Two preadolescent boys both experienced a strange event and later it affects their lives in different ways. One becomes a reckless, adventurous sex worker, while the other retreats into a reclusive fantasy of alien abduction.

A picture of youth and trauma in late-20th-century Middle America, Mysterious Skin presents a sensitive, disquietingly hypnotic coming-of-age entry into writer-director Gregg Araki’s canon. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet deliver exceptionally embodied performances as boys on near-opposite sides of the vast canyon of their shared psychological wound — both approaching revelation in distinctly vulnerable capacities.

A notable formal departure from Araki’s established auteur style, Mysterious Skin screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. Deftly marrying Araki’s bold filmmaking and youthful flair with the gravity of Scott Heim’s lauded novel, the film realizes an unflinchingly honest attention to the American socioeconomic underbelly; the queer psychosexual; the random, undeserved consequences of living. Two decades later, Mysterious Skin remains an unconventional, provocative classic. — CA

Digitally restored by the Academy Film Archive and UCLA Film & Television Archive in conjunction with Sundance Institute in 4K from the original 35 mm A/B camera negatives and original sound elements. The restoration was supervised by Gregg Araki at Resillion and Monkeyland Audio. The restoration was funded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, mk2, Frameline, Sundance Institute, and UCLA Film & Television Archive, with additional funding and services by Antidote Films and Strand Releasing.

Available in person only.

*In attendance will be Gregg Araki, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and others.