With the London and New York film festivals just wrapped, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour banking insane box office bucks, horror fans having a Totally Killer month and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon just days from entering cinemas, we are truly in the business end of the year.

As always, and more now than ever, we’re paying close attention to pictures that might slip out of the daylight and into the blank space between promotional spots, which indie filmmakers know all too well. So while the blockbusters enjoy their champagne problems, get your watchlists open for this month’s selection of gems, hand-picked by our Journal crew… Ready for it? 

We Grown Now

Written and directed by Minhal Baig.
Screening at AFI Fest October 26 and 28.
Sony Pictures Classics

Coming-of-age fans, it’s time to open up your hearts a little wider as Minhal Baig’s wondrous sophomore feature We Grown Now is here. The film received its world premiere at TIFF this year, where it won the Changemaker Award as selected by the Next Wave committee. “The entire time I had a bubble in my throat and that bubble burst during the last scene,” writes Letterboxd member AJ in a 4.5-star review—a feeling I wholly echo for this deeply felt movie.

Baig remembers how joyous making We Grown Now was, as the sweet young actors Blake Cameron James and Gian Knight Ramirez, playing Malik and Eric respectively, held the keys to the castle. “It was so much fun to come to set every day and realize that two ten-year-olds were my boss. They got to tell me what to do,” the director says. “They were so ready to live in this world. They were the light of the movie.” We follow these two best friends as they navigate their changing world as lifelong residents of the Cabrini-Green public housing complex in 1992 Chicago—an enormous story for these growing boys.

“We had this process of taking off the coat of the character at the end of day,” Baig explains. “I wanted them to preserve themselves in the process and separate themselves from the heavy and dramatic scenes.” Still, there is light and beauty: We Grown Now nods to Spike Lee’s Crooklyn and much of Paolo Sorrentino’s work in the emotional and visual sensibilities of working with child actors and a sense of home. The filmmaker summarizes the emotional maximalism beautifully: “I wanted to just make the world feel big like it does for these kids at that age.” EK

WATCH: FOUR FAVORITES WITH MINHAL BAIG

Part of the genius of When Evil Lurks is its clever doling out of just enough knowledge to the audience to scare us out of our minds while not spending too much time on the how and the why to the point of demystifying the terror. “A Fulci-esque descent into nightmare with an elaborate mythology just out of reach,” FakeRobHunter writes, “and while I would love a follow-up digging into things even more, the film is perfect as is.”

Justine describes the film as being “about personal responsibility and the myriad ways humanity is deluded into believing we are above or somehow outside of the brutality of the natural world,” hitting on the underlying, primal concept that we’re all doomed and all these characters are doing is staving off the inevitable. As Tasha says, “the characters don’t have a hope, innocence won’t save anyone, and God is presumed to be dead,” and if that sounds like the kind of relentlessly bleak nihilism that you love having keep you up at night, When Evil Lurks is sure to satisfy your appetite. MB

Omoiyari

Directed by Kishi Bashi and Justin Taylor Smith.
In limited US theaters October 6.
MTV Documentary Films

Kishi Bashi, one-time member of the band Of Montreal and a talented solo artist in his own right, is one to watch and one to listen to. The ‘Song Film’ began as improvisational violin performances by Kishi Bashi while visiting landmark incarceration camps around the US that were established by Executive Order 9066, which persecuted Japanese-Americans following the Pearl Harbor attacks in WWII. Out of those performances grew his fourth album (of the same title, released in 2019) and now a passion-project feature documentary co-directed by Justin Taylor Smith.

Omoiyari is a Japanese word that means to have sympathy or compassion for another. For Kishi Bashi, the profound impact of putting himself in the shoes of the detainees brings him to the way history is repeating itself with refugees interned at the US border today. The violent act of government stripped the assimilated Japanese-Americans of their American identities—to the point where Kishi Bashi himself feels distant from his own Japanese and American identity, despite having no relatives at the camp. The documentary acts as an essential piece of education, an urgent amplifier of activism and a reclamation of an artist’s soul.

“[A] quietly devastating dissection of what it means to be a bi-cultural artist, but moreso, a bi-cultural person, in America today,” describes Joshua. In a politicized country where policy is too often driven by emotion and fear, the acknowledgment of history—especially the most difficult-to-take parts—is more important than ever. For those who will be introduced to Kishi Bashi through his debut film, he tells us that he “hope[s] viewers will continue to cultivate empathy for diverse artistic voices. It’s a beautiful world out there!” Omoiyari to all. JM

Keshavarz also won the Waldo Salt screenwriting award at Sundance for a script that has attracted some lower Letterboxd ratings for its flightiness—but fans reckon it is the ideal framework for Iranian family complexity. Corey suggests The Persian Version is “structured in a way that thematically parallels the journey of searching for a story. The first half is sprawling, panicked, cliche, and as the film progresses it becomes focused, specific, and an overall beautiful stream-of-consciousness family legacy drama.”

Marlo agrees, praising Keshavarz’s “joyous” approach: “While I may understand the criticism behind the multiple narratives and time jumps, the overall effect of it works extremely well for me… Keshavarz abstracts the idea of family history, which works particularly well for Persian culture and the secrets we have kept as we fled a dying country.” Several Letterboxd members have been having moments of true recognition: of boyfriends, and cousins among the cast. On that note, there is also an abundance of thirst for one family member in particular: Jerry Habibi (we see you, SixInchBone, VaporwaveVixen and Eminemifhewas). GG

/andragogy./ (/budi.pekerti/)

Written and directed by Wregas Bhanuteja.
Screening at the inaugural SXSW Sydney as part of the 2023 Features Competition.
Kaninga Pictures

You can’t even queue for a steamed rice cake at your favorite market stall anymore without becoming embroiled in a nationwide social media scandal that puts your job and your family’s reputation on the line. Yes, Lydia Tár fans, /andragogy./ (‘/budi.pekerti/’) is another “cancel culture” film, one firmly rooted in the experiences of the person being canceled: in this case, a kind and smart Indonesian school counselor who is on track for a promotion to Deputy Principal.

Bu Prani (a luminous Sha Ine Febriyanti) is the star of Wregas Bhanuteja’s second feature film—and she’s a star in her students’ lives, too, using a beautiful form of counseling she calls “reflection” rather than punishment. She also holds together a cramped household consisting of her influencer son, activist daughter and bipolar husband. Bu Prani’s life comes undone one day when a quick market visit leads to a discussion about line-skipping, in which a Javanese word is misinterpreted into a slur that spreads fast thanks to bystanders’ mobile phones.

From there, it’s a wholly absorbing drama involving “clarification statements”, indie media, school politics and more. Ryan, who saw the film at TIFF, was enthralled: “For the entire runtime nothing else mattered. My full attention was in this film’s hands, it toyed with my emotions and by the end you just feel exhausted (in a good way).” Zachary also approves: “Seeing how lives can be affected by strangers who don’t know anything about you in this digital age was very powerful. Hopefully this Reflection will help how social media is perceived.” GG