Following a celebrated performance piece about creative evolution, Zia Anger turns narrative cinema inside out with this meta-fiction, starring Odessa Young and Devon Ross. Transforming failure into rituals of rebirth, this poignant film captures the zeitgeist and comes straight from the heart.

Need an antidote to the too-often terrible sub-genre of Christmas movies? Look no further than Charles Poekel’s debut: A gem that ignores the schlocky, capitalist veneer of holiday culture, but rather attends to the emotional and economic nuances brought about by the wintry, consumerist season.

Filmed on a bygone video camera, Stinking Heaven immerses you in the darkest crevices of the 1990s: a rehab commune housing a coven of colorful yet caustic personalities. A lucid vision of Sartre’s assertion that “hell is other people,” written with an utmost sincere sense of anarchy. Oddly sublime.