CHRISTIE PITS Park
Sunday, july 26, 2026

o brother, where art thou?

With the short films Wild Life and Paradise Falls, New Mexico

Joel & Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a Depression-era musical-comedy odyssey starring George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson as a trio of chain gang fugitives trekking across the deep south in pursuit of gold and glory. The journey takes on mythical proportions as the hapless rogues find themselves in tight spot after tight spot, beguiled by dulcet-toned washerwomen, menaced by police and Klansmen, and thrust into celebrity thanks to a Faustian bluesman and a local radio station. The action is set to a rollicking soundtrack produced by T Bone Burnett of 1930s bluegrass, gospel, country, folk, and blues performed by a who’s who of Nashville legends. O Brother, Where Art Thou? might not be the only cinematic adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey you see this summer, but it will be the most devilishly charming. 

The distinctive sepia-tinted glow achieved by the Coens and cinematographer Roger Deakins is digital, but Edmonton experimental film and video artist Christina Battle works directly with film stock to produce mesmerizing visual effects in her short film Paradise Falls, New Mexico. Using footage of old-timey ghost towns, steam trains, and shoot-outs as raw material, Battle physically re-works the mythology of the Hollywood Western into something entirely new. Rounding out the night’s programme, Wild Life tells the tale of a dapper young Englishman with a head full of cowboy dreams who travels to Canada in 1909 to start a ranch, only to be fatally confronted with the gap between fantasy and reality. Albertan filmmaking duo Amanda Forbis & Wendy Tilby’s stunning hand-painted animation earned them an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film for Wild Life.