An exclusive Czech pre-premiere at Variations 2022 – variace.kviff­.com.

Armageddon Time
(d. James Gray, USA, Brazil 2022, 115 min., in English with Czech subtitles)

This bittersweet drama about coming of age in New York in the 1980s and about the loving, if often intense, bonds of a charmingly distinctive yet traditional Jewish family was first screened in the main competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. In his most autobiographical film, director James Gray focuses his attention on twelve-year-old Paul as he explores the complicated world around him with the help of his wise grandfather, who promotes his burgeoning artistic ambitions. The charismatic and a thoroughly sympathetic patriarch is energetically portrayed by the legendary Anthony Hopkins, with excellent support from Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong, the latter of whom recently gained fame as Kendall in the well-received series Succession.

James Gray (1969)

One of the most respected American directors working today, Gray was born into a New York family of Russian immigrants. He abandoned his original dream of becoming a painter the moment he encountered the work of Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Altman. Gray studied film directed at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His feature-film debut Little Odessa (1994) was shown in competition at the Venice Film Festival, where he won the Silver Lion. He returned to the Lido a quarter century later with the big-budget sci-fi Ad Astra. Five of his eight films have been in competition at Cannes, and he has cast his favorite actor, Joaquin Phoenix, in three of them (The Yards, We Own the Night, and Two Lovers).