New films coming to VOD include La Civil, the award-winning debut feature of director Teodora Ana Mihai; the indie film drama Surrounded starring Letitia Wright and Michael K. Williams; the horror film The Haunting Of Hell Hole Mine starring Tom Sizemore and Sally Kirkland; and the documentary Playing With Fire : Jeannette Sorrell and the Mysteries of Conducting from Academy Award winning filmmaker Allan Miller.
LA CIVIL
La Civil, the award-winning debut feature of director Teodora Ana Mihai, is coming to DVD and all major VOD platforms on May 16, 2023.
This “Revenge Narco-Western” (Variety), inspired by true events and winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize of Courage at the Cannes Film Festival, tells the harrowing story of a mother whose daughter is kidnapped by a powerful drug cartel and held for ransom. With no one to turn to for help, she must take on the cartel herself, and bring her daughter safely home.
La Civil unfolds with documentary-like precision as it details the human impact of drug cartels in Northern Mexico. Cielo (Arcelia Ramírez, in a galvanizing performance) learns her daughter Laura has been kidnapped when a baby-faced teenager orders her to pay 150,000 pesos if she wants to see Laura again. With no police support, Cielo embarks on her own investigation, peeling back layers of Mexico’s societal corruption in an increasingly desperate effort to save her child. Inspired by true events, Belgian-Romanian director Teodora Ana Mihai delivers a bold and suspenseful debut feature, collaborating with Mexican co-screenwriter Habacuc Antonio De Rosario and world-renowned co-producers Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Cristian Mungiu, and Michel Franco.
SURROUNDED Starring Letitia Wright
Starring Letitia Wright, Jamie Bell, Jeffrey Donovan, with Brett Gelman and Michael K. Williams.
Five years after the Civil War, freedwoman and former Buffalo Soldier Moses “Mo” Washington travels west to lay claim on a gold mine- the summation of years of toil for Mo and her community. It is a mean, dangerous world for an unaccompanied Black woman in 1870 America and so Mo travels into the deep frontier disguised as a man. After her stagecoach is ambushed by a group of murderous thieves, Mo is forced to hold legendary outlaw Tommy Walsh captive while the remaining surviving passengers seek out help. What ensues is a battle of wills, blurring the line between captor and captive, as they both try to survive the harsh western landscape.
Directed by Anthony Mandler and written by Andrew Pagana & Justin Thomas and Andrew Pagana, the film stars Letitia Wright, Jamie Bell, Jeffrey Donovan, with Brett Gelman and Michael K. Williams.
Available on digital everywhere on June 20, 2023.
THE HAUNTING OF HELL HOLE MINE
The late Tom Sizemore and Tom Lister Jr star alongside Oscar nominee Sally Kirkland in the highly anticipated release of The Haunting Of Hell Hole Mine
To rescue his niece from insanity, Luke must confront the dark spirit trapped in their ancestral gold mine.
Tiny Lister (The Fifth Element), Sally Kirkland (JFK), and Tom Sizemore (Heat) headline Victory of the People Productions’ highly anticipated thrilling supernatural western The Haunting of Hell Hole Mine, premiering on digital platforms May 18 from Film Hub.
Rudy Youngblood (Apocalypto), May Myot Noe (Invincible), and David Fennoy (Suicide Squad : Hell to Pay) co-star in a unique genre mash-up in the tradition of Cabin in the Woods and Get Out written by Paul Collett and Robbie Trujillo and directed by Paul Collett and Tammy Massa.
Inside a long-abandoned gold mine, lurks the Shakani, a dark supernatural being conjured by the Shanowah tribe ages ago to defeat their enemies. Not only ferocious and fast, but can appear as anyone and get inside your mind. Luke’s ancestors trapped it in the mine but each has also gone crazy. Now Luke’s niece Poni, has come down with “the family curse.” But Luke believes with the proper medical treatment she can be healed if only he can get the money to pay for it. So with a couple friends he tries his luck at the gold mine but gradually realizes he must defeat the Shakani and end the family curse.
PLAYING WITH FIRE
On digital platforms June 9 from Global Digital Releasing, the highly-anticipated documentary Playing With Fire : Jeannette Sorrell and the Mysteries of Conducting from Academy Award Winner filmmaker Allan Miller (called “The finest maker of documentary films on music in the U.S” by the New York Times.) and starring GRAMMY®-winning conductor Jeannette Sorrell.
Jeannette Sorrell, after being told by the Juilliard School and the Cleveland Orchestra that no one will hire a woman conductor, forms her own Baroque orchestra, Apollo’s Fire. She shows us how she can transform the notes on the page into musical sounds in her ear and express them with her gestures to the musicians.