The great auteur Kelly Reichardt (First Cow, Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy), America’s most independent director, premiered her latest, The Mastermind, at this year’s Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for its top award, the Palme d’Or.

In a sedate Massachusetts suburb circa 1970, we meet J.B. Mooney (Josh O’Connor), a mostly unemployed failed art student, a husband to Terri (Alana Haim) and a father to two young sons. His seemingly unremarkable existence, however, harbors a rather ambitious, if ill-conceived scheme: the robbery of a local art museum. The expectation that Reichardt may be working within genre cinema is quickly dispelled when the film signals its departure from the crisp precision of a typical heist narrative; it’s less about the action and more about the character undertaking it, a slow burn examination of a man unequal to his own designs, reflected in the irony of the film’s title. The Mastermind continues to explore themes that have run throughout Reichardt’s remarkable career: characters coping with financial insecurity and how it shapes their choices, American lives defined by compromise, loss, and unrealized ambitions. The film also features Gaby Hoffmann, John Magaro, Hope Davis and Bill Camp. 110 minutes.

Tickets: $10

CinemaSavannah has been bringing arthouse, indie, and foreign films to the city of Savannah since 2003. It is the longest continuously running cinema program in our region of the country. Its mission is to show films, mostly new releases, that were not screened or wouldn't have been shown in local commercial theaters. Since 2019, its home has been the Ben Tucker Theater of the Savannah Cultural Arts Center where it presents two screenings a month.