The makers of Trafficked walk a fine line, embedding their advocacy in an action film and conveying the horror of sexual slavery without edging into exploitation. Director Will Wallace achieves this balance by emphasizing the inner lives of enslaved women even as the men who peddle them see them as meat.
The coming-of-age movie is the go-to genre for directors in their twenties and thirties still feeling the reverberations of those excitable years. But an octogenarian? Terry Sanders embraces naïve wisdom in the wispy drama Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey.
In his debut film Some Freaks, writer/director Ian MacAllister-McDonald focuses on teenage misfits. Tagged as irredeemable outsiders in their Rhode Island high school, three seniors cope with indignation and hopelessness.
Director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte wanders through Gus Van Sant territory until he finds his own path in As You Are, which captures the dreamy intimacy of teenage relationships where boundaries between friendship and love prove porous.
When Emily (Evanna Lynch) experiences a sinking feeling in Simon Fitzmaurice’s melancholy teen drama, she submerges herself in water and contemplates whether or not she should rise to the surface.