The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art will showcase new independent American cinema at the AMFEST 2024 festival.

AMFEST is one of Moscow's main film events, often called the "Moscow Sundance" for its premieres of the most relevant independent films from the USA.

Most of the program consists of Russian premieres, films where the line between traditional narrative and documentary cinema may be blurred.

The festival will open with the stand-up musical "Pity Me!" featuring Sophie von Haselberg, daughter of legendary actress and singer Bette Midler.

The program also includes the large family film novel "The Cathedral" by Ricky D'Ambros, who is called a promising new voice in American cinema.

The other three films exist on the border with documentary narrative: the fem-horror "The Residence" about female artists living together in New York, the poetic film "Molni: To the Ocean, to the Shore" about the culture of modern Chinook Indians, and a rom-com shot in VHS style "New Strains" about a young couple stuck in quarantine in their apartment.

This year, AMFEST focuses on independent experimental works and new names. Amanda Kramer, Vinnie Chun, and the duo Artemis Shaw and Prashant Kamalakanthan have not appeared on Russian screens before – and these are one hundred percent discoveries of the festival. Their films radically transform familiar genres: "New Strains" reinvents the romantic comedy, "Pity Me!" mutates the comedy TV show, and "The Residence" turns documentary chronicles inside out. Among other participants are Ricky D'Ambros, author of the grandiose metamodernist film-novel "The Cathedral", which won silver at the debut festival "Spirit of Fire" in Khanty-Mansiysk, invented by Sergei Solovyov, and Sky Hopinka with the film "Molni".

Schedule and tickets – coolconnections.ru/ru/events/am…t-garage-2023/moscow

All films are shown in the original language with Russian subtitles.