Slamdance 2025 Reviews: Agnieszka Zwiefka ‘s SILENT TREES offers a Stark and Intimate Look at Refugee Survival
Agnieszka Zwieifka ’s Silent Trees is a striking documentary that provides an unflinching yet deeply
Slamdance 2025 Reviews: Cameron S. Mitchell ‘s DISPOSABLE HUMANITY exposes overlooked Nazi mass murder program of the disabled
Disposable Humanity, directed by Cameron S. Mitchell , is a powerful exploration of a frequently
Slamdance Reviews: Cory Santilli ‘s Horror-Comedy ‘In The Mouth’ meshes Absurdity with Psychological Depth
Cory Santilli ‘s In The Mouth blends psychological suspense and horror with deadpan comedy, crafting
Slamdance Review: Jessica Hankey ‘s ONE REHEARSES, THE OTHER DOESN’T challenges the boundaries of performance
Jessica Hankey ’s One Rehearses, the Other Doesn’t is an ambitious experimental short that blurs
Agnieska Zwiefka ‘s global refugee crisis documentary SILENT TREES set for U.S. Premiere at Slamdance
Chilli Productions and Agnieszka Zwiefka ’s documentary feature Silent Trees shining a light on the global refugee crisis
SLAMDANCE 2023 Reviews: Linh Tran’s WAITING FOR THE LIGHT TO CHANGE finds emotional truth in its ambiguity
Yes, these all sound like very “twentysomething” problems (and yes, Alex doing palm readings sounds like a very “twentysomething” solution), but the characters are so relatable that even if your twenties were ages ago, watching them will immediately herald back the anxiety and angst you felt then.
SLAMDANCE 2023 Reviews: Remy van Heugten’s MASCOT confronts us with an extreme world without a simple way out of the violence
Dutch director van Heugten demonstrates here that you can understand a protagonist without necessarily liking them. Both Abbey and Jeremy are fundamentally broken people, still in their own way trying to protect Emine from being hurt in the same way by keeping her away from the bad dad she can’t remember.
SLAMDANCE 2023 Reviews: Emily Kaye Allen’s CISCO KID looks at a queer woman creating an unexpectedly American paradise
The movie’s more concerned with her making the place reasonably functional first, without as much emphasis on the artistic nature of it. But as the kind of fly-on-the-wall doc that doesn’t offer additional context nor narration, it shifts that burden to the viewer. It matters less what the artist thinks than whether you see the art there, even if the hands that form it appear more practicality minded.
SLAMDANCE 2023 Interviews: CISCO KID director Emily Kaye Allen
My personal thoughts: This is another film that I am currently working with as their publicist, so naturally I think it’s wonderful. This might be an odd way to compliment a documentary, but when I watched CISCO KID the first time, I kept thinking of Altman films or Malick films, because the combination of an independent, enigmatic character at the center of a story set with in a truly significant landscape is what I so often associate with that cinema when I hear those names. Allen and her camera become trusted companions to a charismatic, yet fiercely independent personality who hearkens back to a different time in their pursuit of restoring structure and life to a literal ghost town in the desert.
Slamdance 2023 Interviews: MASCOT director Remy Van Heugten
My personal thoughts on MASCOT: Full disclosure is that I am working on the PR for the film, so I am obviously a fan of it. And the thing that I am most a fan of, is that while it follows a long tradition of European films that have dealt with hooligan culture and toxic masculinity (before that term had been coined), MASCOT is a rarity in the unflinching manner in which it delves into the environment that created that bubbling inner turmoil and rage in one young man. Specifically, this film looks into the relationship with the boy’s mother, misguided, mistargeted and unintentionally incredibly damaging. It gives the film an additional layer and element that adds to the building dread and threat of the young man potentially losing his hold on his emotions