Posts in Film Fests
Sundance ‘25: Rabbit Trap

In theory, creating an effective folk horror movie shouldn’t be too difficult; there’s a wealth of myth and lore to pull into making a film that both haunts and mystifies. But in practice, modern scary movies tend to fumble this easy bag with dull writing and worse plots. Writer-director Brit Chainey falls into that same camp with Rabbit Trap, his feature debut that premiered at Sundance Film Festival. The movie tries to capitalize on the wild and weird beauty of Wales to create a folk horror story with a strong emotional tenor, but clever visual tricks and an evocative setting can’t save Rabbit Trap from its own incoherent plot.

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Sundance ‘25: Seeds

In her directorial debut Seeds, which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary, Brittany Shyne offers an intimate look at the fate of Black farmers in the American South. Shooting in black-and-white with a single-minded focus on her subjects, Shyne creates what feels like an elegy for a way of living on the brink of dying out.

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Tribeca '24: Witches

Elizabeth Sankey weaves an intricate tale of female persecution and its relation to postpartum depression, soaked with the tears of her own harrowing experience in a psychiatric hospital after her own breakdown. The documentary works as an expose of her institutionalization intercut with iconic witches throughout film and television history and the confessions of other suffering mothers.

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Tribeca '24: The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write About a Serial Killer: "Yes, Sir, I Can Boogie."

Despite its titular (and occasionally apt) shallowness, Tolga Karaçelik’s entry at Tribeca is a great ride that manages to find moments of poignancy.

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Pondering the Multitudinous Laundromat with The Bleacher directors Nicole Daddona and Adam Wilder

Nicole Daddano and Adam Wilder’s short animated film The Bleacher makes the viewer a voyeur in a dark and gritty world, centered around a laundromat where a regular has some very dirty laundry to do indeed. HFC sat down with Nicole and Adam to discuss all the strange turns the film takes and shifting from live action to animation.

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