Chess movies and shows

November 12, 2020 7:41 PM

Having seen The Queen's Gambit on Netflix, is anyone interested in watching some other things chess related?

For a psychological drama, there is Pawn Sacrifice with Liev Schreiber as the Soviet Spassky and Tobey Maguire as the man himself Bobby Fischer and their championship match in 1972.

The other movie I am thinking of is Searching for Bobby Fischer with child actor Max Pomeranc as real life child prodigy Josh Waitzkin. Joe Mantegna is the dad, Joan Allen the mom, Ben Kingsley plays Bruce Pandolfini (one of the main chess advisors on TQG), and Laurence Fishburne as Vinnie the chess player in the park.

Anyone familiar with any other chess centric movies or shows?

posted by Fukiyama (5 comments total)

Fresh (1994) exists.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 9:08 AM on November 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

Brooklyn Castle (and maybe Knights of the South Bronx) and The Coldest Game look like something I might enjoy.
posted by box at 11:46 AM on November 16, 2020

Garry Kasparov recommended Queen of Katwe in an interview at Slate.
posted by Fukiyama at 6:53 PM on November 18, 2020

Searching for Bobby Fischer is on Netflix now, so I invite those who can watch it do so. I'll post something later this week. It's a very good movie with a lot of great actors, people like Ben Kingsley.
posted by Fukiyama at 6:21 PM on December 13, 2020

I remember liking The Luzhin Defence, with John Turturro and Emily Watson, but sadly JustWatch says it's not streaming anywhere currently.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 8:30 PM on December 14, 2020