Rockaway
2018 · 10m · USA
Directed by Melanie Schiele
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tense
On a late-autumn Rockaway Beach in Queens, Teresa weaponizes her sexuality for money and shelter while grieving her grandmother — drifting toward an encounter with a divorced bartender whose intentions stay deliberately blurry.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Super 16, off-season Rockaway, a protagonist who weaponizes vulnerability — this is the kind of texture you don't get from a Sundance lab. The discomfort is the point.
Super 16mm in off-season Queens doing as much character work as the script — the Heaven-Knows-What grit crossed with Hittman's vulnerability-as-strategy makes this a serious proposition.
Super 16 off-season Queens doing as much character work as the script — the granular cold-light is the whole moral register. Grandmother grief + transactional intimacy is a heavy lift but the texture earns it.