What is it like to come of age under constant threat of war? Director Sareen Hairabedian’s poignant documentary “My Sweet Land” follows an ethnic Armenian youngster named Vrej Khatchatryan from the small village of Tsaghkashen in the Martakert region of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Conflict, displacement and exile color everything in his and his […]

Offering an unusual take on the Holocaust, “Nathan-ism” is a low-budget portrait of garrulous, elderly New York outsider artist Nathan Hilu, a proud but impoverished Jewish veteran who compulsively, maniacally documents his WWII military experience in naïve drawings with a black Sharpie and colored crayons. Unfortunately, his self-proclaimed autobiographical art does not always match up […]

Engaging, yet tantalizingly withholding, the contemporary drama “Drowning Dry” offers a nonlinear portrait of two sisters, their marriages and children while depicting a family tragedy during a summer holiday. As it unfolds in a kaleidoscopic manner, the narrative snaps into sharpest focus just as the film ends. It’s the sophomore feature of Lithuanian multi-hyphenate Laurynas […]