You All Are Captains

EXCLUSIVE FIRST RUN! ► “In his first feature, the young Spanish director Oliver Laxe achieves something remarkable ... Laxe stars in this tender and witty metafiction as Oliver, a Spanish director who arrives in Tangier, Morocco, to work with children in an orphanage on a blandly educational film. Instead, Oliver involves them in a politicized art film about their “situation,” and the bewildered kids — who expected something like Hollywood, yet also like home movies — revolt... Laxe self-deprecatingly captures both the grandeur and the folly of Oliver’s high-toned student exercise, all the while unfolding, calmly but relentlessly, in brisk but richly textured black-and-white images, the sights and sounds, as well as the mores and characters of Tangier and its environs. He also, modestly but incisively, contemplates the diverse essence of the cinema itself ... The movie’s scale is small, its subjects are intimate, its artistic reach is immense” (Richard Brody, New Yorker). “A fascinating combination of self-reflexivity, self-deprecation, and documentary ... [This] further entry in the rapidly proliferating, rich vein of documentary/fiction hybrids channels the meta-textuality, genre bending, and sensitivity towards children found in the best work of Abbas Kiarostami and François Truffaut ... You All Are Captains is a mysterious, whimsical, and unique creation (Anthology Film Archives, New York). B&W, 35mm, in Arabic, French, and Spanish with English subtitles. 78 mins.