BALTIMORE - In what is now officially an annual event, Baltimore’s New/Next Film Festival has returned this weekend to the historic Charles Theatre. “The festival has quickly become one of Baltimore’s greatest traditions,” said Craig Swagler, president and general manager of Baltimore Public Media, producers of the festival, during his opening night speech. And he’s not wrong - screening over 150 films, features and shorts, while bringing art and artists from around the world, it is now one of the city’s proudest arts events.
Here's my diary chronicling the first half of my weekend's experiences, which includes features and shorts screened through Saturday afternoon. There's still time to buy single tickets for the festival's final day (today) - the rest of my coverage will drop right here on Feature Presentation tomorrow.
OBEX (2025)
Conor Marsh lives a secluded life with his dog, Sandy, until one day he begins playing OBEX, a new, state-of-the-art computer game. When Sandy goes missing, the line between reality and game blurs and Conor must venture into the strange world of OBEX to bring her home.
Conor (played by filmmaker Albert Birney) is a textbook shut-in: he never leaves his Baltimore home, a good Samaritan does his grocery shopping, and his (seemingly only) source of income is the mail-order drawings he creates of other people using the /s and -s and ]s and \s of his word processor for $5 each. His life is quiet and sad, but he doesn’t seem to be. His daily morning toast is perfectly crunchy, he looks forward to the network broadcast premiere of A Nightmare on Elm Street, and he loves loves loves his dog, Sandy (played by Birney’s real-life dog, Dorothy, who arrived at the hometown premiere in a tuxedo), a pup who just showed up one day and, thankfully, never left.
All of this changes one day when Conor orders a new computer game called OBEX. “They’re all starting to feel the same,” he says about his gaming hobby (every room in his house, including the bathroom, has a tv and/or computer - the scene where he sings karaoke to calm himself down before bed is one of my favorite things I’ve seen in a while), but OBEX promises to be different. They can actually put you into the game to fight the demon king Ixaroth yourself. When Sandy gets pulled into the game, Conor must travel through the map (he partners up with a man with an RCA tv for a head, named, get this, Victor, played by Frank Mosely) to fight off the cicada soldiers and save her.
I’m going to be in the minority of people who prefer the homebound scenes to the strange, subconscious fantasy world of the game, but that’s fine - the movie is more for those people anyway. As soon as Conor enters that world, the imagination of the story goes a little unchecked and it’s hard to know what’s metaphor (the dream sequences in the first half, where Conor’s late mother, played by Birney’s real-life mother who attended the screening, are some of my favorite, and scariest, scenes in the movie) and what’s just weirdo imagery. But you have to appreciate the creativity - and on such a low budget, a single person is assigned “Props/Catering” in the credits - and the lo-fi artistry on display. It’s like if Cronenberg’s eXistenZ and Lynch’s Eraserhead had a baby, significantly less grotesque but equally lonely and existential. If you’ve seen any of Birney’s other work, particularly his co-directed Strawberry Mansion, you’ll recognize plenty of his recurring themes, many of which he wears right on his sleeve.
André is an Idiot (2025)
André, a brilliant idiot, is dying because he didn’t get a colonoscopy. His sobering diagnosis, complete irreverence, and insatiable curiosity, send him on an unexpected journey learning how to die happily and ridiculously without losing his sense of humor.
André Ricciardi was the kind of guy who always did things his own way, never taking life too seriously and reveling in irreverence. He drank every day for decades, but never tried anything “more serious” than heroin or meth. When he was in his 20s, he cheated on his girlfriend by consummating his green card marriage - the Friday night audience at New/Next groaned when the movie cut to his two nearly-grown children. Those children call him André, not Dad, and prefer talking to him about Charles Manson over doing something weird like giving him a hug. He treats his sessions with his shrink like open mic night. And his lifelong motto of “No cops, no doctors” served him well…until he skipped out on his regularly scheduled colonoscopy.
When he told his mother that he had Stage IV colon cancer, it’s no surprise that she responded, “What a fucking idiot.” That is pretty harrowing news, and not usually the kind of thing that people can find much humor in, but not André- one of his first thoughts was to call an old director buddy, Tony Benna, and start filming a documentary about the end of his life. The movie takes a similarly chaotic approach, featuring stop-motion doctor visits and Tommy Chong playing Andre’s dad in a fever dream - and, if you can believe it, it’s the funniest movie I’ve seen all year. It has a rhythm and an energy and a pace that changes, which is not only too rare in the documentary space but just as entertaining and stylish as André himself.
You’re most of the way through the movie before someone’s voice even catches in their throat - and it’s sure as hell not André. That would be his wife, Janice, and it’s about the time she turns ghost-white for the rest of the documentary. The constant smile doesn’t even wipe from André’s face until he starts to think about how much it is affecting his wife and kids. While he gets to joke (is he joking?) about cryogenically freezing his body or participating in the first ever human head transplant or donating his body to television (“Doesn’t science have enough bodies?”), his wife is the one who makes the appointments and packs the snacks and has to watch him wither away on the couch, stressing over whether she’s coping or just in denial.
About halfway through the film, André learns about “death yells,” the act of practicing your final words by screaming them over a cliff. The audience laughs, but it’s very André. With his best friend, Lee, and the death yell guy, who looks and acts exactly like a Jason Schwartzman character, André chooses, “SO LONG, SUCKERS!” He wants to make his goodbye memorable, as he believes you’re never really dead if you aren’t forgotten. Benna’s film, a portrait of a terminally ill man who never appeases the tragedy of life, is too memorable for that to happen. André shows that beating cancer isn’t about surviving; it’s about not letting cancer beat you.
Bonus shoutout to the film’s composer, Baltimore’s Dan Deacon, who performed one of this summer’s coolest national anthems at an Orioles game.
Preceded by a short called “Crusty Old Bastard.” From the passenger seat of his semi, the film follows Steve, a 39-year-old truck driver, as he ponders a life of growth and mistakes. The filmmaker, his son Joey, not only has a clear personal connection, but uses the truck-driving industry, an obvious metaphor for change in both life and the world (New/Next screened a feature documentary about female truck drivers last year), in an ever-evolving economy, to get the audience thinking about their own path, or highway, through life.
American Theater (2025)
A “canceled” theater director summons a troupe of conservative actors to an abandoned cabin in rural Georgia to plot revenge on the Atlanta theater community with a musical retelling of the 1692 Salem witch trials.
Way back in the pre-pandemic times, director Brian Clowdus reigned supreme at the top of the regional theatre world. Best known for producing “site-specific” theatre (where plays and musicals are performed in the exact, or at least similar, environment in which it takes place), Brian directed productions of Shenandoah in the middle of a Civil War reenactment and Hair in a full-field recreation of Woodstock. When landing a real helicopter during an outdoor production of Miss Saigon became too easy, he produced and directed a production of Titanic where they sank a ship in a manmade lake every night. Those of us who watched from a distance were mesmerized. How does he do this? Turns out, he (allegedly, a word my legal team is making sure I use), did it by abusing his employees, exploiting their time and talent, and saying some pretty terrible racist and way-too-personal things, both to their face and behind their backs.
When Brian, an openly proud gay man, got cancelled in the racial reckoning of June 2020, he briefly apologized and vowed to do better…before “coming out” as a gay Republican weeks before the 2020 election. He ran for public office in Florida (he had to move to Florida to do that) and shifted his theatrical career fully to the right, producing shows like Oklahoma! and, I promise this is real, a play about the Salem Witch Trials.
Now, I must admit, I am probably a bit too close to the subject of American Theater, the documentary from co-directors Nicholas Clark and Dylan Frederick, to write about the film objectively, much less attempt to “review” it. My girlfriend actually worked for Brian Clowdus when he got cancelled (remotely, so she knew about none of the terrible things he did), and we followed his resulting meltdown for years. The full MAGA heel turn, his pitiful political career, the conservative plays produced by gay Trumpers (there are two oxymorons in that sentence) - all of this contaminated more than a few dinner table talks and road trip chats.
I was worried that she and I would be the only people that would find this documentary, which follows Brian and his island of cancelled misfit toys as they produce a fiery, dramatic, “epic” production of The Salem Experience (because Brian had the experience of being on the wrong side of a witch hunt, as he explains), interesting at all. Would it be too inside baseball? Would you need to have sat in your car for two hours while the first preview of his Ragtime was delayed because it turns out Brian was yelling at the cast? Because that’s a true story that happened to us! No, turns out, this movie plays.
Stomping around the woods of Georgia with his MAGA hat and venti iced Starbucks, complaining about “woke mob cancel culture bullcrap,” Brian directs a show that he, and we, know isn’t very good. With a cast that consists of former Olympians (that guy can’t sing, by the way) and politically exiled college kids (Brian shit talks her behind her back - wasn’t that part of his problem before?), all of whom seem to have closets that only consist of FAKE NEWS hoodies and SUPPORT THE BLUE t-shirts and LIONS NOT SHEEP tanks and Turning Point USA ball caps, he tries his damndest to revisit his glory days. The obvious cinematic reference point is Waiting for Guffman, but Christopher Guest and company always knew that the shit they were saying was funny. It was supposed to be funny. The Next/Next audience might find it funny when they’re trying out the mechanics of the tree-hanging apparatus and Brian whines, “The noose is too loose!” - and that’s because it is funny - but really it’s just dark. “It’s gotta be epic,” Brian says of the upcoming opening night, “or else it’s just sad.” The story of these dejected artists and political self-outcasts is just bleak. You don’t feel bad for him, but, especially if you grew up as a theatre kid, you do feel for him as you watch him seek out a new circle. While the insistence on using tiki-torches to light the paths of their recreated Salem is rich with ignorance, the humor sort of runs its course.
Screen 4 of the Charles is where New/Next screened Homegrown last year, another documentary about conservatives looking for community in a world where they think of themselves as minorities. The parallels between the two movies are clear, not just in their red hat-wearing subjects, but in their portraits of outsiders who think it’s cool to be an outsider.
Preceded by “Emmanuelle”, a short about a script prompter working to feed lines to an elderly stage actor through an earpiece. You’re not going to believe this, but I’ve also been in that situation, but as an actor on stage opposite that person. I’m not going to name-drop, partially because I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, partially because she was very complimentary of me, and partially because she told me funny things about Nick Nolte’s penis size, but needless to say, it hit a little close to home.
Man with a Movie Camera (2025)
Man with a Movie Camera (2025) is a collectively authored cut-for-cut remake of the 1929 film of the same name through the lens of internet-based aesthetics. Drawing a lineage from the experiments of Soviet montage to contemporary trends such as sludge content, desktop documentary, corecore, and database cinema, Man with a Movie Camera (2025) attempts to reinvigorate the popular avant-garde project of a universal cinematic language which was originally developed almost a century ago by Dziga Vertov and The Kinoks.
Man with a Movie Camera, it cannot be overstated, is one of the most influential films in the history of cinema. An experiment in documentary filmmaking, Soviet pioneer Dziga Vertov wondered if a film could be more than just a story. Could it break the fourth wall? Could it be without a narrative? Could it be…real? This man not only broke ground with his movie camera, but with the way he thought about movies. His 1929 film shows everyday Soviet life, dishonestly manufactured (he faked quite a bit of it) but honest in feeling, which is all that he really wanted. It blew minds.
Don’t call 2025’s Man with a Movie Camera, conceived by Blake Robbins, a shot-for-shot remake. That kind of faithfulness has typically only been reserved for DIY retellings of Shrek or The Empire Strikes Back, excuses for aspiring filmmakers to show their stuff without having to do anything boring like write a script or develop themes. If you’ve seen one, you’ve pretty much seen them all, and you’ve learned your lesson by the time you get to The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie Rehydrated. No, the local filmmaker who introduced the screening, called it “cut-for-cut,” meaning this collaboratively-produced spiritual sequel would instead cut footage at the exactly timed pace that Vertov did. But instead of only one image, the 2025 film shows, get this, three simultaneous images, often comprised of clips and memes from the worst of internet culture. She joked that if three wasn’t enough, you could pull out your phone (she actually encouraged this twice) to go full content-overload brain rot. I suppose that’s why she thought she could be on her phone all throughout last night’s screening of American Theater.
The moving images start simple enough, with clips from Family Guy and video after video of big booty anime girls. Vlogs, stock footage, the occasional AI slop. Some of the images are provocative, like the security footage of the Columbine shooters in the library or the well-circulated clip of George W. Bush reading to children before he was told what happened on that day in New York. Sure, it’s 4chan come to life. It’s clear that the original film’s images of people walking down the street are nothing but tame in the age of the deep dark web. The metaphor works and the inspiration is clear. But because Vertov’s film is 67 minutes, so too is this patience-tester. It’s simple reporting that fewer people finished the screening than started it. When one guy is shown filming a mukbang, eating copious amounts of Wendy’s and wings and whateverthehellelse, I got sick to my stomach. It just goes on and on and on.
Vertov’s original film both inspired and predicted the forthcoming century of moviemaking. New/Next, as its name implies, seeks out the same: independent, creative, groundbreaking work that signifies shifts in the industry and variety against the monoculture. Which is why I love coming to this festival. But if the next 100 years of cinema looks like the 2025 Man with a Movie Camera, I need to look into trade schools.
Preceded by a POV short called “1-Day Adult,” which follows a guy hanging out with those little yellow gibberish speakers at Minion Land Singapore.
$POSITIONS (2025)
Blue-collar Kansan Mike Alvarado attempts to save his family from the throes of poverty by investing their savings into speculative cryptocurrencies. However, as his investment strategy decays into a full-blown gambling addiction, he sends his life into a nightmarish anxiety-inducing downward spiral, compromising his relationships with his girlfriend, his developmentally disabled brother, and his recovering junkie cousin. $POSITIONS will have you gripping your seat as you’re laughing out loud! Through the insanity, Daley crafts a poignant tale about the toll that addiction, grief, and generational trauma take on the family unit.
Remember that one Super Bowl, a few years back, where it seemed like every other commercial was for cryptocurrency, hawked by celebrities eager to earn the biggest paycheck they had ever seen in their already luxurious lives? And then, if you recall, at the following year’s game, mum was the word. That’s about how long it took for the scam to make itself totally known and for us to shame these degenerates into at least not bringing up their obsession in polite company. $POSITIONS (it’s pronounced without the dollar sign) is about Mike (Michael Kunicki), one of the suckers who fell for it. It’s appealing, sure, a get-rich-quick fast track to the American Dream. He’s on the losing end of the country’s class war, and investing every single cent he’s got into that shit seems like the only way to get on top.
Writer/director Brandon Daley, himself an r/wallstreetbets lurker who rode the GameStop dumb money to the moon before cashing out and trading it for crypto, has empathy for his main character. I, however, do not. When Mike sees that his measly investment has skyrocketed in a single morning, he quits his job, asks his girlfriend for an open relationship, and plans a luxurious early retirement - on his $35,000 jackpot. When that number heads south, however, it does not take long for him to panic and begin desperately trying to piece his life back together, a life that no longer exists. It’s at that point, still early in the movie, that Mike totally lost me. Child endangerment, caretaker neglect and abuse, drug relapses, and, yes, even death, quickly follow. All easily avoidable. He’s so unlikeable, in fact, that the film’s most reasonable character might just be his girlfriend’s new boyfriend.
Kunicki is Tom Green for the FilmFreeway generation, equally silly and slimy and very obviously channeling Green’s affect. While the film is pitched as a comedy, and I laughed quite a bit early on, it becomes exhaustingly anxious. Movies about out-of-control gamblers, from California Split to Uncut Gems (this film is very clearly inspired by the Safdies), stress you the eff out, but they hardly see Elliott Gould and Adam Sandler ruin their lives, or the lives of the people around them, sometimes irreversibly, in the first 25 minutes. The woman sitting in front of me listened to a large majority of the movie because she spent a good chunk of the runtime doubled over with her head in her hands.
Forget the hotline, 1-800-DONTDOIT or whatever it is, just take your brother-in-law, the one still nursing the gateway drug of FanDuel, to see this movie in its limited theatrical release next spring.
Preceded by a gross little short film called “Take Care,” about a woman who keeps hurting herself, on purpose, so she can be tended to by a kind E.R. nurse. I get it, I’d do that if it meant I could keep hanging out with Dr. Santos from The Pitt. The nurse is Progressive Flo, who seems pretty committed to indie film between her commercial shoots and paychecks, which is cool.
Each plot synopsis and all photos are from NewNextFilmFest.com