Upcoming Events

- Molly McSweeney
- 2:30 pm to 4:00 pm
- Global Hub
Join us for a panel discussion to hear how experiential learning can help prepare you for a rapidly evolving workforce and equip you with critical skillsets to be an engaged global citizen ready to make a positive impact in the local community. Hear from professionals with a wealth of experience in career development, service learning, and global engagement, as well as from Pitt students themselves who have navigated these transformative experiences and are excited to share their stories with you, too. A networking opportunity will follow the panel discussion. Light refreshments will be served.
This event is part of the UCIS International Career Toolkit Series, and Pitt undergraduate students can earn Global Distinction credit for attending.
Panelists:
- Brandon Blache-Cohen, Executive Director of AllPeopleBeHappy (formerly Amizade)
- Katie Boyes, Undergraduate student, B.A. in Environmental Studies, Minor in Secondary Education, certificates in Global Studies & African Studies
- Rianne Elsadig, Masters student, MID in International Development, Social Policy concentration, certificates in Global Studies & African Studies
- Marie Newkirk, Assistant Director for Experiential Learning, Pitt Career Center
- Rachel Vandevort, Program Manager, Pitt Global Experiences Office
Moderator:
- Molly McSweeney, Assistant Director for Student and Community Engagement, Global Hub, University Center for International Studies
Co-Sponsors:
- University Center for International Studies
- Pitt Global Hub
- Pitt Global Experiences
- Pitt Career Center
- AllPeopleBeHappy
- David C. Frederick Honors College
- Office of PittServes
- Office of Engagement and Community Affairs

- 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
- David Lawrence Hall 121
American-educated, comparative literature professor Ali feels that he has shed his familial baggage, and with it, his father’s patriarchal, draconian sensibilities. Ali’s long-simmering resentment, however, resurfaces as he becomes aware that his mother’s untimely death may not have been natural.
When a mysterious drifter Riza turns up at his rural cabin looking for work, Ali thinks that Riza may be able to solve several problems. As the revenge scheme spins out of control, Ali’s generational trauma threatens to overturn everything he’s worked for. Part David Lynch, part Turkish realism, The Things You Kill explores how the power of the patriarchy is built on an unreal scaffolding, one that crumbles as soon as any pressure is exerted.
Winner, Sundance 2025 World Cinema Award

- 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm
- Alumni Hall 343
In Blue Sun Palace’s Chinese-speaking Queens, Cheung is a migrant laborer and Didi works at a massage parlor with other Chinese immigrants. Among them is Amy (Ke-Xi Wu), a gifted cook who dreams of opening her own restaurant. When Didi is tragically killed, Cheung and Amy form an unexpected bond as they navigate their grief and search for connection. Blue Sun Palace offers a quiet, realistic portrayal of immigrant life in New York, where English is rarely spoken and interactions with non-immigrant Americans are largely commodified. While there are daily indignities foisted upon the immigrants, Blue Sun Palace is no misery showcase. Intimacy and warmth co-exist with economic anxieties and deep grief that are articulated with uncommon intelligence and understanding of how adults endure any given day. Director Constance Tsang gives us confident direction in her debut feature, bringing a fresh exploration to how American newcomers might find comfort and solace in one another in an otherwise alienating land.

- 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
- David Lawrence Hall 121
The 2025 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, a love story set in a traditional Maharashtrian village, follows Anand, a city dweller who, during a 10-day mourning period for his father, rekindles a tender bond with his childhood friend. At the beginning of Cactus Pears, protagonist Anand has to leave his urban world to mourn his beloved father in his ancestral home, where he is inundated with memories and his relations question his marital status. Anand finds himself drawn to his childhood friend Balya, as their personal and emotional struggles bring them closer during Anand’s 10-day mourning period. Cactus Pears is a refreshingly intimate film that explores queer life in rural India in a new way. Far from imagining the region as inherently hostile to queerness, the film explores the deep complexities around family obligation, loss, and desire. By casting local actors and filming in his ancestral village, Cactus Pears becomes a semi-autobiographical portrait of love and hope found. even in the most unusual of places.
Winner, Sundance Grand Jury Prize 2025

- 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
- Kelly Strayhorn Alloy Studies
In the feature film debut of director Kondo Ryota, winner of the Grand Prize at the Japan Horror Film Competition, and produced by legendary J-Horror director, Shimizu Takashi, this film’s quiet horror allows viewers to experience slow-burning dread trapped in the coarse image of a VHS tape. One day, Keita unexpectedly receives an old videotape from his mother. As the tape plays, the grainy images reveal the moment of his brother’s mysterious disappearance years earlier forcing Keita to reckon with a past he has long tried to forget. As unforgettable and ghastly as this revelation might be, Keita decides to confront the incident once more and retrace the past, heading to the ruins of a mountain that should never have existed.

- 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
- Cathedral of Learning G24
In conservative Malaysia, the mere existence of a baby hatch—in which one can safely abandon newborns– remains a whispered taboo, condemned by the rising tide of social conservatism that brands it as an enabler of moral decay. Lai Sum, Fatimah, Kam, and Nurul, committed employees of a Kuala Lumpur baby hatch, navigate a maze of societal opposition to empower women from diverse backgrounds grappling with the complex notion of bodily autonomy. As Ramadan ends, a dire situation unfolds when Siew Man, an underage girl, teeters on the brink of a life-altering decision. Lai Sum endeavors to rescue her from the depths of despair. However, her well-intentioned intervention unwittingly entangles them both in the perilous currents of theocratic and patriarchal forces, threatening to dictate their fates.
Nominee, Tokyo International Film Festival best film 2024

- 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
- Mount Lebanon Public Library
In a village in a remote valley on the northern border of Xinjiang, China, a lonely Kazakh boy named Arsin nurses fading memories of his family. He finds solace in the company of plants. The arrival of Meiyu, a Han Chinese girl, is like the discovery of a plant he has never seen before, bringing him comfort and a strange sense of wonder. Together, they grow like two distinct species, rooted in a shared corner of the world, imagining the valley as an endless ocean. But one day, Arsin learns that Meiyu will be moving to Shanghai, which is 4,792 kilometres away – a distance he struggles to comprehend. She is headed to a city where the ocean actually exists. Arsin is left alone to grapple with the quiet shifts in their small, fragile world.
2025 Berlin Grand Prix of the Generation Kplus Winner, Best Film
Two Shows: Friday, Sept 26 at 1:00 PM (Univ. of Pitt, G24) and Wednesday, Sept 24 at 7PM (Mt. Lebanon Library)

- 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
- Harris Theater
In Sokcho, a small seaside village in South Korea, a young woman, Soo-Ha, lives in a bit of a rut, rhythmed by visits to her mother, a fishmonger, and her relationship with her boyfriend, Jun-Ho. When a French man named Yan Kerrand arrives in the boarding house where Soo-Ha works, it awakens within her questions about her own identity, and that of her French father, of whom she knows almost nothing. As winter settles over the town, Soo-Ha and Kerrand will observe and gauge each other, trying to communicate any way they can – through cooking for one and drawing for the other – delicately weaving a fragile bond between them.

- 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm
- Harris Theater
Hiro and his wife Sono run an okonomiyaki restaurant which employs ex-youth offenders to help support their rehabilitation. Since an incident with a former employee a year ago, Hiro has been hounded by hate speech online. Nevertheless, he sticks to his principles at the restaurant. When he interviews the 18-year-old Yuto in the detention center, the young man tells him: “I want the chance to start over!”, and Hiro hires him. After receiving his first pay packet, Yuto returns to his hometown to buy his father a gift but discovers that he has left town. Yuto’s mother already abandoned him when he was a child and now his father is gone, too. While out at a club, Yuto becomes fascinated with Yukiha, a 17-year-old dancer at the club who was also recently released from juvenile detention.
Berlin Film Festival Panorama 2025

- 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm
- Cathedral of Learning G24
In a village in a remote valley on the northern border of Xinjiang, China, a lonely Kazakh boy named Arsin nurses fading memories of his family. He finds solace in the company of plants. The arrival of Meiyu, a Han Chinese girl, is like the discovery of a plant he has never seen before, bringing him comfort and a strange sense of wonder. Together, they grow like two distinct species, rooted in a shared corner of the world, imagining the valley as an endless ocean. But one day, Arsin learns that Meiyu will be moving to Shanghai, which is 4,792 kilometres away – a distance he struggles to comprehend. She is headed to a city where the ocean actually exists. Arsin is left alone to grapple with the quiet shifts in their small, fragile world.
2025 Berlin Grand Prix of the Generation Kplus Winner, Best Film
Two Shows: Friday, Sept 26 at 1:00 PM (Univ. of Pitt, G24) and Wednesday, Sept 24 at 7PM (Mt. Lebanon Library)

- 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
- Harris Theater
At the beginning of the Cannes Film Festival Critics’ Week winner A Useful Ghost (Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, 2025), we learn that March has lost his beloved wife Nat, whose work in the family factory has left her—and many other workers—poisoned. Their relationship gets a second chance, however, when she comes back to him, reincarnated as a vacuum cleaner. His family is less pleased by her reincarnation and finds their rather unconventional love disturbing. Anxious to be the good daughter-in-law again, Nat decides to become useful by setting herself against the other ghosts who have revenge on their minds. As she becomes involved in banishing other spirits, the question of a ghost’s usefulness clashes with Thailand’s recent authoritarian history. With its tonal shifts and fractious genre changes, A Useful Ghost should not work. But the fact that it does—and does so brilliantly—is a credit to the debut film director’s sense of humor and razor-sharp political vision.
Toronto International Film Festival 2025, Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize 2025

- 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm
- Frick Fine Arts 125
Jin Aixia (Chang) has two daughters, but Emma (Karena Lam), who grew up in New York, and Fan Zuer (Eugenie Liu), who grew up in Taipei, never knew about each other until well into adulthood. When Zuer and her partner decide to try and get pregnant via in vitro fertilization, they wind up travelling to the US for treatments. Tragically, the couple die there in an accident, but their embryo remains alive and well — and Aixia is left as its legal guardian. Arriving in New York overwhelmed with grief, she is faced with the choice to donate, terminate, or find a surrogate for the embryo. But after a life spent feeling like she’s fallen short as a mother, who is she to decide what to do with her deceased daughter’s unborn child?
2024 Toronto International Film Festival Platform Award winner, 2024 Golden Horse winner, best original screenplay

- 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
- Harris Theater
When A Better Tomorrow debuted in 1986, it spawned the Hong Kong gangster cinematic craze, propelled the careers of John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat to international stardom and made Hong Kong cool an aesthetic across the world. We are celebrating the 2025 4k of this film and the entire Golden Princess Collection at the Harris Theater. In the original HK gangster film– A Better Tomorrow, two estranged brothers — Leslie Cheung’s fresh-faced cop Kit, and Ti lung’s jaded criminal Ho — struggle to reconnect after Ho serves three years in prison. As Ho attempts to stay out of gangster life, both are drawn into crime, violence and the Hong Kong underworld. Not only does Woo’s A Better Tomorrow set the gold standard for intense corridor shootouts but also laid the foundation for a stylistic template that would resonate throughout Woo’s illustrious career.

- 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm
- McConomy Hall
While living abroad, a filmmaker returns to Tripoli, Lebanon to confront a hometown that once rejected him as a queer child. With a microphone in hand, he walks around coffee shops, public squares and a park to ask the city’s inhabitants about their cultural and social beliefs and their embrace of new ideas. Gradually, he meets a group of marginalized individuals whose eccentric life choices contradict the general lifestyle in this religiously and socially conservative city. Through intimate conversations with a communist activist, a queer music producer, and other unconventional characters, Tripoli/A Tale of Three Cities explores the complicated relations one forms with a hometown in crisis. This contemplative urban symphony paints a picture of a city trapped in a self-spun web, paralyzed by a deep economic crisis, a faltering revolution, and a looming doomsday.
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
Co-sponsored by The Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University and Backyard Docs

- 8:00 am to 4:00 pm
- William Pitt Union and O'Hara Student Center, Pitt-Oakland Campus Model United Nations high school simulation
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