“What Haunts Us” is this year’s big-deal movie at the Terrace Charleston Film Festival, and theater owner Paul Brown is considering a regular run if festival ticket sales indicate the documentary deserves one.
“This is some serious stuff,” he said of the film’s subject matter, the Eddie Fischer sexual abuse scandal that rocked Porter-Gaud and other schools in the 1970s and 1980s. “This isn’t just a movie; this is about people’s lives.”
It’s directed and produced by Porter-Gaud alumna Paige Goldberg Tolmach. Her husband Matt Tolmach, who worked on Hollywood blockbusters such as the two “Jumanji” movies, three “Spider-Man” movies and the forthcoming thriller “Venom,” was one of three executive directors, along with Hollywood powerhouse Frank Marshall and documentary producer Regina K. Scully.
But “What Haunts Us” is just one of 16 feature films and several shorts on tap for the ninth annual festival. Since many are films from outside the U.S., the festival offers local moviegoers a rare opportunity to delve a little into international cinema.
For a complete schedule and tickets, go to www.terracetheater.com, visit the box office at 1956D Maybank Highway.
Films include:
- Bob Dylan fans will find “Trouble No More,” a fascinating examination of the singer-songwriter’s Christian period. Oscar-nominated short films will be screened in a cluster twice on Saturday. And three shorts made thanks to the Indie Grants program, which supports South Carolina filmmakers, will screen on Friday.
- One movie, “The Leisure Seeker,” portrays a couple (Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren) struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. Another, “Beats per Minute,” is a story about people coping with AIDS in France.
- “Faces Places,” also set in France, features two artists, one young, one old, who form a strong bond. “The Breadwinner” is an animated drama about a young girl struggling to help her family in Afghanistan. “No Stone Unturned” deals with a murder in an Irish village. And “Chappaquiddick” is a dramatic telling of the car accident involving the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy that resulted in the controversial death of Mary Jo Kopechne.
- “Humor Me” is a father-son comedy featuring Elliott Gould. “In the Fade” is a German film about a woman who seeks revenge against Neo-Nazis for killing her husband and child. And “The Insult” is about escalating animosity between two men in West Beirut.
- Five Jewish-themed movies also are part of the festival, thanks in part to a partnership with Charleston JCC Without Walls. “7 Days in Entebbe” is a dramatic telling of the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight. “Shelter” is a suspenseful neo-noir about an Israeli Mossad agent sent to Germany to protect a Lebanese informant recovering from plastic surgery to assume a new identity. “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story” portrays the 1940s Hollywood starlet who came up with a secret communication system to help the Allies beat the Nazis during World War II. “An Act of Defiance” is a thrilling historical drama about Nelson Mandela and his inner circle of black and Jewish supporters, many of whom were arrested by the apartheid South African government in the summer of 1963. And “Fanny’s Journey,” based on a true story, is about how 13-year old Fanny and her sisters, sent to an Italian foster home for Jewish children, managed to escape the Nazis. Guest speakers will be on hand, in person or via Skype, after each of the Sunday screenings.
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