Through Thu, May 2, CIVIL WAR screens in 35mm film (tickets for 35mm screenings here). Starting Fri, May 3, it screens in 4K digital.
In the near future, the United States is in the midst of a second Civil War between the separatist Western Forces — an alignment of states led by Texas and California — and the militarized American dictatorship. Struggling to survive through a series battlegrounds and extremist militias, a team of war photographers and journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura, Stephan McKinley Henderson) embark on a dangerous mission across state lines to Washington, D.C. to interview an increasingly isolated President (Nick Offerman).
“In the abstract, it is bizarre. But CIVIL WAR is a furiously convincing and disturbing thing when you're watching it. It's a great movie that has its own life force. It's not like anything Garland has made. It's not like anything anyone has made.” —Matt Zoller Seitz, rogerebert.com
“In real life, America is growing crueler and more divided by the day, and the social fabric of the country is disintegrating along with its infrastructure. But CIVIL WAR isn’t a plea for empathy, or even civility. It simply follows this trend to its logical end point…. The framework of this movie may be science fiction, but the chaotic, morally bankrupt reality of war isn’t.” —Katie Rife, IndieWire
“Garland seems to have gone to great lengths — including the film’s enigmatic California-Texas coalition — to strip away modern politics and reveal the darker ideologies hidden underneath…. Taken for what it is — a thought exercise on the inevitable future for any nation defined by authoritarianism — one can appreciate that not having any easy answers is the entire point. If we as a nation gaze too long into the abyss, Garland suggests, then eventually, the abyss will take the good and the bad alike. That makes CIVIL WAR the movie event of the year — and the post-movie group discussion of your lifetime.” —Matthew Monagle, The Playlist
“The details of American politics do not concern Alex Garland in CIVIL WAR. Despite the controversy it’s already courted about its supposed prescience, the unsettling feature from the British filmmaker doesn’t predict a future based on the country’s current two-party system. Garland is far more interested in the United States’ self-regarding exceptionalism, its belief in its own safety from executive instability. He is fascinated by how factionalism instigates conflict and how no nation is immune to the results of its violence.” —Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter
“Best known for high-concept science fiction and horror, this isn’t the film that anyone would have expected Garland to make… Frightening, even-tempered, and disarmingly humane, CIVIL WAR is intelligent precision filmmaking trained on an impossible subject.” —Rocco T. Thompson, Slant Magazine