Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
A disillusioned schoolteacher is transferred to the most remote school in the world, cut off from modern life deep in the Himalayan glaciers. In a classroom with no electricity or even a blackboard, he finds himself with only a yak and a song that echoes through the mountains.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS MILD LANGUAGE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“[A] sweet little movie with endearing characters (including the yak in the subtitle) that will bring a smile to your face while it steals your heart.” – Sean Farrell, AFPL Journal
“Lunana demonstrates, as few films ever have, how inspired schooling can break through even the most abject obstacles.” – Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor
“The film invites us to imagine interior lives, a narrowing of the ‘pursuit of happiness’ to tasks at hand, modest goals, music, food and love. As our pandemic waxes and wanes, Lunana becomes one of the great cinematic escapes of recent years.” – Roger Moore, Movie Nation
Last Words
It is 2085. A young man, one of the few survivors of the human community of old, embarks on a long voyage to find others.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS LANGUAGE, THEMATIC MATERIAL, NUDITY, SEXUAL CONTENT INCLUDING RAPE, AND VIOLENCE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Seek out Last Words if you have an interest in the fall and decline of humankind. It is one of the more stark and striking versions of the end of the species these eyes have born witness to.” – Benjamin Franz, Film Threat
“The movie’s depiction of age — specifically, age as it affects movie stars — has real potency. This extends beyond its ostensible message, delivered by Kal: ‘We live and die by the stories we tell each other.’ The stronger statement Last Words ends up making is that we die no matter what.” – Glenn Kenny, New York Times
“Last Words takes a somewhat intimate look at what those wishes might be, how that finality would weigh on those last humans left, and what are the memories we take, the pieces of ourselves we leave behind, when there will be no one to leave them to.” – Shelagh Rowan-Legg, ScreenAnarchy
New Order
While protests rage in the streets, Marianne’s high society family prepares for her wedding. At first, only splatters of green paint and the appearance of Rolando, a former employee seeking emergency medical funds, intrude on the festivities. But soon the party is unable to keep the reckoning at bay, and what follows is a swift disintegration of law and order defined first by class lines, then by disastrous government recapitulation.
RATED R FOR DISTURBING AND VIOLENT CONTENT, RAPE, GRAPHIC NUDITY, AND LANGUAGE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“It is at times a terrifically uncomfortable movie to watch. But director Michel Franco’s New Order, a searing and relentlessly grim indictment of class division and government corruption, scans not only as possible but entirely likely given our current world. Heavy doesn’t begin to describe it.” – Kim Hughes, Original Cin
“A brilliantly unflinching look at a society built on extreme disparities that reads more like an omen than a far-fetched fantasy, New Order repeatedly subverts any hope of redemption. It guts you with the worst of human nature, like Franco often does, but within a larger sociopolitical scale, and for that, it’s utterly unshakable.” – Carlos Aguilar, The Playlist
“On the most basic level, it is a warning of what inequality can cause in the future and what it is effectively causing right now. Perhaps there is something nihilistic here, but New Order very effectively persuades you that a real-life revolution might well be every bit as ugly, horrifying and un-Hollywood as this shows – and that it is on the way.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
I’m Your Man
Alma (Maren Eggert) is a scientist coerced into participating in an extraordinary study in order to obtain research funds for her work. For three weeks, she has to live with a humanoid robot tailored to her character and needs, whose artificial intelligence is designed to be the perfect life partner for her. Enter Tom (Dan Stevens), a machine in human form in a class of its own, created solely to make her happy.
RATED R FOR SOME SEXUAL CONTENT AND LANGUAGE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“I’m Your Man offers a perspective on humanity that’s equally whimsical and melancholy, and its intimacy is a welcome change of pace in science fiction, a genre that too often mistakes violence and colonialism as the only drivers of drama.” – Roxana Hadidi, Polygon
“The film is poetic in its turn, as well as deliciously funny, and pretty much perfect except for a slightly didactic coda. But that’s a minor flaw in a major achievement. To err, even slightly, is you know what.” – Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
“This is, perhaps, a movie easy to oversell. It earns a lot of goodwill simply by never devolving into a dumber version of itself, into what you might expect from a film featuring Dan Stevens as a sexy robot. But I’m Your Man’s charms are real, and steeped in a lightly inquisitive, even philosophical engagement with the meatier matters of smart science fiction and smart relationship drama.” – A.A. Dowd, AV Club
Hive
Hive is based on the true story of Fahrije, who, like many of the other women in her patriarchal village, has lived with fading hope and burgeoning grief since her husband went missing during the war in Kosovo. In order to provide for her struggling family, she pulls the other widows in her community together to launch a business selling a local food product. Together, they find healing and solace in considering a future without their husbands—but their will to begin living independently is met with hostility. The men in the village condemn Fahrije’s efforts to empower herself and the women around her, starting a feud that threatens their newfound sovereignty—and the financial future of Fahrije’s family. Against the backdrop of Eastern Europe’s civil unrest and lingering misogyny, Fahrije and the women of her village join in a struggle to find hope in the face of an uncertain future.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS SEXUAL CONTENT, THEMATIC MATERIAL, AND LANGUAGE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“This is an immersive portrait, buoyed by a central performance that’s hypnotizing in its sparse naturalism. What Basholli has made is a thoughtful, humanistic exploration of the fortitude needed to summon hope in a time and place resigned to hopelessness.” – Roxana Hadadi, AV Club
“This is a richly intelligent drama, in which every word and every shot counts.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“Hive is never quite a feelgood film – the deep trauma that underpins it militates against any jaunty Calendar Girls vibes – but there is a tangible sense of joy as Fahrije begins to lead her fellow, long-suffering widows to a place of healing and the promise of better times ahead. And the comeuppance one or two of the menfolk get is definitely mood-enhancing.” – Phil de Semlyen, Time Out
Margrete: Queen of the North
The year is 1402. Margrete has achieved what no man has managed before. She has gathered Denmark, Norway and Sweden into a peace-oriented union, which she single-handedly rules through her young, adopted son, Erik. The union is beset by enemies, however, and Margrete is therefore planning a marriage between Erik and an English princess. An alliance with England should secure the union’s status as an emerging European power but a breathtaking conspiracy is under way that can tear Margrete and all she believes in apart.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS NUDITY, SEXUAL CONTENT, BLOODY VIOLENCE, AND MILD LANGUAGE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“It all makes for a more riveting ‘what might have happened’ mystery, a history lesson with a caveat and a damned entertaining one at that.” – Roger Moore, Movie Nation
“Throughout, both the character and the film constantly keep one guessing as to whether Margrete’s driving impulse leans more in the direction of the maternal or the Machiavellian.” – Michael Rechtshaffen, Los Angeles Times
“While the plot is at times overstuffed with palace intrigues, this piercing character study carries a contemporary poignancy, as it encapsulates the difficult choices a female leader has to make in a world bounded by patriarchal control.” – Phuong Lee, The Guardian
Beneath the Banyan Tree
After her son is jailed, Mrs. Woo, a matriarch with high expectations, struggles to uphold her family’s remaining reputation by parenting her estranged daughter, with whom Woo and her son’s two unmanageable teenagers must seek shelter in the U.S.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS LANGUAGE AND THEMATIC MATERIAL.
Description and score provided by IMDb.
“Though Beneath the Banyan Tree is specific to Chinese culture, its themes of family and family dysfunction cast a vast shadow of parents placing expectations too high for their children to reach. The story also takes place in Los Angeles and speaks to the story of the millions of immigrants hoping for a piece of that American dream.” – Alan Ng, Film Threat
Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation
The work, lives, and personal journeys of iconic American artists Truman Capote and Tennesee Williams coalesce with creative combustion in this innovative dual-portrait documentary. Filmmaker Lisa Immordino Vreeland distills the loves, fears, and artistic achievements of these masters via an array of archival materials, film clips, and vibrant voiceover work from Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto as Capote and Williams, respectively. Packed with pearls of wisdoms and eloquent observations, the film celebrates the sometimes tumultuous friendship of the titular writers through the ages, while honoring the way their queer identity informed their world-renowned artistic achievements and relationships with their family, confidants, and — most significantly — each other.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS LANGUAGE AND THEMATIC MATERIAL.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Vreeland’s documentary serves as both a wonderfully evocative time capsule and a candid tribute to a pair of artistic legends.” – Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times
“The emotional tone here is sympathetic and elegiac, and since both men have a way with words, often absorbing. Though there is little here that won’t be known by fans of the writers, the format of the interviews is striking.” – Liam Lacey, Original Cin
“An anecdote concerning the ‘amusing, bright, and always very vinegary’ Gore Vidal being caught by a woman police officer breaking into Williams’s New York apartment would, alone, make Truman & Tennessee required viewing.” – Tara Brady, The Irish Times
Test Pattern
Test Pattern follows an interracial couple whose relationship is put to the test after a Black woman is sexually assaulted and her white boyfriend drives her from hospital to hospital in search of a rape kit. Their story reveals the systemic injustices and social conditioning women face when navigating sex and consent within the American patriarchy.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND THEMATIC MATERIAL.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“The film is a staggeringly impressive debut, blending color, sound and story to create an intricate emotional tapestry.” – Jourdain Searles, Hollywood Reporter
“Ford’s commitment to implying trauma instead of visualizing it is more than just an impressive formal constraint. Test Pattern proves the fault of more uncreative depictions of racial and gendered violence that exploit bare bodies and blood for shock value rather than depth and specificity.” – Selome Hailu, Austin Chronicle
“Test Pattern, for its emphatically binary sense of the world as summed up in the differences between these two people, for its literal examinations of blackness and whiteness, and gender, and everything else, somehow avoids falling into the trap of painting the world in black and white. It is a film that — more than presenting the mess of the life — dives in headlong, wisely, cuttingly, and to devastating effect.” – K. Austin Collins, Rolling Stone
QT8: The First Eight
From Reservoir Dogs to The Hateful Eight, actors and collaborators examine the first eight films from acclaimed director/screenwriter Quentin Tarantino.
RATED TV-MA FOR STRONG VIOLENCE AND GORE, STRONG LANGUAGE THROUGHOUT, AND SMOKING.
Description provided by Rotten Tomatoes.
“Even those who already know a great deal about Tarantino will groove on the anecdotes and insights.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety
“Stunningly describing his creative blueprints and infectious personality, QT8 hits the mark when it comes to showing off Tarantino’s special and highly influential career.” – Andrew Dex, Starburst
“A good primer on one of our most important, innovative cinematic storytellers.” – Mike McGranaghan, Aisle Seat
Anonymous Animals
The balance of power between man and animal has changed. In a remote countryside, any encounter with the dominant can become hostile.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG, BLOODY VIOLENCE.
Description provided by Metacritic.
“A presentation of rural animal life and how they must feel amongst humans via a striking role reversal. Baptiste Rouveure has an original and memorable way of bringing the viewer into the world of his protagonists.” – Alix Turner, Ready Steady Cut
“No matter whether this represents Sadean surrealism, vegetarian tract or nature’s revenge, it certainly reflects back at us that strangest and cruelest of creatures, the human animal.” – Anton Bitel, Projected Figures
Striding Into the Wind
Film school student Kun graduates into a real-world that moves too fast to care about his auteur aspirations and sound recording skills. Yearning for an escape away from Beijing’s grinding survival races, he sets off for a film shoot in Inner Mongolia’s lush grasslands, where amusing man-made spectacles and unforgettable lessons await him.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS LANGUAGE.
Description provided by Rotten Tomatoes.
“Wei Shujun’s debut feature… may be set in modern-day Beijing but putters along like an affectionate throwback to the droll rhythms of early Richard Linklater or Jim Jarmusch.” – Jessica Kiang, Variety
“This is ultimately a very funny, light-hearted and thoughtful understanding of the futility in resisting adulthood.” – Anna McKibbin, One Room With a View
Delicious
France, 1789, just before the Revolution. A chef who has been sacked by his master finds the strength to free himself from being a servant to open the first restaurant.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS VIOLENT IMAGES, LANGUAGE, AND SMOKING.
Description provided by Metacritic.
“Delicious is beautiful, entertaining, and achieves greatness by radicalizing eating out, from fine dining to going to the midnight burger drive-thru. Salut!” – Michael Talbot-Haynes, Film Threat
“[A] mouthwatering foodie drama that is as appetizing as the dishes whipped up in it.” – Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News
“This funny, nicely crafted film serves up food as the great social equalizer, cuisine as class revolt.” – Luke Goodsell, ABC News
The Pink Cloud
After a toxic and mysterious pink cloud appeared, Giovana finds herself stuck in a flat with a man she just met, changing her life in a way she never expected.
RATED R FOR SEXUAL CONTENT / NUDITY, SOME LANGUAGE, AND BRIEF DRUG USE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Gerbase’s insightful, quietly unsettling picture may, right now, be too close to the bone to attract viewers desperate for hard times distraction; but it deserves exposure… [A] considerable cinematic achievement.” – Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily
“Gerbase’s thoughtful, precise little film would have marked an impressive enough arrival under normal circumstances. As it is, it might endure as more era-evocative than many of the intentional pandemic dramas to come.” – Guy Lodge, Variety
“Gerbase studies how loneliness brings out the worst, and sometimes the best, in us. She examines how some of us are more adaptable than others; how we are the products of our environment, creatures of habit. The film can also be viewed as a parable about autocracy, ruthlessly dissecting the abide-or-die mentality. Whatever you take from it, the drama is bound to hover over you for days.” – Alex Saveliev, Film Threat
The Obituary of Tunde Johnson
A wealthy, Nigerian-American teen is pulled over by police, shot to death and immediately awakens, reliving the same day over and over, trapped in a terrifying time loop – forced to confront difficult truths about his life and himself.
RATED TV-MA FOR STRONG LANGUAGE THROUGHOUT, VIOLENCE, SEXUAL CONTENT, AND THEMATIC MATERIAL.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“This is one of the best uses of a time loop narrative ever concocted.” – Sarah Gopaul, Digital Journal
“It may use broad strokes at times, but it never loses its purpose to illuminate our double standards or naiveté towards them. Change really does start with something as simple as Tunde’s request to be heard.” – Jared Mobarak, The Film Stage
“An agonizing tale about the weight society hoists upon too many black gay men’s weary shoulders, it’s the kind of film that lingers in your mind days after you’ve seen it, as much due to the relevant subject matter as to Tunde’s penetrating gaze.” – Beandrea July, Hollywood Reporter
Betrayed
During World War II, millions of Jews from all over Europe are deported and killed in German concentration camps. When the German troops invade Norway, the Norwegian Jews feel safe and protected. But as the war escalates in Europe, the situation changes drastically. One day, all the men over the age of 15 are arrested and taken to prison camps. Many of the women left behind are too frightened to escape and are desperately waiting for their husbands and sons to come back home. On November 26, 1942, hundreds of Jews are picked up by the police and transported to the dock in Oslo. Unknowing and frightened, they are forced on board the awaiting German cargo ship “SS DONAU”. The ship leaves Oslo with 532 Norwegian Jews; 302 men, 188 women and 42 children. The end station is Auschwitz. Betrayed is based on the true story about the Braude family. An ordinary Norwegian family whose fate is sealed by the fact that they are Jews.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS VIOLENCE, SEXUAL CONTENT, NUDITY, LANGUAGE, AND THEMATIC MATERIAL.
Description provided by Metacritic.
“Handsomely mounted and deftly dramatized, it’s an agonized study of suffering and treachery, and no less valuable — or powerful — for being regrettably familiar. ” – Nick Schager, Variety
“The movie has its share of disturbing visuals, but it’s the profound emotional toll taken on the Braudes and their fellow Jews that packs the biggest punch.” – Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times
“Another outstanding reckoning with how Scandinavian countries dealt with Nazis in WW2. Several scenes are vivid demonstrations of the full scale collaboration of the title.” – Nora Lee Mandel, Maven’s Nest
Coming Clean
Coming Clean examines America’s opioid crisis through the eyes of the recovering addicts and political leaders on the frontlines. These unlikely allies emerge from the darkness to face their pain, bring the profiteers to justice, and rebuild in the wake of the deadliest drug epidemic in our history.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS LANGUAGE, DISTURBING IMAGES, THEMATIC MATERIAL, AND DRUG USE.
Description provided by Metacritic.
“Coming Clean is an indictment of capitalism run rampant, and, once again, profit taking precedence over human life. Hats off to the frontline warriors taking on this cause.” – Bradley Gibson, Film Threat
“We see politicians, lawyers, and doctors trying to find a better way, and we see those struggling with recovery. But it is not just the addicts who need to come clean; it is those profiting from the current system. The most deadly addiction is not drugs; it is money.” – Nell Minow, RogerEbert.com
“It is crucial to see this film and inform yourself about the horrific greed/racism behind the profits made from people’s pain.” – Amyana Bartley, QBP Reviews
Nina Wu
After toiling for years in bit-parts, aspiring actress Nina Wu (Ke-Xi Wu) finally gets her big break with a leading role in a spy thriller set in the 1960s. The part, which calls for nudity and explicit sex scenes, is made all the more challenging thanks to the director’s unending belittlements. While seemingly on the brink of professional triumph, Nina’s psychological resolve begins to crack under the pressure. As she rushes to her childhood home following a family emergency, Nina begins suffering paranoid fantasies that a mysterious woman is stalking and attacking her. As Nina clings to memories of happier times, it seems that there is one crucial memory that she is repressing.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG SEXUALITY / NUDITY, VIOLENCE, LANGUAGE, AND THEMATIC MATERIAL.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Here, the same genre tropes that are ordinarily primed for cheap thrills and big twists are bent towards the opposite effect, as the film blurs the line between reality and delusion in order to make audiences question a trauma so disorientingly awful that it might otherwise be easy to dismiss altogether — even for the people who suffer it first-hand.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire
“Truth and delusion intermingle within this space, materializing not as spectacle or doubt, but rather as an embodied, if not literalized, study of the ways in which women attempt to intellectually and emotionally make sense of their experiences of exploitation.” – Sarah-Tai Black, Los Angeles Times
“While his previous drama, The Road to Mandalay, showcased his keen eye for social realism, Nina Wu is suffused with visual poetry – all stark-reds and grainy yellows – and a dream-like (or nightmarish, depending on how you view it) atmosphere. It’s a portrait of a country experiencing significant sociopolitical changes. By focusing on its filmmaking industry, Z takes advantage of the opportunity to experiment visually, thematically, and narratively…” – Alex Saveliev, Film Threat
With/In
The directive was simple: Using an iPhone and whatever’s easily at your disposal, shoot a short film dealing with quarantine life in 2020. It’s not as if there wasn’t a surplus of storytelling angles, themes and emotions available, considering how much everyone’s lives changed last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results in the ambitious yet humbly executed With/In run the gamut tonally and narratively, with all of the shorts thriving on a uniform sense of raw, indie-centric looseness. Through that DIY authenticity, the universality of 2020’s sporadic peaks and constant valleys is laid bare, whether it’s topical subjects like Black Lives Matter, playful examinations of technological dependencies and obsessive at-home hobbies or the complexities of love and romance in isolation.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE, AND THEMATIC MATERIAL.
Description provided by Rotten Tomatoes.
“If you’re a fan of one or more of this fantastic cast, you’ll definitely enjoy With/In.” – Alan Ng, Film Threat
Kilo Two Bravo
In 2006, a small unit of soldiers is dug into a ridge overlooking the Kajaki Dam in Afghanistan. A three-man patrol sets out to disable a Taliban roadblock. In a dried out riverbed at the foot of the ridge, one of the patrol detonates a land mine, blowing off his leg and setting into motion a desperate rescue mission. His fellow soldiers come to his aid, only to find themselves trapped in an unmarked minefield, a relic of the Russian invasion of the 1980s. With no way out, any movement risks certain injury and possible death.
RATED R FOR DISTURBING AND GRAPHIC DEPICTION OF WAR INJURIES, AND FOR PERVASIVE LANGUAGE.
Description provided by Metacritic.
“Kilo Two Bravo is one of the most intense anti-war films extant.” – Liz Braun, Toronto Sun
“Few war films are entertaining in a traditional sense. This one is so relentless that recoiling from it is nearly impossible.” – Alan Zilberman, Washington Post
“By casting unknowns, Katis only ratchets up the tension more, leaving his audiences breathless throughout, unable to second guess who might make it out alive.” – James Marsh, South China Morning Post
The Last Tourist
Travel is at a tipping point. Tourists are unintentionally destroying the very things they have come to see. Overtourism has magnified its impact on the environment, wildlife, and vulnerable communities around the globe. Filmed in over 15 countries and guided by the world’s leading tourism and conservation visionaries, The Last Tourist reveals the real conditions and consequences of one of the largest industries worldwide through the forgotten voices of those working in its shadow. The role of the modern tourist is on trial.
NOT RATED.
Description provided by IMDb.
“As The Last Tourist ably demonstrates, there needs to be a massive culture change in the way we consume our holidays.” – Rob Aldam, Backseat Mafia
Dare to Be Wild
Irishwoman Mary Reynold’s journey from rank outsider to winner of a Gold Medal at the Chelsea Flower Show.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS LANGUAGE, SEXUAL REFERENCES, A SCENE OF BLOOD, AND A DRUG REFERENCE.
Description provided by IMDb.
“Even with a few corny plot points, this is a beautifully made, thoroughly involving movie that might help change the way you think about nature.” – Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall
“These fairytale flourishes, a superb soundtrack and a potent environmental message are the film’s finer qualities and source of its undeniable charm.” – Hilary A. White, Sunday Independent
Josep
February 1939. Spanish republicans are fleeing Franco’s dictatorship to France. The French government built concentration camps, confining the refugees, where they barely have access to hygiene, water and food. In one of these camps, separated by barbed wire, two men will become friends. One is a guard, the other is Josep Bartoli (Barcelona 1910 – NYC 1995), an illustrator who fights against Franco’s regime.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS VIOLENCE, LANGUAGE, SEXUAL CONTENT, AND THEMATIC MATERIAL.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“It’s a delicate, thoughtful film, moving and real.” – Cath Clarke, The Guardian
“A harsh history lesson as well as a good yarn, this visually arresting endeavour registers strongly at a time when refugees account for a record 1% of the world’s population.” – Lisa Nesselson, Screen Daily
“The strong subject matter as well as the eponymous subject’s storied life makes one wish for a longer running time than 72 minutes.” – Alissa Simon, Variety
Infinitum: Subject Unknown
Jane (Tori Butler-Hart) wakes up in a strange attic, in a parallel world, with seemingly no way out. She soon discovers that she is stuck in a time-loop, destined to relive the same day over and over again. With each ‘reset’ she begins to reclaim her memories and piece together the clues to what is happening to her and the world around her, which seems to now be devoid of human life. Only through the help of Marland-White (Sir Ian McKellen) she will uncover the truth to help her escape from this never-ending nightmare. Is this finite or infinite, Ad Infinitum?
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE THROUGHOUT.
Description provided by Metacritic.
“Infinitum: Subject Unknown works as a scary, anxious thrill ride.” – Bradley Gibson, Film Threat
“Infinitum: Subject Unknown is a subtle, unconventional and often surreal take on the horrors which could be sparked by science.” – Keri O’Shea, Warped Perspective
“A curious little film that will surprise you with its big ideas, an intricate, expertly woven story and a captivating central performance, Infinitum: Subject Unknown is a delightfully twisty time-loop tale.” – Rachael Harper, SciFiNow
Black Conflux
The seemingly separate lives of an anxious, disillusioned teen girl and a troubled, alienated man converge fatefully in this haunting exploration of womanhood, isolation, and toxic masculinity, set in 1980s Newfoundland.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS VIOLENCE, SEXUAL CONTENT, THEMATIC MATERIAL, AND LANGUAGE.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“When the creepy conflux of the title occurs, it’s terrifying because its conclusion is unforeseeable. Like life you might say: impossible to predict but nevertheless captivating.” – Kim Hughes, Original Cin
“It is rare for a first feature to be so well directed, thoughtful and entertaining.” – David Davidson, The Globe and Mail
“Even if this deceptively artful debut feels a little muted and unpolished in places, it is plainly the work of a skilled filmmaker with ample future potential.” – Stephen Dalton, Hollywood Reporter
Fear
Svetla, a strong-willed widow, lives alone in a small Bulgarian village close to the Turkish border. She has recently lost her job as a teacher due to the lack of families with young children. One day, while hunting in a forest, she encounters an African refugee, Bamba, who is trying to reach Germany, and will bring about a dramatic turn in her life. Reluctantly, she offers him hospitality, but day after day, a bond develops as Bamba learns the language and takes part in her daily life. Svetla will make life-changing choices that go against her traditional community creating a revolt among the villagers.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS LANGUAGE, AND THEMATIC MATERIAL.
Description provided by Metacritic.
“In the end, Fear offers the most beguiling kind of plea for tolerance, via antic suggestion that any other behavior is strictly for dolts whose mob mentality makes them look very stupid indeed. It’s a lesson that goes down easily with this much deadpan charm and skill on tap.” – Dennis Harvey, Variety
“The director, Ivaylo Hristov, is adept at slow-burning suspense and comic misdirection.” – A.O. Scott, New York Times
“Fear can’t help but cover familiar immigrant narrative ground. But Hristov and his characters maintain a deadpan drollery that makes this grimmer take on the migrant’s plight and Eastern Europe’s often hateful backwardness play as lighter than it really is.” – Roger Moore, Movie Nation
A Shot Through the Wall
After an accidental shooting of an innocent Black man in Brooklyn, Chinese-American police officer Mike Tan must wade through his profound guilt as he attempts to navigate the complicated worlds of media, justice, and racial politics.
NOT RATED. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE, VIOLENCE, THEMATIC MATERIAL, AND SEXUAL CONTENT.
Description provided by Metacritic.
“In a time where stories of police brutality are a hot topic, A Shot Through the Wall gives the audience something new to think about.” – Joel Fisher, Battle Royale with Cheese
“The debut feature of writer-director Aimee Long is a somber, thought-provoking essay on policing, race, firearms and family.” – Roger Moore, Movie Nation
“Providing a fresh perspective on a hot-button topic, this earnest yet provocative low-budget drama about the aftermath of a police-involved shooting benefits from some intriguing character dynamics and a deeply felt performance by Kenny Leu.” – Todd Jorgenson, Cinemalogue
Amulet
Following an accident that leaves him homeless in London, former soldier Tomaz is brought to the rotting home of Magda, a lonely woman in desperate need of help as she looks after her dying mother. Though at first resistant, Magda eventually welcomes him into their lives and allows him to help her care for them. But as he worms his way into their routine and begins to fall for Magda, Tomaz starts to notice strange, unexplainable, and ugly phenomena. Something seems very wrong with the mysterious old woman who never leaves the top floor, and Magda may in fact be enslaved to do her otherworldly bidding.
RATED R FOR SOME STRONG VIOLENCE, BLOODY IMAGES, A SEXUAL ASSAULT, AND BRIEF LANGUAGE AND NUDITY.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Horror movies usually aim to scare, entertain, and teach us. Amulet mostly does all three. Very nicely done.” – Norman Gidney, Film Threat
“Amulet is deeply, deliberately mysterious, and all the more fun for it; the less viewers know going in, the more ferocious the ride.” – Fionnuala Halligan, Screen Daily
“Amulet elevates these themes of repentance and sin through deft editing, strong performances, and a chilling score. It’s an evocative, confident debut, recalling the metaphorical horror of Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook or Babak Anvari’s Under the Shadow, even as it announces the arrival of a singular new voice.” – Toussaint Egan, AV Club