Exclusive: Poster for Frederick Wiseman’s ‘At Berkeley’ Welcomes You At the Gates of a Masterpiece

The new film from Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies) arrived on the festival circuit this fall to, unsurprisingly, rave reviews. And you can see some of that praise on the official one sheet, which I’m happy to premiere above. I saw the film via the New York Film Festival and reviewed it with some positive words of my own, calling it “another exceptional documentary from Wiseman…one of his sharpest and most resonant thematic works.”

At Berkeley is a film, well, at Berkeley, as in the University of California school (that’s its iconic Sather Gate in the one-sheet). It’s not necessarily about the institution so much as it is a documentary of it. At around four hours in length, Wiseman manages to fit a lot of the place and what goes on there, but it’s not a college tour. It’s a setting, through which we observe and consider current financial issues with higher education, particularly public universities, among some other less prominent things that caught the filmmaker’s attention. Like a play about Facebook. And biology students dissecting birds.

The trailer for the film also debuted today, via The Playlist (which is quoted on the poster and in the spot), and you can watch that below. At Berkeley opens on November 8 in New York City with other cities to follow. Make some time to see it when you can.