Motell Gyn Foster

A sumptuous, spellbinding anti-biopic as provocative and elusive as its subject, this hypnotic journey through the world of Caribbean surrealist writer and anticolonial activist Suzanne Césaire daringly deconstructs the process of bringing an actually lived life to film. In the sleepy palm groves of the tropics, a small group of filmmakers—including an actor and new mother (Zita Hanrot) haunted by voices as she embarks on inhabiting the title role—stage scenes from the enigmatic intellectual’s life, exploring her youth in Martinique, literary legacy, and relationship with her husband, the writer and politician Aimé Césaire. Inspired by the structures of Suzanne Césaire’s own writing, which often took a colonial convention and unraveled it, THE BALLAD OF SUZANNE CÉSAIRE plants us firmly in the darkness and desire of its subject while acknowledging the impossibility of resuscitating a legacy partially lost to time.

In the sweltering back kitchen of a Times Square restaurant, undocumented cook Pedro is caught between mounting pressures at work and a complicated romance with waitress Julia. When money goes missing, suspicion spreads, igniting tensions that threaten to upend the fragile hopes of the staff.

Over 36 hours in three different wars, a group of five soldiers grapples with mortality, futility, and an increasingly volatile combat situation.