Shock Value: The Filmmakers Behind ‘The Haunting of Pennhurst’ Talk Horror, Disability, and Care

A “horror film about care” is how multi-disciplinary artist Nathan R. Stenberg has described his initial concept for the Tribeca-premiering The Haunting of Pennhurst, a simultaneously disturbing and empowering doc he’s crafted along with fellow interdisciplinary artist Katarina Poljak and filmmaker Mike Attie (2014’s In Country). The film is an archival and vérité look at the Pennhurst Asylum, a tourist destination in Spring City, Pennsylvania, famous for its visceral “haunted attractions” and likewise infamous for having once been home to the Pennhurst State School and Hospital, a facility that systematically tortured and experimented on its disabled residents for close to 80 years. But what makes the multimillion-dollar enterprise truly stand out is that the majority of the “haunters” staging those spooky attractions are themselves disabled, including museum director and volunteer trainer/makeup artist Autumn Werner, who serves as the main guide in the doc. For this group of creatives, what was once a house of horrors has become a space to retake the narrative and to educate others so that the dark, ableist policies of the past are never instituted again. (Whether that message stays with visitors as they exit the gift shop or browse the Etsy store is less clear.) Soon after The Haunting of Pennhurst’s debut in the Escape From Tribeca section, Documentary reached out to the diverse trio of directors to learn all about their unique collaboration, as well as filming in a place of preservation financed by fear.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

How to Feed a Dictator

FOOD / The elderly personal chefs of five strongmen expose the uneasy bond between cuisine, loyalty, and violence. Andrew Neel’s Tribeca and Sheffield Doc/Fest-debuting How to Feed a Dictator, shot across seven countries, teases out the stories of the now elderly personal chefs to Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet, and Kim Jong-il while they recreate the strongmen’s favourite dishes, the final creations framed as if in a culinary magazine. These contemporary images are then juxtaposed with archival footage, along with sit-downs with journalists, academics, and even several victims of the regimes who link food itself to extractive power (as crucial as guns, according to political science prof Bruce Beuno de Mesquita). This allows a sensational premise to ultimately become something much more satisfying, a thorny exploration of the line between banal complicity and circumstantial desperation.

To read the rest visit Modern Times Review.

Kids Like Me — Cynthia Lowen [Tribeca ’26 Review]

Designed to please any movie lover with a heart, Cynthia Lowen and Jon Cohrs’ Kids Like Me follows Oliver Odwazny-Beebe, a passionate indie filmmaker with a murder mystery obsession who is bent on bringing his latest vision to the screen, even if it means corralling everyone from friends, neighbors, and family members, to Tony Shalhoub and the local police. Indeed, the smart and scrappy director is convinced that “people are finally gonna recognize my artistic talents through the delightfully macabre world of murder.” Never mind that Odwazny-Beebe is only 12 years old, and with a rare genetic condition that requires him to be tethered to numerous life-saving (and quality of life-preserving) medical gadgets around the clock. His creative savant imagination seems to be fully operating at warp speed.

To read the rest visit In Review Online.

The Haunting of Pennhurst — Nathan R. Stenberg, Mike Attie, and Katarina Poljak [Tribeca ’26 Review]

Nathan R. Stenberg, Mike Attie, and Katarina Poljak’s The Haunting of Pennhurst is an archival and verité look at the transformation of the notorious Pennhurst State School and Hospital from a real-life house of horrors that warehoused the disabled for nearly 80 years to what could be considered a form of problematic dark tourism. But what sets today’s Pennhurst Asylum — which consists of “haunted attractions” as well as history and ghost tours — apart from the usual capitalistic ventures designed to profit from tragedy is that its marquis fright nights are sustained and run by a group of performers with a wide variety of disabilities. And they’re all as firmly dedicated to making visitors question why the unfamiliar often feels so threatening as they are to scaring them. In fact, Stenberg, a multidisciplinary artist and disability scholar who assumed he’d be documenting an “entertainment attraction commodifying atrocity,” has said that he instead discovered something far more nuanced — folks finding “community on grounds once designed for their death.”

To read the rest visit In Review Online.

Cannes Film Festival 2026: Lila Pinell’s ‘Shana’ and Pierre le Gall’s ‘Flesh and Fuel’

Lila Pinell’s narrative feature debut, Shana, playing in the Directors’ Fortnight at this year’s Cannes, revolves around a twentysomething with no filter, endless chutzpah, and nonstop boyfriend problems. From the film’s disorienting opening—in which Shana (Eva Huault), who appears to be the only white face in a diverse group of friends, storms out of a game involving werewolves—we’re thrown into the day-to-day life of a one-woman, slow-motion train wreck, as Shana approaches every delicate situation with hurricane force.

To read the rest visit Slant Magazine.

A Conversation With Nicole Bazuin And Andrea Werhun (MODERN WHORE)

Modern Whore, which world-premiered at TIFF, is the latest sex-work-destigmatizing project in an unusual multiyear collaboration between director Nicole Bazuin and the hybrid doc’s co-writer and star Andrea Werhun (who also served as a consultant on EP Sean Baker’s Anora). It’s based on Werhun’s book Modern Whore: A Memoir, which features Bazuin’s photos, and comes on the heels of Bazuin’s 2020 shorts Modern Whore and Last Night at the Strip Club, which likewise center on Werhun. In other words, this prolific pair have long been on a fierce artistic mission to bring the oldest and perhaps most misunderstood profession in the world out of the closet, and simultaneously slay some tired tropes in an inventively stylish and often cheeky manner along the way. A few days after the film’s May 1st VOD release (via Quiver Distribution), Hammer to Nail caught up with the Canadian duo to learn all about the productive partnership, along with what they’ve dubbed the “Modern Whore Cinematic Universe.”

To read my interview visit Hammer to Nail.

Humboldt USA

NATURE / Across fractured American landscapes, Alexander von Humboldt’s forgotten legacy links endangered species, damaged infrastructure and the technological urge to measure nature into disappearance. Alexander von Humboldt is likely the most ubiquitous name that very few have ever heard of. Indeed, the «father of ecology,» who came up with nature’s theory of interconnectedness, is both everywhere – with more species and places named after him than anyone else – and yet nowhere in the public imagination. It’s an oversight, director-writer (and producer, DP, and editor) G. Anthony Svatek hopes to correct with his subtly head-spinning, Visions du Réel – and MoMI’s First Look-debuting Humboldt USA.

To read the rest visit Modern Times Review.