OH, CANADA Luminaries

Screening to be followed by a conversation with AFI Alumnus, director and screenwriter Paul Schrader.

Based on Russell Banks’ novel “Foregone,” Paul Schrader’s new film features Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi portraying at different stages Leonard Fife, a political documentarian who achieved notoriety when he fled to Canada to avoid being drafted in the Vietnam War. Now in his late 70s and after a long and successful career, he has been diagnosed with cancer and has agreed to participate in a final interview. Using a technology that he pioneered, the documentarian now finds himself as the subject, able to look directly into both the camera and the eyes of his interviewer. He has bypassed the younger documentarian and would-be-cypher (Michael Imperioli) in favor of his wife Emma (Uma Thurman). Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, this insightful look into the shifting nature of truth from beloved filmmaker and AFI Conservatory Alum Paul Schrader is a reflection on the fragile subjectivity of memories and self-conception. –Malin Kan