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Cannes premiering Santosh from Metrograph Pictures joins Neon’s 2073 in limited release with comedy horror Bloody Axe Wound from RLJ Entertainment/Shudder on several hundred screens for the last weekend of the year. Some of the highest profile films from Searchlight Pictures’ A Complete Unknown to Focus Features’ Nosferatu and A24’s Babygirl and more arrived in theaters on Christmas making for a nice cluster of year-end releases. They’re capping a solid run for indie films in 2024’s recovering post-strike box office.
Italian thriller Vermiglio from Sideshow/Janus Films opened 12/25 on one NYC screen (IFC Center) where it stays, adding LA and Chicago Jan 3. Directed and written by Maura Delpero (Maternal). Premiered at Venice. The distributor’s Latvian animated Flow, which has been an awards season phenomenon, is still out on 107 screens and just passed $2 million – making a run for Sideshow’s highest grosser, Drive My Car at $2.35 million.
Well-received Los Frikis has expanded its run to Miami, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago and Atlanta (from NYC’s AMC Empire and LA’s AMC Burbank). Adds Washington D.C., Tampa and Houston Jan 3.
New openings: Santosh, the U.K.’s Oscar submission for Best International Feature, makes its theatrical debut at New York’s IFC Center, expanding next weekend. Sandhya Suri’s fiction feature debut premiered at Cannes, see Deadline, and played Telluride, TIFF and BFI London. It’s at 100% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes (27 reviews).
Ripped from her life of domesticity, Santosh, a young widow now desperate to support herself, accepts an opportunity to inherit her husband’s job as a police officer in the rural badlands of India. Quickly taken under the wing of Sharma, a charismatic and commanding older female inspector, Santosh begins an investigation into a low-caste girl’s brutal murder that plunges her into a gritty world of crime and corruption, forcing her to confront not only the brokenness of the system around her, but her own place within it. Stars Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar.
Neon’s 2073 by Academy Award-winner Asif Kapadia opens in NY and LA. A future foreshadowed by the terrifying realities of our present moment, it opens in the year 2073 when the worst fears of modern life have been realized. Surveillance drones fill the burnt orange skies and militarized police roam the wrecked streets, while survivors hide away underground, struggling to remember a free and hopeful existence. The mix of visionary science fiction and speculative nonfiction stars
Samantha Morton (In America, Sweet and Lowdown, Minority Report) stars as a survivor besieged by nightmare visions of the past — a past that happens to be our present — visualized through contemporary footage interconnecting today’s global crises of authoritarianism, unchecked big tech, inequality, and global climate change.
Premiered out of competition in Venice, Deadline review here.
Bloody Axe Wound from IFC Films’ RLJ Entertainment/Shudder opens in moderate release on 237 screens. The coming-of-age horror comedy by Matthew John Lawrence starring Sari Arambulo and Molly Brown follows a teenager, Abbie, who is torn between the macabre traditions of her family’s bloody trade and the tender stirrings of her first crush. In the small town of Clover Falls, Abbie’s father, Roger Bladecut, has built an infamous legacy by capturing real-life killings on tape and selling them to eager customers, but as Abbie delves deeper into the grisly family business, she begins to wonder if it’s time to take the family tradition in a new direction.
Catching up with Korean period drama Harbin from Well Go USA opened Christmas Day in LA at two locations. The film has grossed $35.6k in two days. Expands across North America Jan. 3 for a limited run. In 1909, several years after Korea is forced into becoming a Japanese colony, freedom fighters plot the daring assassination of Japan’s prime minister during their quest for independence. Directed by By Woo Min-ho.
