Northern Premiere
Remy, a seemingly naive and devout young woman, finds herself cast out from her religious cult. With no place to turn, she immerses herself into the underground world of truck stop sex workers a.k.a. “lot lizards,” courtesy of her hosts, Sadie , Riley, Liv and Levi . Under the watchful eye of their matriarch, Nora, and enigmatic local lawman, Sheriff Rex, Remy navigates between her strained belief system and the lot lizard code to find her true calling in life.
Grimmfest Says: John Swab, screenwriter and co-director (with Corey Asraf) of LET ME MAKE YOU A MARTYR, one of Grimmfest’s more controversial opening night movies, back in 2016, returns with something equally challenging and confrontational. A sour, seedy, sweaty fusion of sunbaked Desert Noir, Southern Gothic, and Social (Hyper-)Realism, it plays like a manic mash-up of Jim Thompson, JT Leroy, Flannery O’Connor and Hubert Selby, Jr., directed by a MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO-era Gus Van Sant. Lurid but literate, sordid but sympathetic to its cast of damaged characters, it balances brutal violence and in-your-face frankness with black humour, and unexpected moments of poetry and grace, in an unflinching exploration of love, madness, religious gaslighting, and the brutal cost of redemption. Beautifully shot, with a fine sense of its grubby, desert-scrubbed, middle-of-nowhere Montana locations, and boasting an extraordinary, all-cult-star cast, including William Baldwin, LET ME MAKE YOU A MARTYR’s Sam Quartin, Olivia Luccardi (IT FOLLOWS, CHANNEL ZERO, ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, THE DEUCE), Owen Mitchell (SUPER DARK TIMES, X, MY HEART CAN’T BEAT UNLESS YOU TELL IT TO), Eden Brolin (YELLOWSTONE, daughter of Josh, granddaughter of James), and screenwriter & actress Guinevere Turner (AMERICAN PSYCHO, THE BETTIE PAGE STORY), all making the best of the razor sharp dialogue and deft characterisation, this is unsettling, nerve-rattling, and deeply thought-provoking filmmaking. And most definitely not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
FANCY SAVING MONEY BY PICKING UP A FULL FESTIVAL PASS OR A DAY PASS INSTEAD OF AN INDIVIDUAL SCREENING TICKET? GO HERE
SCREENINGS
SCREENINGS