The Phoenix Film Festival is proud to announce that our Opening Night Film is Danny Collins.
Inspired by a true story, Al Pacino stars as aging 1970s rocker Danny Collins, who can't give up his hard-living ways. But when his manager (Christopher Plummer) uncovers a 40 year-old undelivered letter written to him by John Lennon, he decides to change course and embarks on a heartfelt journey to rediscover his family, find true love and begin a second act. Danny Collins also stars Annette Bening, Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Garner and Bobby Cannavale.
Once again, our opening night film will be shown in conjunction with our Opening night Kickoff Party on March 26, a full night of food and celebration, beginning at the Party Pavilion with tastes from some of the best restaurants in town, great entertainment and some special silent auction items.
Then it's over to the theatre where the Phoenix Film Festival will present its 2015 Visionary Award. Past Visionary Award recipients include Dan Harkins, Bob Oldfather from Bookmans and Dr. Sydney Shapiro.
Following the presentation of the Visionary Award, we will begin our Opening Night Film, Danny Collins.
Tickets for this Opening Night Event are $60 with all proceeds going to the Phoenix Film Foundation's education programs.
Please note that the Opening Night Event is not included in Single Tickets, Flex, Festival and VIP Passes.
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Squid and the Whale. Starring Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney and Owen Kline, and based on the true childhood experiences of Noah Baumbach and his brother, The Squid and the Whale tells the touching story of two young boys dealing with their parents' divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980s. 
On Tuesday, March 31 at 7pm, we will be showing Kicking and Screaming starring Josh Hamilton, Eric Stoltz and Samuel Gould. After college graduation, Grover's girlfriend Jane tells him she's moving to Prague to study writing. Grover declines to accompany her, deciding instead to move in with several friends, all of whom can't quite work up the inertia to escape their university's pull. Nobody wants to make any big decisions that would radically alter his life, yet none of them wants to end up like Chet, the professional student who tends bar and is in his tenth year of university studies. 
Finally, our closing night film on Thursday, April 2 at 7pm is Baumbach's latest film While We're Young. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are Josh and Cornelia Srebnick, happily married middle-aged members of New York's creative class. They tried to start a family and were unable to and have decided they're okay with that. But as Josh labors over the umpteenth edit of his cerebral new film, it's plain that he has hit a dry patch and that something is still missing.
Enter Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), a free-spirited young couple, who are spontaneous and un-tethered, ready to drop everything in pursuit of their next passion retro board games one day, acquiring a pet chicken the next. For Josh, it's as if a door has opened back to his youth or a youth he wishes he once had. It's not long before the restless forty-somethings, Josh and Cornelia, throw aside friends their own age including Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz in a sly supporting role to trail after these young hipsters who seem so plugged in, so uninhibited, so Brooklyn cool. "Before we met," Josh admits to Jamie, "the only two feelings I had left were wistful and disdainful." But is this new inspiration enough to sustain collaboration and friendship with a couple twenty years their junior?
While We're Young is an openly funny cross-generational comedy of manners about aging, ambition and success, as well as a moving portrait of a marriage tested by the invading forces of youth. No film has better captured the weird, upended logic of urban sophisticates: the older ones embracing their iPads and Netflix, the young ones craving vinyl records and vintage VHS tapes. 
Liz Manashil, writer/director of PFF Feature Competition film BREAD AND BUTTER, will be in attendance for all three PFF screenings on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. 
What are Your Favorite Films?
LISTENING is a sci-fi thriller about penniless grad students who invent mind-reading technology that destroys their lives and threatens the future of free will itself. It's really about communication, relationships, and technology, and is told as a domestic drama where the stakes keep rising until it's a full-blown thriller and the world hangs in the balance.
A Town Called Panic — I saw A Town Called Panic at what must have been a 10 or 11 p.m. showing at the 2010 festival. The theater was maybe half full, and I don’t think anyone was quite ready for this quirky stop-motion film about characters named Cowboy, Indian and Horse. The premise is zany: it’s Horse’s birthday, so his roommates go online to order 50 bricks, but due to a keyboard snafu they accidentally order 50 million bricks. The bricks start coming in a huge caravan of delivery trucks, which is only the beginning of this ridiculously fun French film. It’s after movies like this you realize how important film festival are, because without one how else would anyone have seen A Town Called Panic?
The Movie Hero — In 2003, during one of my first festivals, I happened to catch The Movie Hero, Brad T. Gottfred’s meta-comedy about a man who is convinced he’s starring in his own movie. The man, and Movie Hero, is played by Clueless co-star Jeremy Sisto, who spends much of the movie dialoging with the audience. It’s all bonkers, with lots of citing of movie cliches and tropes, but it works and works well. It was a fun find.
Anthony Tarsitano and his wife (and co-filmmaker) Deborah accepted the Copper Wing Award at PFF 2014 for Best Live Action Short for their film ICE.
