Madeline’s Madeline. 2018. USA. Directed by Josephine Decker. 94 min.
Madeline (stunning newcomer Helena Howard) has become an integral part of a prestigious theater troupe. When the workshop’s ambitious director (Molly Parker) pushes the teenager to weave her rich interior world and troubled history with her mother (Miranda July) into their collective art, the lines between performance and reality begin to blur. The resulting battle between imagination and appropriation tears out of the rehearsal space and through all three women’s lives.
Writer/director Josephine Decker has long been an independent filmmaker to admire, utilizing a welcome expressionistic approach that imbues her subjects with a vibrant sense of urgency. Anchored by a virtuoso performance from Howard, whose powerful screen presence commands attention, Decker’s film displays a rare sensitivity to the messy struggles of discovering one's self, and defies easy narrative categorization.
Low Road. 2018. USA. Directed by Eleanor Wilson. 9 min.
Wilson’s tense, slow-burning thriller, about a woman consumed by the image of her husband’s affair, was a 2018 Future of Film Is Female fund recipient.