Acclaimed director Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) returns for his highly anticipated follow-up to 2023’s Beau Is Afraid with the neo-western thriller Eddington. The Arkansas Cinema Society is thrilled to partner with A24 for another spectacular installment in the Sneak Series with a very special double feature of Eddington–starring Pedro Pascal and Joaquin Phoenix–and The Wild Bunch, the latter of which was handpicked by the director himself. The films will screen on July 16th with The Wild Bunch at 3:30 pm and Eddington at 6:30 pm at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. These events are free and open to the public. Register here to reserve your spot.

From writer-director Ari Aster comes a modern Western and paranoid thriller set in the American Southwest during the tumultuous summer of 2020. Isolated and sheltered in place, in a global pandemic, a nation under pressure found itself sifting reality through the haze of social media and lost its collective mind.

Eddington stars Joaquin Phoenix as small-town sheriff Joe Cross, who runs for mayor when progressive incumbent Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) attempts to modernize their dusty hamlet by attracting a new artificial-intelligence data center. Aster’s fourth feature takes the form of a classic showdown between two opposing forces over the future of Eddington, New Mexico (population 2,345), as spiraling conspiracies and standoffs derail a citizenry pushed to the brink.

“We all know that we’re in our own echo chambers because we’re trapped in a system based on feedback,” Aster says. “The problem is that people can’t remember that they know that. Eddington is about what happens when feedback ramps up beyond control and the bubbles collide.”

Featuring an ensemble supporting cast of townspeople grappling with a changing world, Eddington also stars Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Clifton Collins Jr., William Belleau, Amélie Hoeferle, Cameron Mann, and Matt Gomez Hidaka.