THE SWEET EAST
Already bored with her high school boyfriend and totally over her school’s field trip to Washington, D.C., senior Lillian (Talia Ryder, NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS) falls in with a group of crust punks on a pilgrimage to their mecca of Philadelphia. The promise of an anarchic existence quickly loses its grimy luster and sets Lillian adrift on an outrageous picaresque nightmare through the Northeast. Whether it’s shacking up with a white supremacist-cum-college professor (Simon Rex, PFF30’s RED ROCKET or embracing fanatic filmmakers (Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy O. Harris), the detached Lillian encounters peculiar fringe communities with a shrug. It isn’t long until Lillian finds herself in over her head and, maybe, starting to stand for something. For more than 10 years, cinematographer Sean Price Williams’s penchant for gritty 35MM has visually defined memorable works from the Safdie brothers and Alex Ross Perry. With his delirious directorial debut, Williams, along with film-critic-turned-screenwriter Nick Pinkerton, sets his sardonic sights on the jumbled disarray of this country we call home.
CAST: Talia Ryder, Simon Rex, Earl Cave, Jacob Elordi
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