EVENT, SCREENING
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
Sunday, Oct 22 at 2:30 pm
Location: Bartos Screening Room
Director Jane Schoenbrun to appear in person on October 22!
Dir. Jane Schoenbrun. 2021, 86 mins. DCP. With Anna Cobb, Michael J. Rogers. Schoenbrun’s feature debut uses the textures and trappings of the horror genre to descend into a striking depiction of a particularly 21st-century loneliness. Anna Cobb holds the screen with tremulous force as Casey, a solitary teenager in a nondescript, wintry upstate suburb who seems to live most of her life on the internet. As she plays an elaborate online horror role-playing game, we watch her plunge into a surreal psychological landscape through webcams, amateur videos, and Skype chats; the line between fantasy and reality grows increasingly blurred after she is contacted by a strange, equally isolated figure who’s either longing for contact or toying with her. With its patient, unsettling long takes and almost otherworldly depiction of the complexities of human empathy, Schoenbrun’s film brilliantly dramatizes the emotional drive toward dissociation and the hope for physical transcendence. “It is a reflective presentation of how an entire generation was drawn into the digital sphere in response to a physical world that often left them in a despondent state of isolation, dissociation, and dysphoria.” —Caden Mark Gardner, Reverse Shot
Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission. Review safety protocols before your visit.