The smash hit that launched creator and leading man Lin-Manuel Miranda into the Broadway stratosphere, In the Heights was less an overnight sensation than a constantly developing passion project. Early iterations of the musical, about a group of residents in Washington Heights who are more family than neighbors, originated at Wesleyan University and Off-Broadway before subsequently making the move to the Richard Rodgers Theatre and winning the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical. Highlighting the intricacies, passions, and dreams of Dominican culture (as well as the inner struggles and homesickness of immigrants and first-generation New Yorkers), the show was praised […]

Port Authority, filmmaker Danielle Lessovitz’s gritty debut feature, is “so New York” that one of its least surprising traits is that Martin Scorsese is credited as executive producer. Opening in the cold, shadow-filled halls of the metro transportation hub that provides the film its title, the narrative follows Paul (Fionn Whitehead), a twentysomething arriving in from Pittsburgh, as he attempts to get in touch with his estranged sister (Louisa Krause). A bloody altercation on the subway leads to a chance encounter that connects Paul to a few (temporary) friends, odd jobs, and shelters to live in.  One evening, Paul meets […]

At the Berlin International Film Festival in 2014, the German-born Anja Marquardt’s debut feature, She’s Lost Control, premiered to positive notices and went on to a healthy festival life. A fictional account of a graduate student (Brooke Bloom) doubling as a professional sex surrogate for men struggling with physical intimacy, the film represented a unique new voice on the independent film scene, ultimately netting Marquardt Film Independent Spirit Award nominations for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay.  Several years removed from that film’s theatrical run, Marquardt has now taken on a project with similar themes but a much more […]

Despite the grim promise of its title, Robert Machoian’s The Killing of Two Lovers is more emotionally brutal than it is violent. Set in a Utah town so small that everyone knows everyone, the film follows David (Clayne Crawford), a depressed everyman who has recently separated from his wife and the mother of his children, Nikki (Sepideh Moafi). Well-intentioned though it may be, their agreement to spend time apart and potentially date other people sends David into a downward spiral, and once he’s made aware of his wife’s new male friend, Derek (Chris Coy), things grow more complicated and conclude […]

From its double-entendre title to the hilarious sightgag of a closing scene, Emma Seligman’s debut feature, Shiva Baby, is universal in its uncomfortable awkwardness and specific in how it chooses to bathe in it. Adapted and expanded from her NYU thesis short, Seligman’s film follows Danielle (Rachel Sennott), a young Jewish New Yorker who has taken to sex work to solidify her funds. After concluding a session with a client, Max (Danny Deferrari), Danielle heads to Flatbush to meet up with her parents (Polly Draper and Fred Melamed) and attend the shiva of a family friend. Faced with unending nagging […]

Unfolding over the course of one evening in the Hasidic community of Boro Park, Brooklyn, Keith Thomas’s debut feature, The Vigil, gets more unsettling the darker the night gets. Dave Davis plays Yakov, a young man experiencing difficulty living a newly secular life. As securing a job has proved difficult, he agrees to a friend’s impromptu request to serve as a shomer, watching over the cold body of a local man, Rubin Litvak, before the deceased is laid to rest. Anticipating an easy few hours of surfing the web on his smartphone, Yakov settles in for his watchman duties. Unfortunately […]

Shatara Michelle Ford’s debut feature Test Pattern addresses sensitive material with clinically painstaking detail. The narrative begins in 2017 at an Austin bar as Renesha (Brittany S. Hall) meets Evan (Will Brill), a thirtysomething white guy whose liquid courage prompts him to ask for Renesha’s phone number. Somewhat surprisingly, the two hit it off and grow to become a loving couple.One evening, Renesha begrudgingly (she has work in the morning) meets up with a friend for drinks at a local bar, where they meet two flirtatious men who proceed to drug them. Nearing unconsciousness, Renesha is taken to an unfamiliar location […]

Deep in the desert of Crestone, Colorado live a group of Soundcloud rappers who live carefree off the land, growing marijuana, recording music, and posting goofy videos to Instagram? Crestone, Marnie Ellen Hertzler’s debut feature, journeys deep into the isolated, sandy abyss, placing her camera amongst an eccentric group of lost boys who have no use for the outside world, even as it steadily burns around them. If influential TikTokers can erect a California-based Hype House to stock up on “content creators,” Crestone is as appropriate a place as any to discover where these wild things are. Hertzler, a 25 […]

Born in what was then Leningrad, U.S.S.R., Viktor Kossakovsky embarked on his journey to become one of the world’s most celebrated and elemental nonfiction filmmakers with a love of photography and a desire to explore the complexities of Russian history. After taking on various below-the-line roles at the Leningrad Studio of Documentaries, Kossakovsky directed his first feature, Losev, a black-and-white portrait of the elderly Russian philosopher Aleksei Fedorovich Losev. For his next black-and-white film, The Belovs, Kossakovsky turned inward, documenting a spirited but warring brother and his sister living on a farm in a western Russian village he had visited […]