The coming-of-age drama “Blue is the Warmest Color,” winner the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, opens Nov. 14 at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center. Also showing is the critically acclaimed “12 Years A Slave.”

“Blue is the Warmest Color” is rated NC-17 and plays through Nov. 21. The film “12 Years A Slave” is rated R and plays through Dec. 5.

“Blue is the Warmest Color” made cinema history as the first film to ever earn the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or for both director and actresses.

In the film, Adèle Exarchopoulos plays Adèle, a passionate young woman who has a yearning she doesn’t quite understand. However, a chance encounter with the blue-haired Emma ignites Adèle’s flame. Played by Léa Seydoux, Emma becomes the love of Adèle’s life.

Director Abdellatif Kechiche charts the couple’s relationship over the course of several years, from the ecstasy of a first kiss to the agony of heartbreak.

In “12 Years A Slave,” Solomon Northrup (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a free black man from upstate New York who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South in the years before the Civil War. Northrup is subjected to the cruelty of one malevolent owner (Michael Fassbender) and the unexpected kindness from another as he struggles to survive and maintain some of his dignity.

Finally, in the twelfth year of slavery, a chance meeting with an abolitionist from Canada changes Northrup’s life forever.

The film is directed by Steve McQueen.

For more information, including show times, go to http://www.theross.org or call 402-472-5353.