MEMORY, the L.A.-based production and now distribution company featured in Filmmaker‘s 2016 25 New Faces list announced today the release plans for New Strains, a microbudget, camcorder-shot pandemic comedy from a pair of filmmakers, Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan, also featured on our list. The film will screen at the Roxy Cinema in New York (June 13), Nitehawk Cinema Williamsburg (June 15 & 16), and Los Angeles’ Now Instant Image Hall (June 21 & 22), with a North American digital release to follow on Friday, July 19.

In New Strains, a pandemic — not necessarily COVID-19 — strands a couple, Kallia (Shaw) and Ram (Kamalakanthan), who have decided to vacation in New York at the apartment of Kallie’s out-of-town uncle. When the government institutes a lockdown, toxic behavior patterns between the two emerge — behavior that could be the result of just the enforced closeness, or something more…. The film was made in a defiantly DIY fashion, using an old camcorder, improvised dialogue and no crew. In her 25 New Face profile, Natalia Keogan wrote, “Wryly funny and cuttingly satirical, New Strains has the rare distinction of being a pandemic film that actually feels authentic to the moment in which it was made.”

Previously for Filmmaker, the couple penned a debrief on their trip to Rotterdam, where the film won a special jury award, and I interviewed them on how they used generative AI to create their poster.