PRIMETIME PREACHER$

US PREMIERE The collaboration between filmmaker Sophie Fiennes and academic philosopher Slavoj Žižek celebrates its twentieth anniversary and third installment with The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias, following in the footsteps of The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, the latter of which screened at DOC NYC in 2012. Whether it is your first or third rodeo with Žižek and Fiennes hardly matters; this zippy trip down the highway of ideas, about human culture as interpreted through popular movies, is breathlessly quirky and appeals to cinephiles of varying intensities. - Jaie Laplante

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

NYC PREMIERE Joss Crowley’s rocking and insightful portrait of the singular Chrissie Hynde and the band she built around her goes way beyond the greatest hits. Now 75 and as fierce as ever, Hynde is an elusive subject, consenting to only one filmed interview with Crowley, which forms the throughline of Pretenders. Hynde’s independent streak has always marked her as a rebellious original, and in here we get the full force of her indelible personality—and her brilliance as a songwriter. - Jaie Laplante

Pretenders is one of 10 nominated films in DOC NYC’s inaugural Archival Storytelling Competition, developed in collaboration with Archival Producers Alliance and co-presented by Footage.Net, Fox Archives, and Global ImageWorks. To see the list of other nominated films, click here.

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Joss Crowley.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

WORLD PREMIERE The story of New Vrindaban, a Hare Krishna commune in West Virginia that grew into one of America’s largest cults, has long been sensationalized for its lurid details of crime and internal corruption. But for brothers Abhay and Halavah, it is the world they were born into, and in Palace of Gold, they aim to show a more sensitive, nuanced side of their family’s reality. The brothers use humor and an affection for human foibles to chart a path from their parents’ original, lofty goals of spirituality to the problems that beset their community in its self-imposed isolation around a cult of personality. Through many unexpected twists, Abhay and Halavah reveal that the contemporary hunger for American alternatives to community continues to grow. - Jaie Laplante

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with directors Halavah Sofsky and Abhay Sofsky and protagonist Ed Sofsky.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE Filmmaker Rachel Fleit (Introducing, Selma Blair) has a gift for honoring the vulnerability of both illness and celebrity. Colin Farrell steps into unguarded territory to admit that behind his fame, he grapples with personal demons. His friend Emma Fogarty, meanwhile, lives with epidermolysis bullosa (EB), a rare, extraordinarily painful genetic disorder that affects the skin. To mark Emma’s milestone of being the longest-living person in Ireland with her form of EB, Colin and Emma commit to a bold and logistically complex challenge: running the Dublin Marathon together. - Jaie Laplante 

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Rachel Fleit and protagonist/producer Colin Farrell.

The second screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Rachel Fleit.

All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones upon request with venue management. IFC Center can also provide a T-Coil loop for compatible devices.