About A Ghost Story
A young Texas musician dies in a car accident, returns to his suburban house wearing the white sheet from the morgue, and waits. Years pass. Centuries pass. David Lowery films most of it in patient long takes, including a single uncut shot of Rooney Mara eating an entire pie that has become legendary in the right circles.
Released in 2017 and running a tight 1h 32m, A Ghost Story sits firmly in the drama tradition that American art-house cinemas have spent the last two decades quietly defending. The film is rated R and presented in English.
Director: David Lowery
David Lowery belongs to the cohort of directors whose work tends to land first at festivals — Sundance, Locarno, the New York Film Festival, SXSW — before opening on a small handful of screens in New York and Los Angeles and then rolling out, week by week, to the independent circuit elsewhere in the country. A Ghost Story is part of that pipeline. It is the only title from David Lowery currently in our directory; if you want to keep tabs on the director's other work, follow festival-circuit coverage from the outlets that track independent distribution.
Cast
The principal cast — Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara — is the kind of ensemble that art-house audiences will recognize from adjacent festival titles. Independent casting tends to favor performers who can carry a long take, hold a quiet scene, and trust a director's control of pace; this film is no exception.
Where to watch A Ghost Story
Our seasonal catalog — an editorial sample of the circuit, not a live ticketing feed — places it at independent cinemas in 12 US cities. Coverage is deepest in:
- Denver, CO — listed at 3 independent cinemas.
- Chicago, IL — listed at 2 independent cinemas.
- San Francisco, CA — listed at 2 independent cinemas.
- Portland, OR — listed at 2 independent cinemas.
- New York, NY — listed at 2 independent cinemas.
- Arlington, MA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Narberth, PA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Shoreline, WA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Big Bear Lake, CA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Clearwater, FL — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Bluffton, OH — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Petaluma, CA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
If your city isn't on the list, the film may still surface on a future repertory week or festival weekend; check our full cinema directory.
Why it belongs on the indie circuit
The independent and art-house exhibition circuit exists to surface films like this one — work that doesn't fit the wide-release calendar, doesn't have the marketing budget of a studio tentpole, and depends instead on programmers, critics, and word-of-mouth to find an audience. A Ghost Story is a clean fit for that model: a 1h 32m drama work, made outside the studio system, that benefits from being seen on a real screen with a real audience rather than queued up on a streaming dashboard. The cinemas in the cities listed above are the venues doing that work for this title.
Cross-references
If you are building a viewing schedule around this film, our Drama genre hub indexes adjacent work in the same tradition.