"You've always had the courage to run away, to do something else, this is something I admire so much." Greenwich Ent. has revealed an official trailer for a documentary film called Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival at the start of the year. It earned rave reviews and won the
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Currently Reading Cusp Review: In a Clear-Eyed Sundance Doc, Three Small-Town Texas Teenagers Act Out Their Alienation, Partying Against Purple Skies
Aaloni, Autumn, and Brittney mostly want to party, but live with a daunting awareness of sexual violence.
Owen Gleiberman, provided by
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With: Aaloni, Autumn, Brittney.
The youth party culture, as portrayed in the mass media, tends to be driven by a certain debauched and glamorous energy: the clubbing, the drugs, the “freedom,” the your-life’s-a-soap-opera excitement that turns the rituals of hooking up into a flame that lures everyone. But in “Cusp,” a documentary about three small-town Texas teenagers wiling away the summer, the party imperative may be just as compulsive, but it’s the scaled-down, middle-of-nowhere version, where a party is a bonfire and a bunch of dudes standing around with beer and blunts and a jug of moonshine and whatever girls they can get to show up.
At the Ready : Exclusive Clip of Sundance Doc on Border Patrol Debate
Brent Lang, provided by
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Filmmaker Maisie Crow was visiting a Texas high school to speak to students in a video production class about her career behind the camera when she saw something shocking. A group of teenagers were making their way through the hallways, SWAT team style, brandishing red plastic guns.
“I was taken aback,” says Crow. “It was at a time when people were talking about school shootings, so it was kind of stunning.”
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It turned out that the students were participating in a criminal justice club, which put them in the orbit of law enforcement officers in order to lay the groundwork for a future career as police officers or border patrol agents. That chance encounter inspired Crow’s new documentary, “At the Ready,” which premieres at this year’s Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 31. What makes the film so compelling is that it grapples with hot