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What does it mean to grow up when the people around you are quietly falling apart? Charlie McDowell’s THE SUMMER BOOK doesn’t open by posing a question that needs to be solved, but rather by assuming a question is always there, and that we live inside of it. Unlike many films, THE SUMMER BOOK doesn’t seek to create dramatic turns or emotional releases. Rather, it takes the idea that grief, love, and understanding, and with that the act of understanding, can unfold at the pace of observation (or even non-action) rather than through action.

What responsibility does a parent have once their children are grown, and what happens when love no longer grants authority? A LITTLE PRAYER begins with that unasked question hanging above each conversation, yet never asked directly, however it's sensed in the silence between lines, in the hesitation of characters before speaking, and in the measured distance maintained by the film from making judgments.

What does it mean when a piece of pop culture not only ages well, but explains the present better than the moment that produced it? BEAM ME UP, SULU is introduced as a story based on a "lost" 1985 Star Trek fan film made in a California forest by students who never got to show their work. But as the film progresses, we realize that the project was much bigger, a discovery of how representation, good intentions, and community were important then and remain important today.

What does it take to keep creating when the industry keeps asking you to disappear? THE ROSE: COME BACK TO ME presents that question hovering beneath every image and interview, even when it’s never stated outright. Rather than framing itself as a victory lap or fan-service celebration, the film commits to something more honest: an exploration of endurance, identity, and the emotional cost of choosing authenticity in a system built to reward conformity.

What happens when survival stops being heroic and starts feeling imperative? HUNTING JESSICA BROK offers the audience a familiar silhouette of a genre archetype — the retired operative, the quiet life, the past that won’t stay buried — but it quickly makes clear that this isn’t a story interested in comfort. Alastair Orr’s film wants exhaustion, consequence, and moral abrasion, even when those ambitions strain against the limits of its own structure.

What does it look like when democracy doesn’t fall with an unforgettable impact, but instead erodes quietly and in full public view? AN AMERICAN PASTORAL asks that question not through narration or argument, but by standing still and letting the answer reveal itself over time. Set in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, the documentary observes a local school board race that gradually exposes how cultural grievance, religious extremism, and procedural manipulation can reshape public institutions long before most people realize what’s happening.

What if the scariest part of the job is how normal it feels? That issue quietly anchors THE MORTUARY ASSISTANT, a horror film that understands fear doesn’t always arrive with extravaganza. Instead, it creeps in through repetition, silence, and the slow erosion of certainty. Adapting a video game known for its oppressive atmosphere rather than jump-driven shocks, director Jeremiah Kipp delivers a film that largely resists the urge to overexplain itself, trusting mood, environment, and performance to do the work.

Who decides which victories are remembered and which are quietly buried? THE OTHER ROE builds its entire purpose around that question, then answers it with precision, restraint, and clarity. In just sixteen minutes, the film accomplishes what many feature-length documentaries struggle to do: it reframes a foundational moment in American history without grandstanding, and it restores credit where it has been systematically withheld.

At what point does lore stop enriching a movie and start replacing it? That question defines FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S 2, a follow-up that clearly understands its audience but struggles to justify itself to those who aren’t diehards. Where the first entry attempted to introduce a broader crowd to Scott Cawthon’s dense mythology, this sequel largely abandons that bridge-building in favor of immersion, recognition, and expansion. For fans, that approach has obvious appeal. For everyone else, it creates a movie that often feels like it’s speaking a language it never bothers to teach.

What are you willing to give up to finally be heard? MIMICS frames that question with a grin rather than a snarl, delivering a genre hybrid that understands its own absurdity without ever treating its characters as punchlines. This film recognizes how desperation and ambition often wear the same face, especially in creative fields where validation feels perpetually just out of reach.

What happens when the person who knows you best is also the one you’ve actively been avoiding? MAGID / ZAFAR chases this question with relentless intensity, turning it into a pressure cooker for identity, masculinity, and emotional avoidance. In just eighteen minutes, director Luís Hindman delivers one of the most viscerally direct British shorts in recent years, a film that doesn’t just depict tension but manufactures it moment by moment until escape feels impossible.

What happens when something you made to escape becomes something others used to survive, or worse, to justify harm? That question hangs over NOSTALGIE from its opening, shaping the film not as a tale of faded fame but as a quiet, devastating examination of authorship, complicity, and the myths artists tell themselves to stay afloat. At just nineteen minutes, Kathryn Ferguson’s BAFTA-nominated short manages to feel both intimate and expansive, never rushing its ideas yet never overcomplicating its message.

What do you do when the world feels on edge, and every new technological promise sounds like a threat dressed up as convenience? GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE doesn’t offer comfort, clarity, or solutions. Instead, Gore Verbinski returns to filmmaking by throwing gasoline on that anxiety and daring the audience to keep up. This is a loud, restless, deliberately overstuffed movie that treats chaos as both subject and method, and it never pretends otherwise. Everything you think you know about this film is wrong, and ultimately, in the best way possible.

What happens when the desire to be loved curdles into the desire to disappear? BY DESIGN doesn’t ask that question softly, and it certainly doesn’t bother cushioning the answer. Amanda Kramer’s feature takes an absurdist premise that sounds like a punchline and commits to it with absolute seriousness, using surrealism not as a stylistic lens, but as a blunt instrument for interrogating female interiority, objectification, and the fantasy of frictionless existence.

What does it mean to watch a band at full strength when you already know what they’ll become decades later? LET’S SPEND THE NIGHT TOGETHER doesn’t just document the Rolling Stones’ 1981 U.S. tour; it captures a rare moment when scale, stamina, and self-mythology briefly aligned without fully calcifying into legacy management.

What does it mean to help someone you love when the cost of that help is never defined? HONEY BUNCH has that question deeply embedded in its premise, then spends nearly two hours refusing to let the audience resolve it. Rather than positioning itself as a puzzle-box thriller or a pure body-horror production, the film commits to something more emotionally destabilizing: a love story in which devotion is both the pulse and the exposure.

What happens when Broadway’s most enduring myths are frozen in celluloid, then revisited decades later, not as nostalgia pieces but as living documents of performance, desire, and contradiction? That’s the challenge at the heart of BROADWAY ON THE BIG SCREEN, a six-film collection that doesn’t ask you to love every note or every choice, but instead invites you to sit with how wildly different these adaptations are in tone, ambition, and intent.

What does a home-invasion thriller owe its audience when it’s built almost entirely on escalation? MISDIRECTION answers that question with a focus on nostalgia while creating its own path forward, if not always with depth. This is a lean, tightly wound genre piece that understands its limitations and chooses momentum over overstatement, even when that choice occasionally exposes thin character shading or narrative shortcuts.

How long can grief sit inside a person before it starts shaping everything around them? THE ARBORIST builds its entire identity around that question, using folk horror not as a gimmick but as a framework for emotional decay. This isn’t a film interested in jump scares or cheap provocation. Instead, it settles into the dirt below you and waits, allowing unease to accumulate, as rot does, slowly and invisibly, until it becomes impossible to ignore.

How do you revisit a work that already reshaped how history is told without diminishing its impact on the world? THE HELL OF AUSCHWITZ: MAUS BY ART SPIEGELMAN approaches this challenge carefully, refusing to position itself as a definitive statement on Maus and instead framing the graphic novel as a living object that continues to provoke, educate, and agitate select people decades after its publication.

What happens when a system designed to shape young minds becomes a hunting ground instead? TEACHER’S PET takes a premise that feels uncomfortably plausible and refuses to treat it as a metaphor or exaggeration. Writer/director Noam Kroll’s psychological thriller frames the academic environment not as a refuge, but as a system built on trust, authority, and access. These very conditions make it vulnerable to exploitation.

What happens to a sense of self when every hour of the day becomes organized around keeping another human alive? REMOVAL OF THE EYE begins from that muted panic, not as a conceptual exercise, but as lived reality, captured in real time by filmmakers Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan as they document the first year of parenthood without the comfort of distance or hindsight. This isn’t a film about learning lessons or arriving with an understanding of clarity. It’s about survival, and the fragile hope that meaning will emerge once the exhaustion lifts.

What happens when permission becomes emotional leverage? BIGHT, with that question hanging in the air, spells out its consequences, positioning itself not as provocation but as an uncomfortable examination of how easily desire can be weaponized when boundaries are treated as suggestions rather than safeguards.

What happens when doing the right thing for your child means reopening wounds you never fully processed yourself? JIMPA places the core of its story around that uneasy question, placing a mother, her nonbinary teenager, and her aging gay father in the same emotional sphere and refusing to let any of them escape without consequence. Rather than building toward a single answer, director/co-writer Sophie Hyde’s deeply personal film settles into the discomfort of competing truths, asking how love, autonomy, and responsibility coexist when family history refuses to stay quiet.