Director Sylvia Caminer brings her new film Follow Her to Fantaspoa 2022. It features Dani Barker as social media up-and-comer Jess as she grinds away, posting live videos about her various paid gigs. When a glitch in her facial blur app causes an online frenzy, Jess must navigate not only a barrage of new followers and mixed comments but a new job offer. A meta revenge thriller, Follow Her, will have your heart in your throat.
Luke Cook plays Tom, the man who hires Jess to assist him in writing an erotic thriller. He’s effortless suave and ceaselessly witty. It is tricky to distinguish between written dialogue and what might be improved. The script allows him to play up the maniacal angle. You’re still rooting for him as a genre fan. Cook is exceptionally enigmatic, and Dani Barker keeps up with his energy.
Barker plays double duty as Jess and screenwriter. She bears a striking resemblance to Kate Hudson and Chloe Fineman and possesses the charm of both combined. Barker understands the complexities of social media and the myriad of baggage that can accompany the lifestyle. She’s given audiences a slick screenplay.
Follow Her would make a great triple feature evening with CAM and Spree. Overall, the meta aspect of the screenplay comes into focus at around the 38-minute mark. The innate anxiety of being a woman alone with a man is front and center. Follow Her had me in full panic mode at 45 minutes. Each consecutive beat skillfully ups the ante. It speaks to the dark side of the internet age, gigging, vulnerability, sexual control, greed, and the consequence-free world we see more and more. Barker cleverly utilizes horror tropes and acknowledges them directly. Fantaspoa 2022 audiences are in for a treat. Genre fans will go nuts for this killer film. I’d “like & subscribe” for franchise development.
FOLLOW HER screens as part of Fantaspoa 2022. For more information on the festival, please visit www.fantaspoa.com.
After losing her mother, Sammy lashes out physically and emotionally. When her dad forces her to take a business class in summer school, she encounters a magician by happenstance. Under the guise of a final project, Sammy trades anger for magic. 
Rhea Perlman
“A Cripple’s Dance” bases pieces of its choreography on Kelsey and Gabe’s moments of impact and what followed in the water. The intimacy of the camera work is visceral. Gabe’s lyrics are profoundly beautiful and hit you in the heart like a dagger. The result will give you chills. 
Co-Directors: Kelsey Peterson, Daniel Klein
Dianna Agron
PTSD is something that never truly leaves you. As a sexual assault survivor, I can attest to the flashbacks and how my trauma affected my relationships moving forward. It’s a permanent piece of my psyche. I understand why women don’t come forward, even to family. Not until #MeToo became mainstream did I reveal my hurt to family, and even that occurred via social media. Jane’s functionality in Disfluency mimics mine. PTSD is often an unseen burden.
Director 
Comic relief comes in the form of 
Opening with a disturbing turn, 
Alexandra Loreth
The creature design is reminiscent of something that might come out of the Wētā Workshop from Jim Henson‘s team. Its evolution is fascinating. It manages to be shockingly grotesque and yet adorable. If you’re a fan of 
“With great power comes great responsibility.” A group of children in an apartment complex realizes they have a strange and often dangerous bond. They possess otherworldly powers. As the connection between the children grows, so too do their abilities. The Innocents plays like a mysterious superhero and villain origin story.
The complexity of The Innocents is endless. This young cast carries a heavy emotional weight. They delighted and terrified me. The evolution of this dark sci-fi narrative gave me full-body goosebumps. The volatility of young feelings is on an entirely uncharted plain. What these characters do with their power speaks to the purity of good and evil. Look for an extraordinary turn from 
TOPSIDE is a dark and dispiriting portal into the literal underbelly of New York City. The film follows a suburban community hidden amongst the subway tunnels of the city, and the struggles a mother and daughter face when they are suddenly evicted from this home. They are forced to venture up onto the city streets, but even there, there’s no real light to be found. Powerful but stomach-turning, this stuff is bleak with a capital B.
By contrast, Little’s first experience in the sunlight is traumatic and saturated with new noises and fears. The narrative moves behind Nikki, and here the film began to lose me. Where Little’s view is full of naïve wonder, Nikki’s is laid low by the crushing reality of her circumstances. However wonderful life in the tunnels may seem to Little, there’s no romancing Nikki’s reality. But it also quickly becomes clear that those dark, dirty tunnels below Manhattan are in fact far safer than what lies ahead.
The Thief Collector is a film that is not what you expect. The film is nominally about the theft of de Kooning’s painting Woman Ochre from the University of Arizona in 1985. The painting was cut from the frame and carried off by a couple not long after the museum opened on the day after Thanksgiving. Where it went or who took it remained a mystery for decades…until it was rediscovered in the effects of Rita and Jerry Alter. While that is a part of the story, the film actually is a look at the Alters and their obsessions. This is not a look at the crime but at the way people feed their obsessions and how seemingly normal people almost always seem to have another side to them.
Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne, Celeste Barber, Daniel Webber, and Thomas Campbell give superb performances. Seriously Red lives and breathes in screenwriter and star Krew Boylan. She brings unbridled nuance to Red. Comedy timing from the gods, slapstick chops, and a voice for days, Boylan owns every scene. You can’t take your eyes off of her.
Urara Takano plays Kingyo, a voice actress whose passion for her work is clear to the audience from the very beginning. In 15 minutes we get an emotional journey worth every second of screen time. Competing with a new generation proficient in self-promotion, how does a dedicated veteran compete? The Voice Actress gives us a peek behind the curtain that is the boys club of entertainment, while simultaneously putting us inside the mind of an accomplished performer. Writer-director Anna J. Takayama gives Takano space to bloom. I would happily watch a feature on this character. There is a purposeful beauty to the costumes, especially the use of the color red. The undeniable quirkiness from Takano makes you fall in love with her. It’s no wonder the short garnered SXSW22’s 
Jane and Charlotte find common ground in parenting styles and celebrity. They speak openly about Jane’s lifelong dependency on sleeping pills, inspiration for songs, and her various marriages. The loss of her daughter Kate was perhaps the most impactful event in her life. The grief she carries is palpable. Jane and Charlotte discuss maternal guilt. It’s one of the most poignant through lines in the film. Charlotte’s eye and adoration for her mother are written all over this doc. It’s a lovely ode to a beloved icon from a daughter who continues to idolize her. As a mother, Jane By Charlotte has a revelatory feeling of intimacy. Gainsbourg‘s documentary makes me jealous in the best way possible.
Simultaneously awkward and natural, this is an awesome and important ten minutes about accessibility, perception, and power. Stay for the credits!
Synopsis: For a stand-up comic, a drastic life change can mean losing one’s entire act. Bisexual comedian Krista has decided her relationship with a trans woman is worth coming out over—but will she commit to an entire rebrand with one gay haircut?
A seemingly simple change with a lot of weight attached. In 7 minutes we get an entire journey about identity filled with some quirky weirdness.
Writer-director Christian Nolan Jones brings to life a coming-of-age short that dives into the universal feeling of acceptance. Set in the 90s, two best friends Jibril and Tawanda are on a mission to purchase an item that will catch the eye of his crush. Glitter Ain’t Gold perfectly captures middle-school angst. The costumes and overall aesthetic were spot on. Our two young leads Alfred R. Lewis III and Priah Ferguson are stellar. This might as well have been a documentary with their natural ability to captivate the audience. Each beat is authentic. Glitter Ain’t Gold is a tight treatment for s feature or series.
At 41, I cannot imagine navigating a new relationship at this precise moment in time. I remember when Match.com first became a thing and how weird I thought it sounded. Then I recall attending four weddings in the years that followed, each couple had met through Match. RADICAL HONESTY, a 7-minute short film, tackles the complexities that Gen Z and Millenials face day-to-day. Performances are natural and the opening camerawork is fun. It is no surprise that the idea of radical honesty is something we experience more and more now. With the push of social media platforms, everyone is encouraged to share an opinion. Yes, this leads to awareness, self-discovery, and connections across the globe, if we’re talking upsides, only. My Xennial self also understands this to be a potential trap. C’est la vie.
Why do people climb mountains? What is it that drives a person to climb to the peak of the highest mountain on earth? As a person afraid of heights and generally risk-averse, I, for one, will certainly never understand. But whatever it is that lights that kind of internal fire within a person, it is certainly not a male instinct alone. 
THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY is a snapshot of all the people we pass on a journey; the waitress, the motel manager, or the convenience store clerk. It’s a picture of America. The sound editing is a flurry of sounds from a car radio, local and national news reports, music, and whatever Tanna stumbles upon on her way.
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