Infamous for its extended, bone-crunching fistfight scene between “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and Keith David, John Carpenter’s 1988 cult favorite is also an ingenious satire of neoliberal politics that holds particular resonance in our second go-round of Trumpism. When drifter John Nada (Piper) dons a pair of sunglasses he’s found, he discovers the true faces of many of the country’s elites—they’re skull-faced aliens manipulating people to consume and conform to the status quo—and sees it as his mission to convince the real people to believe him and resist! Like The Matrix, which blew millions of minds a little over a decade later and also features some iconic sunglasses, They Live questions the fundamentals of reality and is even more direct in its criticism of mass media and capitalist consumption. Carpenter fans also won’t want to miss the Festival’s special outdoors screening of his eerie 1980 film The Fog.

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