About Margaret
A Manhattan high schooler distracts a bus driver and is the only witness to a fatal accident. Kenneth Lonergan’s long-delayed second feature follows her grief outward into the law, the opera, her mother’s love life, and a city that simply will not stop. Cut down for theatrical release and finally restored on disc — every frame is worth the long fight.
Released in 2011 and running a tight 2h 30m, Margaret 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: Kenneth Lonergan
Kenneth Lonergan 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. Margaret is part of that pipeline. If you have responded to this film, the director's other available titles in our catalog are listed in the sidebar; Kenneth Lonergan's filmography rewards sustained attention.
Cast
The principal cast — Anna Paquin, J. Smith-Cameron, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick — 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 Margaret
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:
- Portland, OR — listed at 2 independent cinemas.
- Brooklyn, NY — listed at 2 independent cinemas.
- Miami Beach, FL — listed at 2 independent cinemas.
- Denver, CO — listed at 2 independent cinemas.
- Birmingham, AL — listed at 2 independent cinemas.
- New York, NY — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Campbell, CA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Salt Lake City, UT — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Caro, MI — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Grandview Heights, OH — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Wilkes-Barre, PA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Clearwater, FL — 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. Margaret is a clean fit for that model: a 2h 30m 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.