It is a rare gift to stumble across a film about which you had heard and seen almost nothing and discovering a work of precision, artfulness, and profound emotional resonance. Silence & Darkness, the debut feature from writer and director Barak Barkan, is an intimate and deeply compelling work, inviting viewers into a hypnotic world between two sisters – one blind, the other deaf – and the terror and hope that is present in the life they share together.
Releasing this week on most VOD platforms is a strong and haunting story of a woman’s struggle to maintain her agency and her sanity as she wrestles with sudden grief and the apparent threat of indefinite captivity. Kindred is the debut feature from director and co-writer Joe Marcantonio and starring Tamara Lawrence, Fiona Shaw, and Jack Lowden. It owes an immediate and apparent debt to Rosemary’s Baby, but manages to forge its own unique path with some deliberate shifts in key elements.
