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PUT YOUR SOUL ON YOUR HAND AND WALK arrives with a story already aching inside it — a young woman whose life mattered, whose art demanded attention, and whose humanity insists on being remembered. That insistence is the backbone of Sepideh Farsi’s documentary. This film does not dramatize war so much as live inside it, through phone screens and connections that refuse to break even when everything else around them does.

he thing that makes 31 CANDLES engaging is this: it understands how much harder it is to change when you’re old enough to know better. Jonah Feingold plays Leo, a guy who skipped having a Bar Mitzvah at 13 and never quite shook the feeling that he left something unfinished. Now grown and stuck in the adult version of neutral — successful enough, charming enough, avoiding anything that might expose what he hasn’t figured out — he decides to finally accept the tradition he dodged, not as a punchline, but as a reckoning. The movie builds from a relatable place: when you’re tired of calling procrastination a personality trait, you have to do something uncomfortable.

In fifteen minutes, TRAPPED builds genuine tension, explores layered social commentary, and leaves you thinking long after the credits. Directed, written, and produced by brothers Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz, the short turns an ordinary high school janitor’s shift into a nightmare of escalating peril. But beneath the suspense lies something more penetrating—a critique of power, privilege, and how the smallest choices reveal who society protects and who it doesn’t.

PISTACHIO WARS peels back California’s agricultural facade and reveals something far more unsettling beneath the orchards. Directed and written by Yasha Levine and Rowan Wernham, the investigative documentary follows the trail of corporate greed that turns the state’s natural resources into a luxury commodity. What begins as a straightforward inquiry into a small water deal evolves into a sweeping, damning examination of power, branding, and the privatization of something as essential as life itself.

THE DEMON’S ROOK is the kind of horror artifact that earns its place on a late-night shelf through sheer willpower. Made on weekends with a group of friends, cast in latex and fog, and pointed squarely at anyone who missed the hand-built monsters, it’s an oddity that wears its influence proudly. You can feel the lineage: nightmares, ritual nonsense that plays like a dare, and a devotion to practical effects that puts much pricier productions to shame. On those terms, it’s a blast—an unruly parade of demons, zombies, slime, and the occult that proves enthusiasm can do a lot of heavy lifting.

SUNFISH (& OTHER STORIES ON GREEN LAKE) is a soft-spoken anthology with a backbone. It moves with the logic of a true summer—people arrive, drift into each other’s worlds, and leave changed in ways they won’t fully understand until later. Across four interlocking stories, the film treats the lake not as scenery but as the constant: a place where lessons are learned, responsibilities sneak up on kids and adults alike, and every victory feels earned because it’s so small you could miss it if you blinked. Sierra Falconer writes and directs with a confidence that favors presence over plot; the film is less about what happens than how it settles in your chest after.

There are reinterpretations — and then there are works that claim a legacy as their own. Edge of Paradise’s REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (AND THE ANGELS OF STATIC) belongs to the latter: a full-scale metamorphosis of Clint Mansell’s immortal composition into a new cinematic-like experience. Where the original thrives on restraint and creeping dread, this version detonates with emotion and a sense of dimensional scale. The band amplifies the theme’s darkness and wonder, forging a sound that feels equally suited for the stage and screen. This isn’t a homage — it’s an ascension, transforming a cultural touchstone into something fiercely personal, visual, and unmistakably their own.

When memory becomes a commodity, truth is no longer sacred—it’s transactional. That’s the unsettling premise behind FALSEHOOD, a high-concept Canadian sci-fi thriller from director Ethan Hickey. While ambitious and full of provocative ideas, the film occasionally leans too heavily on its philosophical framing. Still, there’s no denying its scope. For a low-budget production, it manages to feel expansive, polished, and politically charged, threading personal drama through a near-future narrative steeped in surveillance, power, and faith.

The marketing tagline promised “HIGH NOON in space,” but that undersells what OUTLAND actually achieves. Peter Hyams takes the bones of a Western—one good man against an empire of corruption—and transplants it to a mining colony orbiting Jupiter’s moon Io. It’s as bleak as it sounds: six hundred million miles from home, the air is synthetic, the work is brutal, and every worker is disposable. The colony, Con-Am 27, has the energy of a late-stage capitalist nightmare. Productivity is worshipped, human life is collateral, and one man dares to ask why miners keep dying in such spectacular, gruesome ways.

If there’s one thing Jess Franco could always do, it was find the line between camp and sleaze—and dance across the line with a grin. DEATH PACKS A SUITCASE (also known as Der Todesrächer von Soho or The Avenger of Soho) is one of the director’s stranger entries: a playful, oddly clean-cut mystery with all the hallmarks of German “Krimi” cinema and just enough Franco flavor to keep it weird. For an artist better known for erotic exploitation and psychotropic nightmares, this 1972 London-set whodunit feels like a weekend vacation—blood light but heavy on personality.

There’s a moment in AI WEIWEI’S TURANDOT when art and activism stop being separate entities and merge into something entirely new, for Ai Weiwei, whose career has always been an act of rebellion, directing an opera feels both unexpected and inevitable. The artist who once dropped a 2,000-year-old urn in the name of challenging authority now orchestrates Puccini’s Turandot inside the Rome Opera House—turning one of Western culture’s grandest traditions into a living statement on censorship, humanity, and power.