Synopsis

Chicago journalist Seymour Hersh has uncovered some of the most momentous political scandals in American history, from exposing the U.S. military’s My Lai massacre in Vietnam to its torturing of Iraqi citizens at Abu Ghraib. After decades spent trying to get Hersh to agree to make a documentary, Oscar winner Laura Poitras (CitizenFour), together with Mark Obenhaus, finally get their moment, sitting with the occasionally combative Hersh to do a deep dive into his history, his investigations, and his sources, telling a story not only about the legendary indefatigable reporter but also about the need to hold those in power accountable for their actions.

No hagiographic portrait, Cover-Up shows Pulitzer Prize winner Hersh as a complex and contentious figure whose reputation has taken a fair share of knocks, even as he’s been one of America’s most important truth-tellers. As President Nixon says of Hersh in an archived audio recording, “The son of a bitch is a son of the bitch, but he’s usually right.” As we observe brief scenes of Hersh still working to expose abuses in Gaza, the film serves as a testament to the vital need for investigative journalism in our precarious modern world.

Synopsis

Lina, an accomplished Argentinian designer and artist, walks alone around the wintery Swiss town where she has just received an award. In a sudden and dangerous impulse, she plunges from a bridge into the icy river, emerging unhurt but shaken. Back in Buenos Aires, she is confronted with a crippling phobia of water, yet she feels unable to admit to her loving husband and young daughter what she is going through. Estranged from the world she has built for herself, she begins to reach out to reconnect with a painful and distant past life that she had hoped to forever leave behind.

Milagros Mumenthaler crafts an intimate, emotional portrait of a woman coming undone—one that approaches trauma with profound empathy and paints Lina’s surreal interiority with the full breadth of its complexity. A haunting, lyrical meditation on identity, belonging, and motherhood, The Currents journeys through memory with delicate grace.

Synopsis

A young filmmaker tasks himself with reclaiming the Dracula story for Romanian cinema, only to experience a crisis of creativity. Determined to make his film, he channels his ideas into an artificial intelligence program, DR. A.I. JUDEX 0.0, generating a collage of stories that include a seedy, fellatio-filled stage performance of the Dracula myth and a real-life vampire hunt through the streets of modern-day Bucharest—not to mention a series of hideous, uncanny renderings of Vlad the Impaler and plenty of zombies.

Bold, unpredictable, and unapologetically over-the-top, Dracula is the absurdist brainchild of iconoclastic master Radu Jude (2023’s Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World), brilliantly commenting on the pervasive ugliness of AI and offering up a deft and pointed survey of our modern visual landscape. In Jude’s hands, Bram Stoker’s landmark novel couples with grand folkloric traditions to produce an unforgettable, maximalist examination of mythmaking and the cinema itself.

Synopsis

Lisa, a photographer, goes missing while on assignment to photograph rural soccer fields in Georgia. Troubled by her disappearance, her father Irakli embarks on a journey across the country’s vast and varied landscape in hopes of finding her. He’s accompanied by Lisa’s invisible best friend, Levani, and together the two travel from town to town searching for clues.

Shot entirely on an outdated cellphone (an ancient Sony Ericsson, to be precise), Dry Leaf is a radical reimagining of the “road movie” genre. Stunning Georgian scenery—from majestic mountains to idyllic sundrenched farms—is rendered in blurred, pixelated images that challenge our ideas about natural beauty in cinema. Backgrounded by an atmospheric, elegiac score and featuring a subtle, Kiarostami-like wit, the film is a moving, transcendent meditation on family, country, and life on the road written in a cinematic language all its own.

Synopsis

In an afterlife where souls have one week to decide where to spend eternity, Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) is faced with the impossible choice between the man she spent her life with (Miles Teller) and her first love (Callum Turner), who died young and has waited decades for her to arrive. Guided by an Afterlife Coordinator (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), they have just one week to confront the ultimate dilemma: where, and with whom, to spend eternity. From this whimsical concept blooms a bold, heart-stirring rom-com, a journey into a charming pop vision of post-earthly existence and how we take the measure of a lifetime of love and happiness.