Lowlife

All luchador fans rise! It’s your moment to shine… literally! Anyone who comes head to toe dressed up as a luchador gets in for free… plus some damn fine extra goodies too. We’re ready, so bring out your spandex! Best dressed wins an IFC Center membership.

NYC PREMIERE “Monster,” “Fiends,” “Thugs” and “Criminals:” four vignettes that introduce us to a world that’s unsettling, gruesome, effed up and… funny, colourful and as human as it is inhumane. El Monstruo (Ricardo Adam Zarate), a Mexican wrestler, delivers a wild monologue about the burden of the legacy passed down to him by his father. Crystal (Nicki Micheaux), an owner of a cheap hotel, watches as a fake cop escorts away a handful of immigrants. Teddy (Mark Burnham), a small-time crime boss, eyes the women they’ve rounded up: the younger ones sent into the sex trade, the older ones destined to be ripped apart. And Teddy’s accountant Keith (Shaye Ogbonna) picks up his childhood friend, Randy (Jon Oswald), from prison. As all their stories collide, they change each other’s cursed lives for forever.

This film punches you – in the face and in your gut. And when your face is swollen and some of your teeth are missing, you smile. You smile damn wide! And let out a hysterical laugh. And then suddenly, in a moment of quiet, you feel your heart get crushed, because this is a film that touches you in unexpected ways. And then you laugh again, not nervously, but from deep down in your belly. The best kind of laugh that comes from the good place all great laughs come from. I felt the same when I first watched Pulp Fiction, but Ryan Prows’ directorial debut goes darker, it’s less forgiving and the sunshine in his vision of the California dream is 100% fake. Dear you (yes, I am looking right at you), looking for a WTF!? experience, this is an absolutely bonkers and beautiful film that I cannot recommend enough. You’ll just have to come and see it for yourself.

– Maria Reinup

GENRES: COMEDY | CRIME | DRAMA