The bold debut, We (Wij), from Dutch director Rene Eller uses various unreliable narrators and a fractured chronology to create an intricate and arresting new spin on coming-of-age tropes. The ostensible setup is a typical teen movie: A group of friends find a shack in the woods and use it as a base for their…
In the last few decades, films about workers and the labor movement in American cinema have been few and far between. Documentaries such as American Factory, however, can begin to shed light on the problems facing workers in the 21st century world of global capitalism. Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert (“Making Morning Star”),…
Waiting for Anya, directed by Ben Cookson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Toby Torlesse, is a film that falls within a popular World War II sub-genre that focuses on a local conflict between German occupiers and French non-combatants, typically set away from the civilian centers that suffered crushing horror, destruction, and death. Based on a…
“Even though I am poor and I have AIDS, I am happy. Each day brings hope.” — Liu Ximei Ximei, a documentary filmed in China over a seven-year period by Andy Cohen and Gaylen Ross, follows the HIV-positive titular protagonist and plain-spoken community leader named Ximei, a local “peasant” woman in her thirties. Ximei is…
“Be me, then be yourself,” so says Chuck Knoach (Ben Lloyd-Hughes, “Me Before You”), a best-selling self-help guru who has an avid fan in Lou (Katy Brayben, “Luther” TV series) a 30-something woman with a dead-end job and a suffocating mother (Sarah Ball, “Doctors” TV series) for a housemate. As we see her enjoying rare…
There is no denying that New York City is the most magical of places to celebrate the holidays. But when you’ve lost a loved one, the sparkle of the season can dwindle to the lowest of lows. That’s the subject matter of Daniel Tenenbaum’s A New Christmas, a romantic tale that examines the simultaneous joy…
Former marine and single mother Sam (Rebecca Rogers) is on maternity leave. Her baby needs medication, so she leaves the kid home alone and runs to the pharmacy. Sam is abducted. She wakes up in a locked-down warehouse. A mysterious voice informs her that her child will be killed unless she “plays the game.” It’s…
