FRUITS OF LABOR
SXSW: Documentary Spotlight
Ashley Solis is a high school senior who must divide her time between school and supporting her family as a second-generation Mexican American. Located in a California working class town, the harshness of agricultural labor in the strawberry fields shares a stark contrast with the beautiful nature and relationship to her spiritual ancestral upbringing.
The Thing That Ate Birds
Midnight Shorts
Set on the North Yorkshire Moors, the film follows Abel, the Head Gamekeeper as he discovers the thing that is eating his grouse. His blunt and violent response brings the menace back home shattering his already crumbling relationship with his wife.
Kid Candidate
Documentary Feature Competition
Kid Candidate, a Gunpowder & Sky production and in association with XTR, s a feature-length documentary from up-and-coming filmmaker Jasmine Stodel (“Who Is”, Gentrification for Good? Pop Brixton Uproxx Reports). It tells the story of Hayden Pedigo, a 24-year-old artist and experimental musician in Amarillo, Texas as he makes an unorthodox run for city council. As he rapidly grows from a neophyte to a legitimate candidate, we see the ways that big money politics keep youth and minority candidates from participating in American government. By the time Hayden reaches election night, he has faced the crushing baggage of his own religious upbringing, a political system rigged to favor one of the wealthiest families in America, and the social pressure brought to bear against anyone who dares to change the system.
The Feast
Midnighters
THE FEAST is told over the course of one evening as a wealthy family gathers for a sumptuous dinner in their ostentatious house in the Welsh mountains. The guests are a local business man and a neighbouring farmer and the intent is to secure a business deal to mine in the surrounding countryside. When a mysterious young woman arrives to be their waitress for the evening, the family’s beliefs and values are challenged as her quiet yet disturbing presence begins to unravel their lives – slowly, deliberately and with the most terrifying consequences.
