The Forbidden Room

Friday, October 11 - Tuesday, October 15, 2024

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM is Guy Maddin’s ultimate epic phantasmagoria. Honoring classic cinema while electrocuting it with energy, this Russian nesting doll of a film begins (after a prologue on how to take a bath) with the crew of a doomed submarine chewing flapjacks in a desperate attempt to breathe the oxygen within. Suddenly, impossibly, a lost woodsman wanders into their company and tells his tale of escaping from a fearsome clan of cave dwellers. From here, Maddin and co-director Evan Johnson take us high into the air, around the world, and into dreamscapes, spinning tales of amnesia, captivity, deception and murder, skeleton women and vampire bananas. Playing like some glorious meeting between Italo Calvino, Sergei Eisenstein and a perverted six year-old child, THE FORBIDDEN ROOM is Maddin’s grand ode to lost cinema.

Created with the help of master poet John Ashbery, the film features Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Maria de Medeiros, Jacques Nolot, Adele Haenel, Amira Casar and Elina Lowensohn as a cavalcade of misfits, thieves and lovers, all joined in the joyful delirium of the kaleidoscopic viewing experience.

See more and save! Get a Forbidden Rooms Pack (3-ticket pack: $30 for IFC Center members and $45 for non-members). Ticket packs are good for any three shows in the series lasting from October 11-17, 2024.

Part of our retrospective Forbidden Rooms: The Films of Guy Maddin

  • Country Canada
  • Year 2015
  • Running Time 120 minutes
  • Format DCP
  • Distributor Kino Lorber
  • Director Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson
  • Cast Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Udo Kier, Gregory Hlady
  • Accessibility Assistive Listening, T-Coil

IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.