5 must-watch movies at IFFBoston 2024

Independent Film Festival Boston will bring more than 90 movies to Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline during its 8-day spring festival, starting May 1.

Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler in "Janet Planet." A24

May 1, 2024

Ask any Boston-area cinephile about the best film festival the city has to offer, and chances are they’ll name the Independent Film Festival Boston (IFFBoston).

Since its founding in 2003, IFFBoston has grown in size and stature, bringing an impressive slate of new movies to the independent cinemas of Boston during its annual spring festival, which runs from May 1-8 this year.

The IFFBoston 2024 lineup features more than 90 films, a mix of narrative titles, documentary features and shorts, and short film programs featuring directors from near and far.

The festival opens Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre with Sundance favorite “Ghostlight” and closes on May 8 at the Coolidge Theatre in Brookline with “Thelma,” about a senior citizen (June Squibb) who seeks revenge on a phone scammer who impersonated her grandson.

Whether at its spring showcase or its annual Fall Focus, IFFBoston is frequently the first opportunity for Boston audiences to see movies from small or mid-major studios that will go on to win Oscars or top film critics’ year-end best-of lists.

According to IFFBoston executive director Brian Tamm, that ability has grown in recent years thanks to relationships he and IFFBoston programming director Nancy Campbell have built with studios like A24, Neon, IFC Films, and Magnolia.

“We’ve grown these relationships, and deepened them,” Tamm said. “Nancy and I have been working with a lot of the same people at [these studios] for like a decade now.”

Tamm’s favorite thing about the festival, however, is introducing audiences to unheralded filmmakers who haven’t quite risen to the level of working with the likes of A24, but are poised to do so in the future.

The festival showed director Yorgos Lanthimos’ first film released outside of Greece, 2005’s “Kinetta,” to what Tamm recalls “was not a packed house.” Almost two decades later, Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” was nominated for 11 Oscars, winning four.

Another example is Hirokazu Kore-eda, one of Tamm and Campbell’s favorite filmmakers. The Japanese director had his biggest mainstream hit to date in 2018 with “Shoplifters,” a Palme d’Or winner and Oscar-nominated film about a family of small-time grifters living on the margins in Tokyo.

Long before his breakthrough, however, Kore-eda’s films were an established presence at IFFBoston, where Tamm and Campbell have been highlighting the director’s works for more than 15 years.

“That first year, not a lot of people showed up, but everyone who did was really passionate,” Tamm said. “Now, for the last six years of Fall Focus, we’ve shown Kore-eda films, and they’ve all basically been selling out.”

Whether your goal is to see buzzworthy festival hits before anyone else or discover your new favorite filmmaker, here are five of the best movies to watch at IFFBoston 2024.

For a full schedule of IFFBoston 2024, visit IFFBoston’s website.

“Ghostlight” (May 1, 7:30 p.m., Somerville Theatre)

A scene from the movie "Ghostlight." — A scene from the movie “Ghostlight.” *– Courtesy IFFBoston*

IFFBoston’s opening night film is Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan’s “Ghostlight,” which follows a middle-aged construction worker named Dan (Keith Kupferer) who surprises everyone by joining a local theater’s production of “Romeo and Juliet.” Amidst family strife, Dan discovers that the centuries-old tragedy unexpectedly resonates on a personal level.

Thompson and O’Sullivan, who will be present for a post-film Q&A, struck a chord with audiences at Sundance earlier this year.

“Any movie that’s about the power that art has to heal us and make us whole is something that really resonates with me,” Tamm said. “We want to start the festival and put our stake in the ground and say, ‘This is what we think about art. This is what matters to us.'”

“Good One” (May 3, 8 p.m., Brattle Theatre)

A scene from the movie "Good One." — A scene from the movie “Good One.” *– Courtesy IFFBoston*

Another Sundance favorite, “Good One” (directed by India Donaldson, who will also do a post-film Q&A) follows 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias) as she contends with egos of both her father and his oldest and somewhat troubled friend while on a backpacking trip in the Catskills.

“There’s a shift that happens so quick, but the impact is just earth-shattering,” Tamm said.

“Green Border” (May 4, 2:30 p.m., Brattle Theatre)

A scene from "Green Border." — A scene from “Green Border.” *– Courtesy IFFBoston*

A winner of the Special Jury Prize at the most recent Venice Film Festival, “Green Border,” from director Agnieszka Holland, puts a spotlight on a humanitarian crisis in Europe. Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka — who lost his reelection bid in 2021 but still clings to power — opened the country’s borders to migrants fleeing horrors in the Middle East and Africa not as an act of kindness, but a ploy to overburden the EU. The film goes into the so-called “red zone,” a barbed-wire purgatory where people hang in the balance.

“You can read statistics in the paper, and it’s sometimes a little bit hard to wrap your head around it,” Tamm said. “But when you see these dramatized stories, it helps you get to the heart of the humanity in these situations.”

“Janet Planet” (May 4, 7:30 p.m., Brattle Theatre)

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker filmed her big-screen directorial debut in Western Massachusetts last year, where this coming-of-age title is set. Introverted 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) spends the summer of 1991 daydreaming and hanging out with her mom, Janet (Julianne Nicholson). When Janet begins to enter and exit a series of relationships, Lacy goes through the painful process of seeing her mother as a fully-formed human being, warts and all.

“I think that’s such a like a pivotal time in everybody’s life, and I don’t know that that gets captured as much in film,” Tamm said. “But I think ‘Janet Planet’ does such like a masterful, delicate job of that.”

“Sing Sing” (May 7, 7 p.m., Coolidge Theatre)

Another film about putting on a stage production, “Sing Sing” is based on the real-life arts rehabilitation program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Directed by Greg Kwedar (who will conduct a post-film Q&A), the cast of “Sing Sing” includes Oscar nominee Colman Domingo (“Rustin”) as well as a number of formerly incarcerated actors.

“In this country, we put a lot of people in jail and then don’t think about them very much,” Tamm said. “A film like this, that uses actual formerly incarcerated people who were actors, gives people a perspective. These are real people behind these statistics.”