Ackland Film Forum: “Aftersun” (Charlotte Wells, 2022)
Set during a modest holiday at a Turkish resort in the early 2000s, Aftersun approaches coming of age obliquely, through memory and retrospection. Stunningly shot on 35mm film, which is contrasted with mini DV home movie video footage, the plot follows young Sophie (Frankie Corio) and her father Calum (Paul Mescal). But it is the adult Sophie’s somber attempt to reconstruct this formative trip that gives the story its emotional charge. Coming of age here is not marked by clear lessons or dramatic turning points, but by the gradual, dawning recognition of a parent’s fragility—and of the limits of childhood understanding.
The film will be introduced by Rick Warner, Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor and Director of Film Studies.
This film will be screened at 7:30 p.m. at the Chelsea Theater, 1129 Weaver Dairy Road, Suite AB, Chapel Hill, NC 27514. Tickets are free for UNC-Chapel Hill students. UNC-Chapel Hill students can receive CLE credit for attending by scanning the QR code at the event.
About the Series:
Join the Ackland Film Forum on the evenings of Monday, February 23, Monday, March 9, and Tuesday, March 24 for Growing Up, Looking Back, a series that accompanies the Ackland exhibition Bill Bamberger: Boys Will Be Men. This semester’s series highlights the filmgoing experience by using three local movie theaters as its venues
The Ackland Film Forum is co-organized by the Ackland Art Museum and UNC Film Studies, housed in the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of English and Comparative Literature.
