A multigenerational family saga in extreme miniature, the new feature from singular American independent director Ricky D’Ambrose (Notes on an Appearance) is his most refined, emotionally resonant work yet. Slicing across decades with impressionistic precision, The Cathedral tells the formally economical yet engrossing story of the Damrosch family, whose quiet rise and fall is seen through the eyes of its youngest member, Jesse, born in the late 1980s. Using photographs and archival news footage to buttress his oblique drama, D’Ambrose shows how a family’s financial and emotional wear and tear can subtly reflect a country’s sociopolitical fortunes and follies. Official Selection: Venice, Sundance, Rotterdam, New Directors/New Films.
Screening to be followed by a Q&A with Ricky D'Ambrose, moderated by director Tyler Taormina (Ham on Rye, Happer's Comet)
A hybrid unlike any other.
- Amy Taubin, Artforum
A quietly stunning jewel box of a film.
- Alissa Wilkinson, Vox
The Cathedral is a deeply humanist film, but it's also a relentlessly bleak exorcism of a family's intolerances.
- Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine
The viewer is asked to be as observant to details, to furtive gestures and to shades of meaning, as D’Ambrose is in adapting his own family story, making The Cathedral a genuinely radical act.
- Robert Koehler, Cinema Scope
A fervent memory piece, filled with haunting images of Jesse's visions. Amazingly, these scenes don't have the subjective feel of point-of-view shots; rather, they render memory as fact and present inner experience as an objective reality.
- Richard Brody, The New Yorker
(Available to download after screening date)