About Old Joy
Two old friends drive into the Oregon Cascades to find a hot spring one of them remembers from years ago. Kelly Reichardt’s film of a Jonathan Raymond short story is exactly seventy-six minutes of small kindness, accumulated grievance, and the politics of a 2003 Air America broadcast on the car radio.
Released in 2006 and running a tight 1h 16m, Old Joy sits firmly in the drama tradition that American art-house cinemas have spent the last two decades quietly defending. The film is rated NR and presented in English.
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Kelly Reichardt 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. Old Joy 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; Kelly Reichardt's filmography rewards sustained attention.
Cast
The principal cast — Daniel London, Will Oldham — 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 Old Joy
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:
- Los Angeles, CA — listed at 2 independent cinemas.
- Omaha, NE — listed at 2 independent cinemas.
- Portland, OR — listed at 2 independent cinemas.
- Arlington, MA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Campbell, CA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Waterville, ME — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Saint Paul, MN — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Grove City, PA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Ridgecrest, CA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Millbury, MA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Williamstown, MA — listed at 1 independent cinema.
- Ambler, PA — 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. Old Joy is a clean fit for that model: a 1h 16m 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.