kinds of original, exciting and unforgettable films you won’t see at the multiplex. July in New York offers classic tales of romance and murder, new visions of horror and fantasy, and true stories of political resistance, local heroes and one very special owl.
“Barrio Triste”
“We wanted to believe in something, but we got our a--es kicked.” In 1980s Medellín, a group of teen boys steal a video camera and use it to document their lives, filming their petty crime exploits and mundane conversations about suicide, family, and the planet they inhabit. Living amid poverty and a looming epidemic of missing teens, the group struggles to extract meaning from their harsh lives before things take a turn for the uncanny.
“Barrio Triste,” the feature debut of Bad Bunny music video director Stillz, is fiction, but the grainy found-footage quality gives the impression you’re watching something that might have happened, even as the plot descends further into the surreal. Soundtracked by a synth-heavy, otherworldly score by Venezuelan musician Arca, “Barrio Triste” bends the barriers between reality and dreams.
The screenings on July 10 and 11 will include Q&As with producers Esteban Zulauga and Eric Kohn.
“Colony”
Back in 2016, Korean director Yeon Sang-ho unleashed “Train to Busan,” a visceral action-horror film about passengers on a high-speed rail train who find themselves in the midst of a zombie outbreak. A decade later, his newest film, “Colony,” revisits that premise with a twist: This time, the main characters are trapped inside a high rise, quarantined from a deadly fungus-based infection.
As the hive mind claims more victims, the survivors must do everything they can to get out while they’re still human.
“Colony” premiered in the Midnight Screenings section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and will kick off the New York Asian Film Festival later this month with an opening night screening followed by a Q&A with director Yeon, star Gianna Jun, and producers Yoomin Hailey Yang and Ahn So-hee.
“Reading Lolita in Tehran”
Golshifteh Farahani stars in this adaptation of Azar Nafisi’s bestselling 2003 memoir “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” following Nafisi’s career as a university professor in Iran during the post-revolution Islamic Republic, her expulsion from the university, her return to teaching, and her eventual emigration to America.
Interspersed with Nafisi’s personal history are anecdotes from the book club she secretly hosted for seven of her female students, in which they read famous yet forbidden works of Western literature like “The Great Gatsby,” “Pride and Prejudice,” and “Lolita.” The film is a chronicle of a nation in turmoil, as well as a clear-eyed examination of the relationship between the Western world and the Middle East.
The July 9 screening will include a Q&A with director Eran Riklis, and the July 10 and 11 screenings will include Q&As with Riklis and author Azar Nafisi.
“Remake”
What begins as a project following director Ross McElwee’s efforts to turn his metaphysical 1986 Civil War documentary “Sherman’s March” into a fictional feature morphs into a catalogue of his life’s work, seen through the lens of the relationship between McElwee and his late son. Using the threads of family, love, and personal connection found in his previous films, McElwee pens a love letter to a lost child, and ruminates on the push and pull between artistic integrity and commercial viability.
The result, “Remake,” is as personal as any other of the director’s documentaries, showcasing film’s unique ability to preserve a life.
The July 10 and 11 screenings will include Q&As with McElwee.
“Run Lola Run”
What if you could repeat a moment in time again and again to try to save a life? That’s the premise of “Run Lola Run,” the reality-bending 1998 German thriller about a woman, played by Franka Potente, who races through the streets of Berlin to rescue her boyfriend from mobsters. Every time either she or he is killed — by a cop, or a speeding ambulance — she respawns like a video game character for another try.
The film is directed by frequent Wachowski sisters collaborator Tom Tykwer, and demonstrates a similarly Wachowskian relationship to the cyclical nature of time. Its high-concept plot coupled with a booming techno score firmly cements it in the annals of ’90s European cinema, and its aesthetic influenced everything from a Bon Jovi music video to a "Legend of Zelda" video game.
“Dressed to Kill”
New York City’s glitzy facade hides a deadly shadow world of murder, sex, and cruelty in Brian De Palma’s famously seedy thriller “Dressed to Kill.” When a sex worker accidentally witnesses the murder of a bored, rich housewife, she teams up with the victim’s son to solve the crime before the killer can get her next.
The film toes the line (and often crosses it) between titillation and exploitation, imbuing every scene of violence and madness with an undercurrent of carnal desperation. As part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s De Palma: Summer of Suspense series, this one is not to be missed.
“Wild Inside”
If you’re reading this, you probably fondly remember the summer of Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who escaped the Central Park Zoo and was living large for nearly a year in and around the park, catching vermin and posing for photo ops by delighted birders. Through interviews with local Flaco super-fans, director Penny Lane tracks the fascinating success story of one of NYC’s most unlikely immigrants as the beloved nocturnal celebrity taught himself how to fly, hunt and thrive in the city that never sleeps.
“Wild Inside” will have its free premiere in Flaco’s former digs — the Great Hill in Central Park — before moving to IFC Center for its theatrical run.
New York Non-Fiction 2026 Short Film Program
New York Non-Fiction returns to Green-Wood Cemetery this month with a program of documentary shorts, each following the characters, creatures, and myths that inhabit the city’s streets. A Grammy-nominated poet turns the Blue Note club into a cathedral for the arts; an unqualified Michael Bublé impersonator has a week to prepare for a wealthy stranger’s party; a locally famous driving instructor sends his students on the road; a flock of pigeons reveal the ways their unknown avian lives connect to our own.
