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The Sweet East

Dir: Sean Price Williams, 2023, U.S.A., 104 minutes, Cert: 18

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Sun 14 April // 17:00
Tue 16 April // 20:00

Tickets: £5 (full)

Smack in the middle of a high school trip to Washington DC, self-possessed teen Lillian (Talia Ryder) breaks off from her classmates, kicking off a journey straight down the rabbit hole of the New Weird America.

In the rollicking feature debut for both director Sean Price Williams (known for his grotty-beautiful cinematography for films by Alex Ross Perry and the Safdie brothers) and critic-turned-screenwriter Nick Pinkerton, the Eastern seaboard becomes the site for a deranged and hilarious autopsy of contemporary U.S. life.

Lillian becomes an indifferent sounding board to all manner of loquacious, callous oddballs, including a sexually numb, white supremacist pedant (a delightfully committed Simon Rex) and a pair of wildly excitable indie filmmakers (Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy O. Harris, comedy gold). Tying it all together is a performance of remarkable poise and confidence by Ryder (memorable in Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always), who provides the tender center to this cockeyed exhibition of all-purpose mockery.

"A shape-shifting satire about modern American subcultures." —Beatrice Loayza, The New York Times

"A weird little bitch of a film and I ate it all up. God bless the United Vapes of America!!" —Douglas Greenwood, i-D