The universe is vast and mysterious. But the fact remains that even if humans manage to dwell beyond the confines of Earth, we will still be humans. We’ll likely always be slaves to some sort of currency and thrive on a class divide, even in a far-flung future galaxy. Writer/director team Zeek Earl and Christopher Caldwell work off of this concept in their debut feature space western, Prospect. The alien world they’ve miraculously created on a shoestring budget is rife with implications of an expansive human-populated universe that is inaccessible to their financially-strapped protagonist.
Cee (Sophie Thatcher) is a teenager living with her widower father, Damon (Jay Duplass), on a space freighter. They are prospectors in orbit around a green moon rich with precious gems called aurelacs. Extracting them from their fleshy spermatozoidal sacs is a risky and complicated process. But Damon is uniquely skilled and also desperate to make ends meet, which is why he decides to risk their lives for the chance at one big score that would cure their financial ills for good. Of course, they aren’t the only ones after the motherlode. Damon’s get-rich-quick scheme soon turns into a fight for survival for him and his daughter…
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The 2018 Seattle International Film Festival ran from May 17th to June 10th. That’s 25 solid days of movie madness. It kicked off with the premiere of Isabel Coixet’s The Bookshop, starring Emily Mortimer as a widow who uses her “bibliophilia” to open the hearts and minds of the conservative residents of a small English town.
Effed by the Wind 