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. 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. 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. MBĭirected by Kishi Bashi and Justin Taylor Smith. 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. 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. “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.” 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. 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 “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.

“We had this process of taking off the coat of the character at the end of day,” Baig explains. 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. “They were so ready to live in this world. They got to tell me what to do,” the director says. “It was so much fun to come to set every day and realize that two ten-year-olds were my boss. “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.īaig 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. The film received its world premiere at TIFF this year, where it won the Changemaker Award as selected by the Next Wave committee. 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.

Utopia band youtube