SCREEN | Elizabeth Olsen Observes 'The Assessment'

"Because this society needs people who know what it is to love a child."

Magnolia Pictures / Amazon MGM Studios

The appealing trio of Elizabeth Olsen, Alicia Vikander, and Himesh Patel star in French music video director Fleur Fortuné's discomforting sci-fi chamber drama, The Assessment, about a vaguely dystopian near-future with strict rules around parenthood. Vikander plays an "assessor" who must evaluate Olsen and Patel's couple and their potential viability of raising a child over the course of seven long days.

SCREEN | André Holland Paints and Heals – 'Exhibiting Forgiveness'

"Some things can't be worked out on canvas."

Roadside Attractions / Vortex Media

Accomplished African-American contemporary painter Titus Kaphar makes his directing debut in a soulful but piercing Michigan family drama. Touching on issues of artistry, generational trauma, and parenthood through the lens of fractured fathers and sons, Exhibiting Forgiveness tells a tender semi-autobiographical story of forgiving yourself and your family.

SCREEN | Saving the 'Watchmen: Chapter II' in Animation

"Exposing this plot results in greater destruction."

Warner Bros. Animation / Paramount Pictures

DC's second part of its animated Watchmen retelling of the densely layered 1986 graphic novel's political themes continues its faithful adaptation. Watchmen: Chapter II furthers its use of superhero storytelling to deconstruct the nature of humanity, conflict, and war.

SCREEN | Watching the 'Watchmen: Chapter I' in Animation

"We're society's only protection!"

Warner Bros. Animation / Paramount Pictures

DC's latest animated Watchmen adaptation, based on the groundbreaking 1986 graphic novel, takes its time faithfully translating another deconstruction of superhero storytelling nearly forty years after its initial publication. Watchmen: Chapter I, the first installment of a two-part release, features plenty of moody animation directed by veteran animator Brandon Vietti, who fleshes out the central murder mystery stylishly.

SCREEN | Julianne Nicholson Orbits 'Janet Planet'

"Someone lit himself on fire here."

A24 / BBC Film

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker makes her illuminating filmmaking debut in the moving, coming-of-age mother/daughter drama Janet Planet, set in early-'90s rural Western Massachusetts. As the planetary title suggests, the indie film explores a young girl's less-than-healthy "orbit" around her struggling single mom.

SCREEN | Clara and Ewan McGregor Drive Past 'Bleeding Love'

"I could never keep up with you."

Vertical / Killer Films

Bleeding Love (formerly titled You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder) unites actress Clara McGregor, a producer on the film who also shares a story credit, and her famous actor father, Ewan McGregor, in a family road trip drama about addiction trauma from sophomore director Emma Westenberg.

SCREEN | Jake Johnson Plays A Deadly Game – 'Self Reliance'

"I hope no one murders either of you."

Neon / Republic Pictures

Comic actor Jake Johnson makes his directorial debut in the absurd indie comedy Self Reliance, about a lonely, middle-aged man without much going on playing a dark web reality television game show reminiscent of The Game for a chance to win a million dollars if he can stay alive for thirty days while unknown participants try to hunt him down and kill him whenever he's alone.

SCREEN | Emilia Clarke Gives Birth to 'The Pod Generation'

Vertical / Photon Films

French-American filmmaker Sophie Barthes travels into the near future for a science fiction romantic comedy starring Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor as prospective parents in The Pod Generation. As the title slightly hints, technology has developed where a woman no longer has to give birth, as special egg-like pods can now hatch newborn babies.

SCREEN | Devery Jacobs Finds 'This Place' x VQFF 2023

"Disappearing feels good sometimes."

Vancouver Queer Film Festival

Mohawk actress Devery Jacobs (originally from Kahnawà:ke Territory outside of Montreal) stars as a mixed-race Indigenous-Iranian student in the moving queer romantic drama This Place. Set in Toronto, freshman director V.T. Nayani tells parallel stories of daughters of refugees dealing with the ghosts of absent fathers set against Canada's history of both settling and displacing its inhabitants.

GENRE | Judy Greer Fires Into the Past – 'Aporia' x Fantasia 2023

"This machine is a gun that can fire a bullet into the past."

Fantasia International Film Festival

Indie filmmaker Jared Moshé writes and directs an emotional lo-fi sci-fi drama with an impressive reverence for its time-travel adjacent material. Aporia (definition: "an irresolvable contradiction or logical impasse") stars Judy Greer as Sophie, a widowed mother of a teenage daughter (Faithe Herman), still grieving from the devastating loss of her husband Mal (Edi Gathegi) after a drunk driver takes his life.

SCREEN | Jon Hamm Finds A 'Corner Office' x WFF 2022

"A smile disarms your opponent."

Whistler Film Festival

Filmed in Vancouver, commercial filmmaker Joachim Back directs a moustached Jon Hamm, who also narrates, in the surrealist workplace satire Corner Office, based on the acclaimed Kafkaesque novel The Room by Swedish author/actor Jonas Karlsson. When Hamm's corporate paper pusher, Orson, finds a secret door to a lavish (possibly magical) room no one else can see, his behaviour starts to go off the rails in the eyes of his colleagues.

GENRE | Margaret Qualley Sells 'Sanctuary' x WFF 2022

"It's because you're a pervert."

Whistler Film Festival

New York indie filmmaker Zachary Wigon directs a chillingly unpredictable two-hander of a psychological thriller starring Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott as an unconventional dominatrix blackmailing her insecure hotel empire heir client in Sanctuary. Set during an emotionally intense session, the charismatic pair go back and forth sublimely in a twisty roleplay that goes beyond its stage-like theatrical setting.

SCREEN | Self-Reflections on 'Beba' x DOXA 2023

"Violence lives in my DNA."

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

First-time filmmaker Rebeca Huntt chronicles her own life and racial identity in the striking coming-of-age, cinematic self-portrait Beba. Her intimate documentary interrogates Huntt's own family history as a series of introspective visual memories recalling her childhood growing up in New York City as an Afro-Latina.

SCREEN | Anna Kendrick Controls 'Alice, Darling' x WFF 2022

"He wouldn't love me if he knew how bad I am."

Whistler Film Festival

Anna Kendrick stars in British actress-turned-director Mary Nighy's disquieting relationship drama Alice, Darling. Kendrick gives a gripping yet restrained performance as the titular young woman struggling to leave her emotionally abusive and controlling boyfriend (Charlie Carrick) after he expertly manipulates their toxic co-dependency.

GENRE | Hayley Law Traps 'Door Mouse' – Stylish Neo-Noir Pulp

"It was a full pack of cigarettes type of night."

Gravitas Ventures / Elevation Pictures

Vancouver native Hayley Law stars in fellow local actor turned filmmaker Avan Jogia's stylish debut feature behind the camera in an indie neo-noir dripping with contemporary pulp. Door Mouse mines gumshoe detective genre fare with a modern gloss (not unlike the 2005 film Brick) for a rather oddball mystery genre effort.

SCREEN | Gillian Jacobs Finds 'The Seven Faces of Jane'

"Everyone struggles to find a version of themselves that they like."

Gravitas Ventures

The Seven Faces of Jane, an experimental anthology indie road film conceived by producer Roman Coppola as an "exquisite corpse" blind collaboration starring Gillian Jacobs as the eponymous heroine, is a surrealist vision of a woman tumbling through eight different strange mini-adventures. It's an odd but often emotional series of small character pieces.

GENRE | Tilda Swinton Haunts 'The Eternal Daughter' x TIFF 2022

"I had a very unsettled night."

Toronto International Film Festival

British auteur Joanna Hogg has created a haunting, single-location ghost story with shades of gothic horror set on the foggy moors of the English countryside. The Eternal Daughter is a loose continuation of Hogg's previous semi-autobiographical The Souvenir films, reteaming with her longtime friend and collaborator Tilda Swinton.

SCREEN | Drawing Comedy – 'Funny Pages' Colours Grime

"Crude isn't a style."

A24 / Sphere Films

First-time writer/director Owen Kline (son of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates) shoots the abrasive Funny Pages about a particularly dickish New Jersey high school dropout (Daniel Zolghadri), desperate to become a comic book artist through an appropriate griminess to the world he captures on grainy 16mm film.

SCREEN | 'Spin Me Round' Travels Under the Tuscan Grove

"Is this the part where we kiss?"

IFC Films / Limelight

Director Jeff Baena and his frequent collaborator Alison Brie (co-writer and producer) continue their string of offbeat indie comedies in the Italian-set romantic comedy thriller, Spin Me Round. Set on a corporate training retreat where franchise managers of an Olive Garden-esque chain restaurant ("Tuscan Grove") meet and mingle before stumbling upon some very strange happenings that culminate in a giallo horror-inspired climax.

GENRE | Rebecca Hall Spirals – 'Resurrection' x Fantasia 2022

"I'm the only one who can see you."

Fantasia International Film Festival

Rebecca Hall is so striking as an otherwise confident businesswoman spiralling into a total and complete emotional breakdown when a controlling and abusive ex-boyfriend, played by a deceptively calm Tim Roth, unexpectedly reappears in her life. Resurrection is a terrifying and deeply unsettling psychological thriller told carefully by writer/director Andrew Semans through character development.