The 2026 Philadelphia Film Festival opens with The Only Living Pickpocket in New York and La Bola Negra

When there’s a crime movie in which a big part of the plot is that the criminals are at an unusually advanced age, the point of it is either an elegy for a time gone by and the way things used to be, or a hacky comedy that features old people walking towards the camera in slow motion.

An old-school thief

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, though, is something very different, new, and welcome.

The 69-year-old Turturro plays Harry, a small-time criminal still in the old-timey trade of pickpocketing. Harry never learned to use modern technology like cell phones or computers, seems to deal only in cash, and still has a CD tower in his apartment, as I did in college in 1998.

He lives in a shabby apartment in the Bronx, his wife is catatonic, and his only friends are a couple of other guys his age: a pawn shop fence (Turturro’s The Big Lebowski co-star Steve Buscemi) and a police detective (his Do the Right Thing and Desperately Seeking Susan co-star Giancarlo Esposito).

When Harry robs some of the wrong people, led by an obnoxious crypto bro (Will Price), he has to scramble to set things right.

The film is very matter-of-fact about Harry’s life in an analog world. It’s not condescending to Harry for not being up on the new tech, nor is it snide about how the good old days were so much better. But the film shows an unironic appreciation for all things New York City, filming across all five boroughs and paying homage to 1970s New York cinema. The soundtrack also features plenty of New York-centric songs, though oddly enough, not “The Only Living Boy in New York” by Simon and Garfunkel.

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York expands nationwide on October 30.

La Bola Negra

Two nights later came La Bola Negra, the latest film by the Spanish duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, and it certainly doesn't lack epic scale or a sweeping view of history.

Drawing on the history of the Spanish Civil War and the literary works of the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, the film explores three stories from three time periods, all concerning gay men in Spain, and it’s probably no spoiler to say the stories end up interconnecting.

The first story, set in 1932 and drawn from Lorca’s unfinished play of the same name, follows a young man named Carlos (Milo Quifes) who is rejected by a powerful social club after he’s suspected of being gay.

The second, set during the Spanish Civil War in 1937, follows a conflicted Spanish Nationalist soldier (Guitarricadelafuente) who develops an affection for the man (Miguel Bernardeau) he guards as a prisoner of war. The third part is set in 2017, when a young gay playwright-turned-researcher (Carlos González) studies the past and uncovers surprising family secrets.

Catharsis needed

I liked a lot here, including gorgeously shot compositions and heartbreaking work from several actors, including Quifes, Guitarricadelafuente, and Bernardeau. Penelope Cruz shows up for two dynamite scenes as a performer of the Spanish cupletista tradition, while Glenn Close also appears briefly as a literary theorist, speaking flawless Spanish.

The third act, though, is where it kind of lost me. This story needs a bit more emotional catharsis than the movie delivers, and while I understand there’s a strong literary reason for ending Carlos’s story the way the film does, it doesn’t quite work cinematically.

Award-show bait?

La Bola Negra is a Netflix release, and it’s getting a much longer theatrical window than movies from that service typically do, as it was released in some markets last Friday before expanding wider, including a Philadelphia release on November 6. It will stream on Netflix in early December.

After its Cannes premiere last spring, more than one person compared La Bola Negra to the types of films Miramax used to release in the 1990s. Which is apt, because it feels like the sort of movie its studio is giving a forced awards push, since it’s probably their best option this year.

A glaring omission

One unescapable thought on the festival’s opening stretch: the programmers did a great job putting together the most loaded PFF lineup in years, featuring most of the big movies set for release the rest of the year, with few glaring omissions.

However, the film that’s been the major topic of conversation this week isn’t in the PFF lineup and, given its release timing, probably couldn’t have been: Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s mind-bending Elizabeth Holmes documentary, You Can See Everything.

The local press saw it on Wednesday, and it had its first local public showings on Thursday, the day the festival began. It’s playing several showings a day at the Bourse, a festival venue, throughout the week, and some of them are sold out.

But I can’t stress it enough: the movie everybody in town is talking about (including before and between festival showings) is You Can See Everything.

The Philadelphia Film Festival continues through October 25, 2026 at the Film Society Center, Film Society Bourse, and Film Society East. Tickets are available here.

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