This intimate glimpse at two teenage girls in a Moscow locker room is a simple but rich exploration of burgeoning sexuality and a search for expression. Alice can’t help but steal some glances at her teammate while she changes, catching flashes of skin, reflected in searching close-ups. The teamm...

Shot in New York, L.A., Moscow, and Paris, this portrait of the young and free is an appealingly raw glimpse into the joys and struggles of love. The mixed-format filming keeps the visuals fresh and the perspective deeply personal. Structured around four stages of a relationship — the meeting, th...

Mass shootings happen so often in our country that it's become routine. For the most part we make no attempt to remedy the problem, but at least we shower the victims and their families with sympathy and prayers. It's from this recognition that a divorced father and social outcast attempts to rec...

A titillating California drama with splashes of unexpected humor. Or maybe it’s the other way around. The gist: a divorced mother attempts to break up her daughter’s relationship. Maybe it’s to protect her... or maybe it’s out of jealousy. The handsome, smooth-talking boyfriend named Whit seems t...

It’s no secret that if you scratch an open-mic comedian, a Beckettian epic of beaten, wretched perseverance is bound to fall out (see: Muck, which we featured on this site last year, or Richard Pryor’s autobiopic Jo Jo Dancer Your Life is Calling, or whatever Louis C.K. is cooking up as I write t...

Fearing her own displacement, Anna torments her stepbrother's new fiancee.

Directed by Joey Izzo. Starring Anna Seregina, Beth Lisick, and Brent Weinbach.

When a bet on Trump alienates him from all his friends, Keith aims to defend himself by telling his side of the story. As he recounts the tale of how it all went down, spouting his unlikely political views through the shocked streets of NYC post-election, it keeps getting darker and darker. Keith...

Memories and fiction begin to overlap when a pair of ex-lovers play a couple in a film. Stanley Xu directs “Reprise,” a film that blurs the line between performance and reality. In front of the camera is a complicated relationship between two characters played by actors with a complicated history...

Director Jason Giampietro sets 'em up & knocks 'em down in this hilariously straightforward story of an anxious New Yorker's ruined summer. The neurotic man, perpetually wearing a ratty aqua short-sleeve, lets a friend store a bike in his hallway for what he promises is only a couple days. Three ...

 Rudy, a grouchy, putty-colored naif rocking a Mennonite center-part, is thrown off of his normal afternoon routine of shuffling around looking glum by an intense pain in his groin. According to a not-very-trustworthy looking dude outside the bodega, it’s a hernia. Instead of wisely staying home ...

A band of ravers who reside and dance under the L.A River have their lives turned upside down when one of their own is chopped in half with a glow stick. “A Ballet,” directed by Zoe Katz, is a bonkers 5-minute no-fi extravaganza where everyone wears JNCOS (this is a sequel to Katz’ “A Very JNCOS ...

A lighthearted take on the Alphabet made in quarantine during the Coronavirus Pandemic. Guy Kozak directs “Alphabet,” which creates an appealing mood and atmosphere from a series of simple compositions, one for each letter, A-Z. There’s a lovely variety of visuals — some words are proper nouns, l...

Pak Anggir is a rice farmer in Bali living a modest, spiritually-connected existence, intent on passing along ancient Hindu traditions to his grandchildren. This calming documentary portrait directed by Ashleigh Goh Hua captures Anggir in his element, working the fields, blessing the offerings, a...

Infantrymen are waking up in full battle dress under the pines of a manicured mid-century subdivision. They mount the tarred roof of what might be an elementary school and return fire at an unseen enemy covered somewhere across the school’s front drive. A man on a riding mower throws the platoon ...