Directed by Alexander Payne (USA, 2023, 133 min.).

With five Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, and a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress win for Da'Vine Joy Randolph, this heartwarming comedy from director Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways) follows a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually he forms an unlikely bond with one of them—a brainy troublemaker (lauded newcomer Dominic Sessa)—and with the school’s head cook (Randolph), who has just lost a son in Vietnam. Left to their own devices in the empty school, the three experience adventures, a little calamity, and finally a semblance of family.

Some scenes in The Holdovers were shot in the MFA’s galleries of ancient Greek and Roman art, so seeing it at the Museum promises to be an extra-special experience. The film will be preceded by remarks from Lawrence Berman, Chair of Art of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art the MFA.

“The best kind of throwback … one does wish to linger in its inviting, melancholy spell for a bit longer …. It’s built with such care and detail, populated by such complicated and interesting people.” —Vanity Fair

Watch the trailer.