The Passing

This month's 55+-friendly Talking Pictures screening is a sympathetic, nuanced portrait of a kindly, generous widow (Mary Kay Place) whose son is an addict. Stay for a coffee, cookies, and a chat.

Based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (Eyes Wide Shut) this is a sly, poignant comedy about vanity and art from director Kent Jones, starring Willem Dafoe as a mailman belatedly acclaimed for a book of poetry he wrote in his youth.

In 2093, a filmmaker arrives in the African village of Umata, where he meets Princess Mumbi, a woman torn between love, legacy, and the future of storytelling. It's a fabulous genre-blending fable about memory, invention and cinematic resistance.

A teenager tries to change her dire circumstances in this overwhelming naturalistic drama from the Dardenne brothers, winner of the Palme d'Or and Best Actress awards at Cannes, 1999.

Werner Herzog's unforgettable documentary reveals the unfolding disaster of the Kuwaitian oil fields in flames in 1991 as a sweeping inferno of mesmerizing power.

Inspired by Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Claire Denis' transfixing Beau Travail is set in East Africa. Sgt Galoup (Denis Lavant) reflects on his time in the French Foreign Legion, and the impact of the handsome Sentain (Gregoire Colin).