Movies: Dustin Guy Defa

Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate Maddy introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of re...

Eric returns home for a short visit and finds himself caught between reuniting with his sisters and chasing a victory with his old poker group. As the trip extends, Eric finds it increasingly difficult to avoid confrontations and revelations as his c...

Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings....

1950s America. Since his mother‘s confinement to an institution, Andy has lived in the shadow of his stoic father. A family acquaintance, Dr. Wallace Fiennes, employs the introverted young man as a photographer to document an asylum tour advocating f...

A mysterious visitor spends the night at an apartment belonging to a young engaged couple and their friend. Over the course of the night and the following day he sleeps with all three roommates and then disappears, leading to conversations about God,...

Set in the Mojave Desert, the film follows a broken-down comedian playing clubs across the Southwest, working his way to Los Angeles to meet his estranged daughter....

Follows a variety of New York characters as they navigate personal relationships and unexpected problems over the course of one day....

Camila, a young Argentine theater director, travels from Buenos Aires to New York to attend an artistic residency to develop a Spanish translation of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Upon her arrival, she begins to receive a series of myste...

A woman is confronted by a stranger, who believes she’s been edited out of their story....

When their elderly neighbor suddenly drops dead, a young Brooklyn couple investigates signs of foul play....

Scenes from the working life of a male director: Defa sophisticatedly lampoons masculinity in filmmaking with this sly, surprising meta-movie. (Courtesy of Film Society of Lincoln Center.)...

In a desperate search to create a follow-up to Joe Swanberg's 2011 film Uncle Kent, Kent Osborne travels to a comic book convention in San Diego where he loses his mind and confronts the end of the world....

Lousy lover and egocentric Eric Sparrow is dumped by his girlfriend after rejecting her marital proposal. After a few failed dates his luck turns when a chance encounter with a vampire turns him into a sex god....

Independent Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi is trying to make a television show. He persuades BRIC TV, a Brooklyn non-profit Arts organization, to finance a television show whose premise is that every episode will be about the making of the previous episode. ...

Between surrealism, unusual characters, art and magic tricks, "Swim Little Fish Swim" is a dreamlike journey from childhood to adulthood....

A humorless loner attempts to win the admiration of a drifter with his debut performance at the local comedy club....

Each day of 2024 is represented by one minute of footage. Two transgender filmmakers in a long-distance relationship document their personal lives for an entire year as a form of therapy. The project forces the couple to examine who they are as indiv...

A relationship drama set amid a winter van trip from New York to New Orleans. A loose continuation of the 2010 film....

Writer/director/star Alex Karpovsky, a familiar face to indie filmgoers, reveals his sterling comic chops in this close-to-the-bone comedy. Teasing the line between fiction and reality, he plays an indie filmmaker named Alex Karpovsky who, dumped by ...

Joel Potrykus calls fellow indie filmmakers during the pandemic crisis to check in and see how they're holding up....