Starting on Feb. 1, the Movies at Meadville will bring back the annual International Film Festival where it will showcase a film from each section in the Allegheny language department every Thursday at 7 p.m. for the month of February. Each language section submits three films and the rest of the faculty decides which one will be shown.

Chinese
The first movie — shown on Thursday, Feb. 1 — is the three-hour long Chinese science-fiction adventure film, “The Wandering Earth II” which is a sequel to the 2019 film, “The Wandering Earth.” The essential story of the movie is a future where the sun is rapidly burning and threatening Earth’s existence, inciting the humans to build engines on the Earth’s surface to drive it into a different solar system. The journey iinvolves a group of young people that will “execute a dangerous, life-or-death operation to save the earth,” according to Rotten Tomatoes.
It was also submitted as China’s entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the upcoming 96th Oscars, but it did not place.

French
The second movie on Feb. 8 will be the hourlong 2021 French fantasy drama film, “Petite Maman.”
“Petite Maman is about a young girl dealing with her grandmother’s death and learning more about her family and her relationship with her mother,” said Associate Professor of French Briana Lewis. “It incorporates fantasy elements that blur the line between magic and a child’s imagination. It is simple, in that it is a story about childhood, but it includes surprising emotional subtleties.”
The 2021 movie was received well by critics and the faculty, according to Lewis.
“We chose this film because we found it sweet and charming,” Lewis said.

German
The third movie on Feb. 15 is the hour-and-a-half long 2023 German drama film, “Afire.” The movie is about a pair of friends who are vacationing around the Baltic Sea at a family member’s holiday house. As they get entangled with multiple strangers who join their group, tensions rise in the house while the forest near them catches on fire and slowly encroaches on them, leading them to a dangerous situation that they have to work through.
“The director, Christian Petzold, is one of the most innovative artists working in film today. He has created subtle, yet intense stories centered on complex characters,” said Associate Professor of German Julia Ludewig. “This one, ‘Afire’, brings together interpersonal dynamics with questions of existential thread and climate change through the thread of wildfires.”
The movie was submitted by Germany as one of its entries for the Best International Feature Film category at the upcoming 96th Oscars, but it did not recieve a nomination.

Spanish
The fourth movie on Feb. 22 is the 2023 two-and-a-half-hour Spanish survival thriller film, “Society of the Snow,” based on the 1972 crash of the Uruguayan charter plane Air Force 571 flight into the Andes.
“The movie is probably the third or fourth time a story’s been told about what happened,” said Professor of Spanish Wilfredo Hernández. “Traditionally these kinds of movies exploit fears and show the worst of the worst. This director took a different route by deciding to tell the story from a different point of view.”
The director does that in his movie by basing it off of the documentation of the survivors. Hernández explained that “the point of the movie is how a group of humans are able to survive in the worst conditions and how our humanity is tested.”
It was submitted by Spain as their entry for the Best International Feature Film and is currently one of the five nominations in that category and in the Best Makeup and Hairstyling category.

Arabic
The last movie, which will show on Feb. 29, is the Arabic film — which has not yet been decided. While posters around the campus state that the Arabic section is planning on showing the 2021 Lebanese film “C-Section,” the actual movie has not been picked yet.
“It is to be determined; the theater is having a hard time locating the films,” said Associate Professor of Arabic Reem Hilal. “There are a lot of factors apparently that go into showing a movie at an independent theater, like American distribution rights. So far, we have offered four titles and they have not been located so we are waiting on two more titles.”
This leaves the final movie a surprise — for now.