Synopsis

A reclusive necromancer and a young woman battling uterine cancer form an intense and intimate bond in the latest haunting film from The Adams Family, the horror dream (or nightmare) team and real-life family that writes, edits, directs, and stars in all their films.

A spiritual sequel to 2021 Festival entry Hellbender, the film follows Mickey and her father Jake on a journey into the depths of a forest lush with morbid imagery. There, the mysterious Solveig awaits with an unconventional cure for Mickey’s disease. She expects no payment for her magical remedy—but dark magic always has its price. Brought together by their shared familiarity with the death that shadows all living things, Mickey and Solveig become engrossed in their bloody and transformative rituals while Jake’s skepticism pushes him to seek answers: Who is this strange woman? And what are these archaic methods that seem more likely to cause harm than to heal?

Mother of Flies is poetic and personal, speaking to the interwoven processes of life and death, the horrors of motherhood gone awry, the power of belief, and The Adams Family’s own experience with cancer.

Synopsis

​​When Jihan was six years old, her father, Mansur Rashid Kikhia, a notable Libyan politician and human rights lawyer, flew to Egypt and never returned. In the late 1970s, during the brutal dictatorship of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, Kikhia had served as Libya’s ambassador to the United Nations until finally resigning in protest and moving to America where he helped lead a peaceful opposition movement. Then, in 1993, he vanished.

In this captivating film, part political mystery and part personal exploration, filmmaker Jihan sets out to find the truth behind her father’s disappearance. With the help of her mother, a strong-willed Syrian American artist, Jihan pieces together the history of the father she barely remembers and the troubled politics of their past. Combining a superb collection of archival footage and intimate, revealing interviews, My Father and Qaddafi takes the audience on a raw and reflective journey about a daughter’s struggle to connect with her father, a man caught between autocracy and resistance.

Synopsis

On what begins as an ordinary day, two brothers wait—restless, suspended—for the return of their estranged father, journalist and activist Folarin. He suddenly appears and takes his sons on a thrilling, unexpected trip into Lagos to collect his long-overdue unpaid salary. Set against the backdrop of Nigeria’s pivotal 1993 presidential election, one that offers a choice between military rule and democracy, the city is bracing for backlash. Together, the three must navigate the commotion as the nation breathlessly awaits the results.

Based on director Akinola Davies Jr.’s personal experiences, My Father’s Shadow is a poetic and moving meditation on love, legacy, and the human cost of political conviction. The film delicately traces the intersections of social resistance and private reckoning, tenderly contrasting a complex portrait of fatherhood against his sons’ coming-of-age. Beautifully textured 16mm images lend authenticity and nostalgia to this snapshot of history.

Synopsis

The Chilean desert, 1982. It is rumored that a single loving gaze between two men is how the plague spreads—an illness both mysterious and lethal that is tearing through a remote mining town. At the center of the paranoia is a community on the margins: a home where eleven-year-old Lidia grows up among a fierce and loving queer family. As fear and violence begin to spread even faster than the plague, Lidia sets out to find the truth about this mythical epidemic to protect her beloved kin.

With sensuous magical realism and poetic tenderness set against the harsh desert backdrop, director Diego Céspedes draws us into a pivotal moment in queer history as lived by its most marginalized and misunderstood protagonists. An ode to the care and resilience of trans family, this breathtaking debut never loses sight of the power of love in the face of dire circumstances.

Synopsis

If Invasion of the Body Snatchers traded pods for human pyramids and took place in a Japanese high school, it would be New Group.

Ai is an ordinary schoolgirl easily swayed by the opinions of her peers. But her worldview begins to change with the arrival of nonconformist newcomer Yu, who returns from living abroad just in time to witness a series of unexplained events taking hold in their community. The bizarre phenomenon begins with a student freezing on all fours in the middle of a soccer field; soon, others join in, positioning themselves alongside and on top of him. Before long, the entire town is overrun with human pyramids. In a world where no one is safe from these random gymnastic formations—or the self-styled fascist leadership aligning itself with these “new groups”—Ai and Yu must renounce individualism and assimilate or face destruction.

A disarming and strange second feature from director Yûta Shimotsu, New Group takes body horror in grotesque directions to create an eerie new entry in the contemporary J-horror canon. The uncanny contortions gleefully captured by the filmmaker’s kinetic camera are both funny and disturbing—but the film’s astute commentary on the rise of authoritarianism in today’s world is what’s most unsettling.