The annual Forum Film Festival offers you the unique opportunity to watch and discuss movies dealing with legal themes, with a box of popcorn in hand and surrounded by a large audience, most of whom are not lawyers, so you don’t need to know any legalese. Featuring an exciting mix of current blockbusters, classic favorites, documentaries, and independent movies over six nights, the Film Festival illuminates the legal system with all of its triumphs, failures, moral dilemmas, and dramatic moments.

Each movie is followed by a post-screening discussion with renowned artists, writers, public intellectuals, and members of the legal profession who have a particular connection to the film. Explore how the themes of justice and injustice continue to inspire the artistic imagination. Hear interesting stories and anecdotes. Get answers to your questions. And share your own ideas and viewpoints.

Additionally, the Forum invites filmmakers from across the globe to submit an original short film on a legal theme. The judges' top picks are shown, discussed, and celebrated at the FOLCS Awards Night during the Film Festival where the winning films receive the FOLCS Awards. The Short Film Competition offers aspiring filmmakers an opportunity to be viewed by renowned judges and the Forum's audience, which votes for the winner of the Audience Favorite Award—all taking place in New York City, the capital of culture.

Events / Film Festival Schedule / 2011

2011 Film Festival

The world of Wall Street traveled to Lincoln Center at the 6th Annual Forum Film Festival with screenings and discussions of Too Big to Fail, the HBO movie about the 2008 economic collapse, with Paul A. Volcker and Andrew Ross Sorkin; Wall Street, the definitive film of insider trading, with Oliver Stone and Edward R. Pressman; and Absence of Malice, with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who that very week concluded the sentencing phase of several high-profile insider trading cases. Other screenings included the iconic movie about child custody proceedings, Kramer vs. Kramer, with Oscar-winning director and screenwriter Robert Benton, and a rare public appearance by the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Michael and Robert Meeropol, who discussed the film, Daniel.

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  HBO Films
  Too Big To Fail

  • Andrew Ross Sorkin - New York Times Columnist and Editor, DealBook
  • Paul A. Volcker – Economist; Chair, Federal Reserve (1979–1987); Chair, President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board (2009–2011)
  • An all-star cast—including William Hurt, Cynthia Nixon and Paul Giamatti—portrays powerful bankers and government leaders during the 2008 economic crisis in HBO’s dramatic take on Andrew Ross Sorkin’s inside look at the events culminating in the TARP bailout.
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  Daniel

  • Michael Meeropol – Professor Emeritus of Economics from Western New England University in Springfield, Massachusetts; Co-author (with brother Robert), We are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
  • Robert Meeropol – Progressive Activist, Author and Public Speaker; Founder and Executive Director, Rosenberg Fund for Children
  • Clyde Haberman – Longtime New York Times Columnist and Author, “The Day” for City Room Blog
  • Directed by Sidney Lumet and adapted from E.L. Doctorow’s acclaimed novel, The Book of Daniel, this fictional account of the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—and its impact on their children—examines the 1950s Red Scare and the government’s relentless pursuit of their conviction for atomic espionage.
    
    
    
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  Wall Street

  • Oliver Stone – Three-time Academy Award–winning Director, Writer and Producer; credits include Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, Platoon, and Midnight Express
  • Edward R. Pressman – Producer of Wall Street, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, and American Psycho
  • Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko became an icon of Wall Street greed as he manipulated securities markets and the soul of a young stock trader who loses his way and breaks the law in this cultural touchstone and 1980s time capsule.
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  Absence of Malice

  • Bob Balaban – Film and stage Actor, Producer and Director; film credits include Absence of Malice, Gosford Park, Midnight Cowboy, and Best in Show
  • Preet Bharara – U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York
  • Samuel G. Freedman – New York Times Columnist, Author and Columbia University Journalism Professor
  • In Sydney Pollack’s 1981 film, Sally Fields and Paul Newman star as a reporter and the accused criminal she implicates, and then tries to exonerate, for murder as they both navigate the legal system’s complicated relationship with the media. Bob Balaban portrays a news-leaking federal prosecutor who attempts to try his case in the press.
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  Kramer vs. Kramer

  • Robert Benton – Three-time Academy Award–winning Director, Screenwriter and Producer; credits include Kramer vs. Kramer, Places in the Heart, and Bonnie & Clyde
  • Avery Corman – Novelist; books include Kramer vs. Kramer, Oh, God, and The Old Neighborhood
  • Raoul Felder – Noted Divorce Attorney
  • In Robert Benton’s 1979 Kramer vs. Kramer—the most influential, if not the first, film to spotlight child custody battles and the law’s settled presumptions about parental roles—Dustin Hoffman stars as a workaholic father left to care for his son when his wife, played by Meryl Streep, leaves them. He is ultimately drawn into a bitter legal fight when she returns seeking custody of their child.
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  M

  • Henry Bean – Screenwriter and Director, The Believer (2001 Sundance Grand Jury Prize); Screenwriter, Internal Affairs, Deep Cover, and Basic Instinct 2
  • Larry A. Gross – Producer and Screenwriter, We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2004 Sundance Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award); Co-screenwriter, 48 Hours, Another 48 Hours, and Streets of Fire
  • Sarah Williams Goldhagen – Author and Architecture Critic, The New Republic
  • Starring Peter Lorre, Fritz Lang’s “M” is a haunting thriller set against a massive German police investigation to catch a pedophile and child murderer that infringes on the dealings of the underworld and the legal system, igniting a mob-led manhunt. One of the most influential movies in film history, inspiring artists and architects as a city becomes a character in this story of legal and moral failure.