Just two days till the opening of the 29th annual Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival! Here’s a first look at three more films that will be screening this weekend at the Alamo South Lamar location. Badges can still be purchased HERE.
Women Who Kill
Morgan and Jean are two ex-partners who still share a podcast devoted to their favorite subject: Women who kill. At her Co-op day job, Morgan meets the beautiful and mysterious Simone. After they start dating, Simone confesses to actually being a big fan of their podcast. Things take a more sinister turn when Jean investigates Simone and believes she may be the daughter of a serial killer they interviewed. A notion Morgan dismisses until people start turning up dead.
Clever and cunning, Women Who Kill is a slow burn thriller that enthralls and terrifies. Writer/Director/Star Ingrid Jungermann builds a fascinating world of dangerous love and paranoia, filled with twists and rounded out by a brilliant cast. She has an incredible gift for making simple conversations tense and uncomfortable for Morgan, forcing her to navigate a world where the motives of everyone around her leaves her unsure who she can trust. The suspense reaches a fever pitch in a way rarely seen since the 1980’s.
I Love You Both
Donny and Krystal are fraternal twins who are celebrating their mutual 28th birthday. Krystal is still pining for her Ex-boyfriend and Donny is single and miserable. Enter Andy, an artist on a second hand invite to their party. They both immediately are smitten with him and after he invites them both to another party it turns out he’s smitten with them both back.
Writer/Director/Star Doug Archibald makes his feature debut with this charming and funny comedy of plural love. The concept may sound like a ‘wacky’ comedy but it’s actually a very smart exploration of the nature of loneliness and relationships, with some very funny dialogue. There’s a fascinating dynamic in play of two people who have had to share everything, having to deal with the one thing they cannot really share. It’s not all serious though and there are moments that will find you trying to catch your breath with laughter.
Free CeCe
On the night of June 5th, 2011, Cece McDonald and several friends decided to take a late walk to a local supermarket. On the way, they passed a group of people smoking outside of a local bar who began to harass Cece for being a transwoman and her whole group for being African American, using a variety of slurs. A woman from the bar smashed a glass in CeCe’s face and a fight broke out. CeCe, in the process of fleeing was rushed by a man much larger than herself and she stabbed him once, but got him in the heart and killed him. This is the story of CeCe’s arrest, imprisonment, how the system treats people of color and people of minority orientations, and the international effort that was launched to get her proper treatment and release.
There are many shocking elements to this story but the one that strikes me first is that this not a tale from thirty years ago, this is not a historical retelling of how hard things used to be, this happened in 2011 and CeCe was in jail from 2012 to 2014. It is a modern injustice that still happens. A broken society allows people to be attacked in the street, and if they survive, they are subject to arrest. A broken justice system tends to place blame on minorities by default and then disproportionately hands down draconian sentences. Free CeCe is a brilliant documentary that demonstrates the importance of standing up for the most vulnerable among us and fighting for equality for all.
Adam Ruhl is a writer and life long Cinephile. He is the Executive
Cinema Editor of Pop Culture Beast’s Austin branch; covering festivals,
conventions, and new releases. When not filing reports, Adam can be
found stalking Alamo Drafthouse Programmers for leads on upcoming
DrafthouseFilms titles. Adam once blocked Harry Knowles entrance to a
theater until he was given extra tickets to a Roman Polanski movie.