Author: Jan Hamilton

Claire is on her way home after a career in California as a photographer. She’s still relatively young, but she feels she never really accomplished her goals. Claire thinks she didn’t reach the excellence she strove for and must give up on her dreams and settle for something less. Driving across the desert, Claire stops… Continue reading SXSW 2024: DESERT ROAD

In 2015, young Japanese journalist Shiori Ito met an older, highly respected writer to discuss the possibility of her getting a job in Washington. He asks her to meet him for dinner; she is surprised that no one else joins them. He has a close relationship with Prime Minister Abe, the country’s leader, and a… Continue reading SXSW 2024: BLACK BOX DIARIES

It was relatively easy to be sent to The Home for Wayward and Delinquent Girls in 1950s New Zealand. If you were a 12-year-old who shoplifted a few trinkets, if you were poor and homeless, or if you engaged in any sexual activity, chances were that you would end up there. We follow Nettie, Daisy,… Continue reading SXSW 2024: WE WERE DANGEROUS

Jin-sook (Yum Jung-ah) and her family have a fishing boat in a coastal South Korean village where she and a group of women free dive (no air tanks) for clams, but nearby factories have polluted the sea so badly that their catch is mostly dead and rotting. A friend offers the boat’s captain, Jin-sooks father,… Continue reading SXSW 2024: SMUGGLERS

Louise is a screw-up. She drinks too much and stalks her ex-boyfriend, who has moved on to a new relationship. While trying to climb to a window to see his new apartment, Louise slips, falls to the sidewalk, and breaks her hip. In the hospital, she is roommates with Antonia, an older Polish woman who… Continue reading SXSW 2023: LATE BLOOMERS

Two astronauts are on a mission stretched to three years because they have lost their navigation and communication systems. Adam and Jane can be relatively self-sufficient, with hens that provide eggs, a goat for milk, and a sustainable garden. Adam is sad because he is down to his last few pop-tarts. They get along well,… Continue reading SXSW 2023: IF YOU WERE THE LAST

When you hear the film’s premise, you might assume, “lecherous youth pastor seduces innocent teen,” but that’s not quite the case here. Seventeen-year-old Jem Starling has had a crush on a youth pastor named Owen for a while. He and his wife have just returned from a mission to Puerto Rico that lasted a year,… Continue reading SXSW 2023: THE STARLING GIRL

This film reimagines the Mary and Joseph story with some nice supernatural and twenty-first-century twists. We first meet Maria, an innocent teen in Belize who inexplicably finds herself pregnant. A menacing stranger arrives to kill her, but she escapes after he slays her friends and family. The stranger tells people he is Baal, a biblical… Continue reading SXSW 2023: HAIL MARY

We pick up our story two years after the first film, Becky, left off. Now an orphan, sixteen-year-old Becky lives with an elderly black woman who took her in. She works at a diner, and no one wonders why she’s not in school. Becky seems to be doing okay until she encounters rude jerks at… Continue reading SXSW 2023: THE WRATH OF BECKY

The film starts with the interview of a presumed pedophile by Deena and Amos, two government agents. Their subject, Gareth, has worked worldwide for various computer and CGI companies. The agents believe he has something to do with a child porn site of a young girl named Cherry; they think he knows where the girl… Continue reading SXSW 2023: THE ARTIFICE GIRL