Fueled by the hope of escaping her dreary suburban life, a misunderstood teen entertains the increasingly sinister advances of an Internet acquaintance. A stylish and self-assured melange of high and low art, “The Follower,” directed by Stephanie Szerlip, tracks the excitement and danger of a 16-old-year girl drifting away from childhood innocence. After posting a photo on Instagram that her mother considers risqué, Sophie is punished and not allowed to attend a barbecue party. That’s just fine with her — it leaves her home alone to drink wine and sunbath in the yard listening to music. That’s when Jimmy Flowers enters the picture, a face-scarred cool kid in a leather jacket that shows up driving a decommissioned cop car to flirt with Sophie (while his damaged friend stays in the car with his pet raccoon). When the exchange turns a bit dark, Sophie starts to backpedal, but she’s in a vulnerable spot and brimming with mixed feelings. A riff on the 1966 Joyce Carol Oates story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
A young couple heads home for the holidays to find themselves trapped at a family dinner where awkward tension boils into rage. Avant-garde filmmaking based on a poem by Bob Holman, “Boiler” marches to its own beat, a weirdo vision directed by Nicholas Motyka. This isn’t your average meal — for s...
An intimate story of the lives of two queer-identifying women in Norway struggling to navigate the messiness of their twenties. “Gemini,” directed by Anna Fredrikke Bjerke, is a seven episode drama centered around two roommates, Rubi and Samira, and their revolving door of relationships, awkward ...
During lockdown, a man travels to the desert to pick up his dog from an estranged partner. The film, “Pup, directed by and co-starring Avon Haughton, was conceived and filmed during the Covid-19 quarantine and registers as a poetic response to isolation and missing affection. Largely silent, we f...
