Without her insight, without understanding the character of Maggie, After the Hunt gets lost in the noise of everything around her and doesn’t find its way back to something more grounding.

The Wilderness is an exercise in compassion in the face of harsh conditions, and what happens when kindness is missing.

The Currents section of the New York Film Festival is a section of the programming reserved for films that are pushing the boundary of the artform. Dennis Lim, NYFF Director of Programming, says that “the most vital work in any art form is often to be found among its most daring risk-takers.” Those boundary-pushing works are in the Currents section, and below are two short film selections from the program.

Hair, Paper, Water… is remarkable in a simple way. In the way that we all find purpose and pain throughout life, but discover something to believe in every morning.

The Bad Guys 2 is a heist flick for the entire family, one that proves that the Bad Guys are actually pretty good.

A House of Dynamite an uncritical view of the state of global affairs that doesn’t go much deeper than “no nukes.” Bigelow crafted a powder keg of modern anxieties, but forgot to light the fuse.

Rats! is a riot that crawled out of the depths of Warped Tour to arrive on the doorstep of the 2020s in the best possible way.

Affection looks at the pain nostalgia like this can inflict on the present day and at how chasing the past will never bode well for the future.

Stripped for Parts takes the spirit of the investigative written word and turns it into a motion picture worth more than a few thousand words.

I Only Rest in the Storm is an epic deconstruction of the effects of neocolonialism as they are today on the global scale.

A perfect way to start your October horror season, Good Boy will remind you that man’s best friend is the most loyal friend we have, but you didn’t need that reminder, did you?

Shell is a lot tamer than The Substance, but certainly has its own share of blood, guts, and gore to offer those who want to embrace its campiness.

Eleanor the Great is a film about connection, but one whose wires get a little too crossed.

CAMP, like the summer sleepaway activity the film is named after, is a means of connection, both among the characters in the film and between Fast and the viewer. Trauma is not healed in silence, but in moonlight dances, incantations, and laughter shared with friends.

Dolly amps up the guts and gore of yesteryear to make a throwback isolationist horror sure to delight the bloodthirsty.

While The Curse is a little too silly to reach the peak of the Japanese horror of the aughts, there’s still something to love here. By the end of the film, there’s not a sliver of the screen untouched by blood.

With strong, funny performances by genre favorites like Sean Gunn and Jermaine Fowler, APPOFENIACS comes from a place of loving Tarantino, but with a new, fun dimensionality.

Bad Haircut is a John Hughes movie that’s been hacked away at by James Wan, and the result is the sort of haircut people can’t stop asking you about.

With the heart of Cellars translated through the weirdness of Waters, The Cramps: A Period Piece is a cult classic in the making.

Silver Screamers is endearingly heartfelt in its pursuit of making something frightening, a mirror of sorts to life itself.