PATERSON Special Screenings

Premiering at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, PATERSON is the latest film from America’s punk poet laureate Jim Jarmusch. Adam Driver stars as the title character, a working-class poet and bus driver living in Paterson, NJ. Eschewing the comforts of modern life, he lives a routine existence, finding beauty in everyday details. From this loose narrative, Jarmusch has found one of his most liberating film structures yet. Having already played with narrative in such films as NIGHT ON EARTH (1991) and COFFEE AND CIGARETTES (2003), here Jarmusch seems to echo an earlier version of his filmmaking self, laying down story beats based on characters and the rhythms of their environment — and playing with how these two forces push and pull one another. A grooving meditation on contemporary life and an aching ode to the poetic in the mundane, PATERSON sings.