Poets & Writers Theater

“He does the work. I do the cleanup, and we fight.” Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb is a documentary directed by Lizzie Gottlieb exploring the remarkable fifty-year relationship between Pulitzer Prize–winning author Robert Caro and his longtime editor Robert Gottlieb, and the art of editing.

Living is a film directed by Oliver Hermanus with a screenplay by Nobel Prize–winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru, which was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Set in 1950s London, Bill Nighy plays a hardworking civil servant who reflects on his life while facing a fatal illness.

Watch the trailer for the film adaptation of Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Other Four-Letter Words (Atria Books, 2017) by Michael Ausiello, starring Jim Parsons, Ben Aldridge, and Sally Field with a screenplay by David Marshall Grant and Dan Savage.

Watch the trailer for Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a new film adaptation of the 1928 novel of the same name by D. H. Lawrence. Directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre with a screenplay by David Magee, the movie stars Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell and premieres in December on Netflix.

For a haunting Halloween treat, watch the trailer for Bones and All, a film adaptation of the award-winning 2015 novel of the same name by Camille DeAngelis. Directed by Luca Guadagnino with a screenplay by David Kajganich, the film stars Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, and Mark Rylance.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a Netflix film adaptation of the acclaimed 1929 novel of the same name by German author Erich Maria Remarque. Directed by Edward Berger, the German-language film stars Felix Kammerer, Daniel Brühl, Aaron Hilmer, and Albrecht Schuch.

Watch the trailer for White Noise, a Netflix film adaptation of the 1985 National Book Award-winning novel of the same name by Don DeLillo, written and directed by Noah Baumbach and starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig.

Watch the trailer for Three Thousand Years of Longing, adapted from the title story of A. S. Byatt’s collection of fairy tales for adults, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (Random House, 1997), directed by George Miller and starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton.

“From my many wanderings on this earth, I had so much to say about imperfect fathers and imperfect sons, and about loss and love.” In this film adaptation of the classic tale written by Italian writer Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio begins with Gepetto mourning the death of his son and carving a puppet from a tree growing above the boy’s grave. The stop-motion Netflix film is directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson, and features a cast including Cate Blanchett, David Bradley, and Ewan McGregor.

Watch the trailer for Blonde, a film adaptation of the best-selling 2000 historical novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates. Directed by Andrew Dominik, the film stars Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe and will be released on Netflix this fall.

“What does it mean to write something urgent right now?” Don’t Be Nice is a 2018 documentary directed by Max Powers that follows a group of poets from the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City’s East Village who grapple with the political climate punctuated by the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements as they prepare for the National Poetry Slam championship during the summer of 2016.

“Writing, of course, is a substitute for the life I cannot live, am unable to live.” Loving Highsmith, a documentary directed by Eva Vitija, offers an intimate look at the life and work of Patricia Highsmith through her personal notes and diaries, as well as interviews with those who knew her.

“I wanted to tell people how I became this woman with razor blades between her teeth.” BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, directed by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, chronicles the life and work of poet and political activist Sonia Sanchez, including her emergence as a seminal figure in the Black Arts Movement, her tireless political activism, and a poetry career so great Maya Angelou called her “a lion in literature’s forest.” Sanchez is the recipient of the 2022 Jackson Poetry Prize.

Drive My Car is a film adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story of the same name, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi and starring Hidetoshi Nishijima and Toko Miura. The film, which won best screenplay at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and the 2022 Oscar for best international feature film, follows the relationship between a widowed theater actor-director and a young woman hired to be his chauffeur.

“The crime is murder.” Watch the trailer for the film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery novel Death on the Nile, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Tom Bateman, Annette Bening, Russell Brand, Gal Gadot, and Armie Hammer.

After Yang, a film adaptation of Alexander Weinstein’s short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang” from his collection Children of the New World (Picador, 2016), follows a family conflicted with how to repair their android companion. Starring Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith, the film is directed by Kogonada and will be in theaters and available to stream on March 4.

Starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, and Rooney Mara, Nightmare Alley is a film adaptation of the 1946 novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham. Directed by Guillermo del Toro, the film follows an ambitious carnival performer with a talent for manipulating people who meets a corrupt and dangerous psychiatrist.

The Lost Daughter is a film adaptation of the 2008 novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante. Directed and written by Maggie Gyllenhaal, the cast includes Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson, Ed Harris, and Peter Sarsgaard.

“I was twenty-three when I first approached him about making this film. I became obsessed,” says director Robert B. Weide in this trailer for Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, a documentary codirected by Don Argott that captures two decades of footage of the famed author and recounts an extraordinary friendship.

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” Watch the trailer for The Tragedy of Macbeth, a film based on the play of the same name by William Shakespeare, written and directed by Joel Coen and starring Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, and Corey Hawkins.