In 2021 New York, we find ourselves in the early days of a new administration making big promises of change and a “fresh start” in the shadow of a white-supremacist nationalist insurrection and in the midst of a global pandemic that cleaved open the flimsy fiction that our most urgent problems are new ones. It doesn’t matter that this is an egalitarian state in name only, or that the complete reorganization of society can’t even be peaceful in a parallel universe. In a facsimile 1980s New York City, Born in Flames opens ten years after the so-called “War of Liberation” with a chirpy news announcement celebrating “the most peaceful revolution the world has known,” when the Labor Party installed a Social Democracy in the United States. Head to Vulture’s Twitter to catch her live commentary, and look ahead to next week’s movie here.

This week’s selection comes from writer Yasmina Price, who will begin her screening of Born in Flames on February 5 at 7 p.m. Hmm …Įvery week for the foreseeable future, Vulture will be selecting one film to watch as part of our Friday Night Movie Club. A failed progressive regime beckons collective action to meet the people’s needs.

Born in the fire