Hit Sundance documentary Prime Minister starts an exclusive run at AMC Theaters. Samuel L. Jackson and Pierce Brosnan test out a western in The Unholy Trilogy. Venice-premiering Israeli-Iranian sports drama Tatami, part two of a Norwegian trilogy and a doc on Simple Minds launched during the group’s North American tour populate a lively specialty box office. Neon takes a big jump with Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation Life Of Chuck starring Tom Hiddleston from 16 screens to 1,075 in week 2.
Magnolia Pictures debuts documentary Prime Minister, Sundance Audience Award Winner in the World Cinema Documentary Competition this year, at 56 AMC theaters in an exclusive weeklong run, expanding to Laemmle and a handful of arthouses in coming weeks.
Directed by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz, the doc follows former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as she led her nation through the pandemic, balancing the personal and professional in the highest seat of power. That became a national conversation as Ardern discovered she and husband Clarke Gayford were pregnant with their first child shortly after she ascended to the post at age 37, becoming only the second female national leader to give birth on the job.
Ardern successfully championed a ban of semi-automatic weapons after a devastating massacre, oversaw the decriminalizing of abortion, and faced tough choices when Covid shut down the world. She is now a climate rights activist, author (A Different Kind of Power) and a Senior Fellow in the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard.
AMC held special preview screenings of the film in nearly 100 theaters that included a live-cast Q&A with former Ardern and CNN’s Abby Phillip). Magnolia acquired Prime Minister out of Sundance with HBO Documentary Films and CNN Films.
The widest new opening is Roadside Attractions with western The Unholy Trinity in moderate release on 771 screens focusing heavily on the Midwest, South and Southwest. Directed by Richard Gray (Murder at Yellowstone City), written by Lee Zachariah, the actioner stars Pierce Brosnan (Golden Eye) and Samuel L. Jackson (The Hateful Eight) alongside Brandon Lessard (Classified). Set against the turbulent backdrop of 1870s Montana, the film picks up in the moments before the execution of Isaac Broadway, as he gives his estranged son, Henry (Lessard) an impossible task: murder the man who framed him for a crime he didn’t commit. Henry travels to the remote town of Trinity, where an unexpected turn of events traps him in town and leaves him caught between Gabriel Dove (Brosnan), the town’s upstanding new sheriff, and a mysterious figure named St. Christopher (Jackson).
Other new openings are limited. Strand Releasing is out with Sex, the second film in the 2024 trio from Norwegian novelist/filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud’s Love – Sex – Dreams: The Oslo Trilogy opens at the Film Forum in New York. Love opened there in mid-May and is currently out in limited national release. Strand will release Dreams sometime this fall, no date set. The three films are linked but not consecutive. Love focuses on two colleagues at an Oslo hospital — Marianne, a straight (and straitlaced) doctor, and Tor, a gay male nurse. Both single, they cross paths by chance after hours and confide in each other. Sex follows two Oslo chimney sweeps, men in heterosexual marriages whose unexpected experiences challenge their perceptions of sexuality, gender and identity.
Strand is also out with Rithy Panh’s documentary Meeting With Pol Pot at the Film Forum. Premiered at Cannes last year.
XYZ Films opens Venice-premiering sports drama Tatami directed by Iranian and Israeli filmmakers, Academy Award winner Guy Nattiv and Cannes Best Actress Winner Zar Amir (Holy Spider), at the IFC Center. Adds L.A.’s Laemmle Royal next week. The story is based on the real experiences of Iranian athletes like Sadaf Khadem, Elnaz Rekabi and Kimia Alizadeh, who risked everything to follow their dreams and stand up to oppressive systems. It’s set during the Judo World Championships, when Iranian Leila and her coach Maryam receive an ultimatum from the Islamic Republic ordering Leila to fake an injury and lose, lest she be branded a traitor of the state. With her own and her family’s freedom at stake, Leila is faced with an impossible choice: comply with the Iranian regime or fight on for the gold. StarsArienne Mandi, Zar Amir, Jaime Ray Newman and Ash Goldeh.\
Greenwich Entertainment opens Simple Minds: Everything Is Possible at IFC Center in NYC. The documentary directed by Joss Crowley is timed to the North American tour by the Scottish group best known for hit Don’t You (Forget About Me). Simple Minds has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide, charting two dozen singles in the U.K. alone, including Don’t You, which recently made the Spotify Billions Club, Alive and Kicking, Let There Be Love, She’s a River and “Sanctify Yourself.
Singer-musician Jim Kerr and guitarist Charlie Burchill are the only two members who have been with the band since it was formed in Glasgow in 1977. “From working-class kids in post-industrial Glasgow to rock stars playing Live Aid,” notes the logline, “this is the unlikely story of an extraordinary band that continues touring around the world to this day.”
Abramorama opens House of Abraham at LOOK Cinema in NYC. Directed by Lisa Belcher, written by Lukas Hassel and starring Natasha Henstridge and Lin Shaye. A woman looking for an end to her suffering, checks in to the House Of Abraham, home to a mysterious cult that promises a way out. She soon discovers all is not what it seems and must plan an escape before it’s too late.
