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What is grief if not living in the liminal space between mourning and coping, of life and death itself? Courtney Stephens’ fiction and autobiography hybrid film “Invention” blurs fact and fiction as it centers on the aftermath of actress/co-writer Callie Hernandez’s own father’s death.

Director Stephens and Hernandez both are credited for the script, with Hernandez also starring in it (the duo also produce together). Hernandez won the Pardo for Best Performance in the Filmmakers of the Present at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival.

The official synopsis for the film reads: “The film fictionalizes the aftermath of Hernandez’s father’s death using a real archive of varied TV appearances he made as an alternative health doctor in the late ’90s through 2020. The fictional storyline revolves around the patent of an experimental healing device that becomes his daughter’s (played by Hernandez as the character of ‘Carrie Fernandez’) sole inheritance.

Universal Language, the original and quietly funny Oscar-shortlisted Cannes and TIFF premiering feature by Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rankin debuts on one screen each in New York and LA. Chinese animated juggernaut Ne Zha 2 opens Stateside and Oscar Nominated Shorts are back for a 20th season. Sony Picture Classics’ Becoming Led Zeppelin expands to 1,039 locations from 369 Imax screens and IFC Films jumps Armand to 230 theaters from two. Oscar contenders continue to populate screens.

Oscilloscope’s Universal Language quite likes this window with the Academy Awards a few weeks away. In a crowded market, “this date is great. Once the ceremony comes and goes, there is a rotation of films out of theaters,” says theatrical distribution chief Andrew Carlin.

He calls Rankin a great actor and filmmaker with a particular sense of style and Universal Language a film with “a strangeness to it that defies classification” — a plus for Oscilloscope.

Rankin returned the compliment.

While there was a noticeable drought for pick-ups at the Sundance Film Festival this year, movie sales continue to trickle out from Park City a few weeks later.

In fact, Oscilloscope Laboratories acquired the North American rights to Albert Birney’s black-and-white fantasy odyssey “Obex” on Thursday, TheWrap has learned.

Birney starred in, produced, directed and co-wrote the surreal film with Pete Ohs. It marks the filmmaker’s solo, live-action directorial debut. Producers include Birney, Ohs, Emma Hannaway and James Belfer.

“The film follows Conor Marsh (Birney), a man living a secluded life with his dog, Sandy, until one day he begins playing Obex, a new, state-of-the-art computer game. When Sandy goes missing, the line between reality and game blurs and Conor must venture into the strange world of Obex to bring her home,” per the logline.

“I’ve long been captivated by the unique and thought-provoking films released by Oscilloscope Laboratories,...

Oscilloscope Laboratories has acquired North American rights to “Obex” following its debut at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The surreal, black-and-white fantasy film was directed by Albert Birney (“Strawberry Mansion”) who wrote the script with Pete Ohs (“Jethica”). Birney also stars in the film.

The film was widely praised for its imagination and style, with Variety calling it “entrancing and singular” and comparing it favorably to “I Saw the TV Glow.” It follows Conor Marsh (Birney), a man living a secluded life with his dog, Sandy, until one day he begins playing Obex, a new, state-of-the-art computer game. When Sandy goes missing, the line between reality and game blurs, and Conor must venture into the strange world of Obex to bring her home.

The producing team includes Birney, Ohs, Emma Hannaway and James Belfer, the founder and CEO of production company Cartuna. “Obex” marks the company’s third collaboration with Birney,...

Writer-director Albert Birney’s latest film, Obex, an almost non-categorizable sci-fi/fantasy/comedy-drama, stands out as a vibe film through and through. If you’re on Obex’s wavelength or frequency, i.e., attuned to its oddball charms, quirky humor, and irony-free, poignant exploration of its central themes, then Obex will prove a deeply engaging, infinitely rewarding experience. Set in 1987 and everything that implies low-tech wise, Obex centers on Birney’s character, Conor, a mild-mannered type defined by his agoraphobia. Conor never leaves his home except to collect the groceries his unseen neighbor, Mary (Callie Hernandez), leaves on his front steps or his backyard to spend time outside with his longtime companion, Sandy. Sandy means everything to Conor. She’s his stalwart friend, the best...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Heading into the EFM next week, Magnify has acquired the global sales rights excluding France to Nelson Foix’s Guadeloupe-set crime thriller Zion.

Adapted from an award-winning short, Timoun Aw, the French-language feature takes place in the projects of the Caribbean island’s second cityPointe-à-Pitre and follows26-year-old Chris (newcomer Sloan Decombes), who balances his time between drug deals, one-night stands, and motorcycle rides.

When Chris attracts the attention of local gang leader Odell, he is given a dangerous assignment. On the same day as the mission, Chris unexpectedly discovers an anonymous baby left at his doorstep. A gripping race...

Magnify has boarded “The Blood Countess,” a vampire mystery movie starring Isabelle Huppert as Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a 16th-century Hungarian serial killer.

Directed by renowned German New Wave artist and filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger, the movie is inspired by the life and legend of Countess Elizabeth Báthory. The screenplay was penned by Ottinger and Elfriede Jelinek, the Nobel Prize in Literature winner and acclaimed author of “The Piano Teacher.”

Huppert stars in the film opposite Birgit Minichmayr (“Daughters”), Lars Eidinger (“Dying”), Thomas Schubert (“Afire”) and André Jung (“The Forger”).

“The Blood Countess” is one of the hottest European projects to head to the EFM next week where Magnify’s sales team, led by Lorna Lee Torres, will be introducing the movie to buyers.

Huppert plays the Countess Elizabeth Báthory (aka ‘The Blood Countess’), as she awakens from her long beauty sleep and emerges from the underworld. “She and her devoted maid...

“There it is,” says Computer Conor, finding the advert for his modest computer-art service in the latest issue of Personal Computing while his dog, Sandy, snuffles on the sofa. Though the aesthetic of Obex — Albert Birney’s follow-up to the pastel-hued Strawberry Mansion (2021) — is grainy ’70s Eraserhead monochrome, appearances can be deceiving. The year is 1987, with Reagan in the White House and Madonna in the charts, but Conor (played by Birney himself) is unaware. A virtual shut-in, he sees life through a screen, even sending his neighbor Mary to do his grocery shopping.

Flipping through the magazine, an advert for a new computer game catches his eye; illustrated with a gothic castle, a satanic goat’s head and human brain, it promises a breakthrough in interactive gaming: “Can you make it to the end of the maze and defeat the demon Ixaroth before he eats your mortal soul?” To take part,...

Hand-labeled VHS tapes line the shelves of the living room where Conor Marsh (Albert Birney), a 36-year-old man living alone with his dog Sandy in 1987 Baltimore, spends many hours watching late-night horror movies and broadcast programs he’s recorded on a setup composed of three stacked Ctr TV sets. This analog library of thrilling fictions and ephemeral images preserved on tape is part of the bevy of references in “Obex,” a miniature epic of melancholic whimsy endearingly conceived in black-and-white with a lo-fi aesthetic.

This ingenious fantasy about the perils of finding comfort in screens while avoiding flesh-and-blood connections is the product of the close artistic partnership between Birney — who wrote, directed, edited and stars — and Pete Ohs, credited as the cinematographer, co-writer and co-editor. Together, Birney and Ohs are also behind most of the modest, yet sagaciously employed visual effects. The result of their joint artistic labor amounts to...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

2025 Sundance Film Festival

While Sundance Film Festival kicked off last week in Park City, those across the country can now experience the festival from home through this Sunday with online offerings. As of this publishing, there’s still online tickets available for some of my favorites of the festival, including Blknws: Terms & Conditions, The Perfect Neighbor, Two Women, Zodiac Killer Project, Obex, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, Cutting Through Rocks, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, and Predators. Check out all our coverage here and we’ll be sharing much more in the coming days.

Where to Stream: Sundance.org (through Sunday)

Babygirl (Halina Reijn)

Premiering with much fervor at the Venice Film Festival, Halina Reijn’s Bodies Bodies Bodies follow-up Babygirl finds Nicole Kidman...

A kite shaped like a horse, a cicada-filled Baltimore world, and a black-and-white aesthetic almost perversely hooked on its own disaffected weirdness — writer/director Albert Birney’s “Obex” is a surreal, early-’90s’-esque odyssey into its main character’s (also played by Birney) addiction to his vintage Mac and inability to form actual human connections. With the lo-fi scrappiness of a dot matrix printer and the hallucinatory male-specific anxiety of David Lynch‘s “Eraserhead,” “Obex” tells the story of an awkward-under-his-skin computer programmer named Conor who escapes dreary black-and-white Baltimore into a fantasy world to defeat a demon named Ixaroth.

Birney, who previously co-directed the sci-fi adventure rom-com “Strawberry Mansion” with Kentucker Audley, writes, directs and stars in the movie as Conor Marsh. Living alone with his dog Sandy, he makes custom dot matrix printer photo reproductions for money over the post, while a neighbor Mary (Callie Hernandez) brings...

A scene late in Albert Birney’s Obex cuts tenderly to the heart of our growing nostalgia for analog forms of technology. Conor (Birney), an awkward man in his 30s, is having a fireside chat with Victor (Frank Moseley), who’s quite literally a bulky 1980s-era television set with a human body. Victor says that Conor looks familiar, and then the context hits him: He was the family TV in Conor’s childhood home, purchased by Conor’s father. While the family watched Victor, he also watched over them. Conor, who lost his father as a child, is reassured by Victor, who says that the dead man loved his son very much.

This moment is staged by Birney in the same tone as many of Obex’s most moving scenes: with a wry absurdity that at once parodies and honors Conor’s tunnel vision. Victor is an artifact of Conor’s past,...

Albert Birney’s Obex is a dark, twisted, and nonsensical fantasy about a man who gets sucked into a video game and forced to fend for his life while trying to recover his most trusted companion; a Wizard of Oz-esque mixed with a dash of Wizard of Wor, all while millions of bugs emerge after long dormancy just to add to the level of auditory anxiety. It was a strange feeling watching Obex mere days after the passing of David Lynch. With its start black and white imagery, low-fi aesthetic, and fascination with introverted characters, it’s fair to say that the likes of Eraserhead were on my mind while watching Albert Birney’s latest. Then again, given its video game structure based on a series of quests, it was easy to think warmly of 100s of Beavers, or a canine caper like John Wick.

Magnify has landed worldwide sales rights to helmer Yi Jing’s directorial debut “The Botanist,” ahead of its world premiere in the Berlin Film Festival’s Generation Kplus competition.

The coming-of-age tale, set in a remote village in China’s Xinjiang region, follows a young Kazakh boy named Arsin who develops a deep connection with plants. His life takes a turn when he meets Meiyu, a Han Chinese girl whose free spirit he likens to a mysterious plant. Their friendship unfolds into what’s described as a dreamlike allegory that weaves between reality and botanical fantasy.

The film is produced by Shan Zuolong, known for Bi Gan’s arthouse hit “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” alongside Ai Qi. The creative team includes composer Peyman Yazdanian (“Hit the Road”), editor Yaonan Liu (“The Great Phuket”) and lenser Fannong Li.

“Jing Yi’s debut film is a remarkable discovery, a tender tale...

While the likes of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and Steven Lisberger’s Tron have examined the thrills and fears of humanity’s relationship with screens since the early ‘80s, there’s been a recent, renewed interest as the number of screens in one’s life has ever-expanded. At last year’s Sundance Film Festival, Jane Schoebruen explored identity-forming bonds with media and the eventual curdling nostalgia with I Saw the TV Glow. This year, Obex finds Albert Birney following Strawberry Mansion with another inventive and lo-fi adventure, but one that finds the director honing in with a more satisfying focus. Even though our main character spends every waking moment in front of a screen, this is no damning screed but an earnest, even poignant look at how entertainment can provide a sense of comfort for the most lonely souls.

It’s 1987 in Baltimore, an unlucky year in which 17-year cicadas...

Day 3 of the Sundance Film Festival continues with premiering films today, from writer Hailey Gates’ directorial debut, Atropia, to James Griffiths’ The Ballad of Wallis Island.

Alia Shawkat, Callum Turner, and Hailey Gates graced the red carpet at the Eccles Theatre on Jan 25 for the premiere of director Gates’ comedy, Atropia. Produced by Luca Guadagnino, the film follows an aspiring actress who falls in love with a soldier cast as an insurgent while training at a military role-playing facility. Their nonsimulated emotions threaten to derail the performance. The film also stars Tim Heidecker and Jane Levy.

Related: Sundance Film Festival 2025: All Of Deadline’s Movie Reviews

Later, Griffiths presented the premiere of his latest film, The Ballad of Wallis Island, starring Tom Basden and Tim Key, opposite Carey Mulligan, Sian Clifford, and Akemnji Ndifornyen. Basden and Key, longtime collaborators who previously brought their 2015 film Two Films About Loneliness to Sundance,...

In Obex, the secluded Conor finds his life take a turn for the worse when a state-of-the-art computer game begins to intrude into his reality. The film, directed by Albert Birney (The Strawberry Mansion), will premiere as part of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s Next section. Multi-hyphenate Pete Ohs was a co-writer as well as the director of photography for Obex. He speaks in his capacity as cinematographer below, describing the goals and influences for the film’s look and explaining how his close friendship with Birney informed the film. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and […]

The post “It Was Always Fun, But Not Necessarily Easy”: Dp Pete Ohs on Obex first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In Obex, the secluded Conor finds his life take a turn for the worse when a state-of-the-art computer game begins to intrude into his reality. The film, directed by Albert Birney (The Strawberry Mansion), will premiere as part of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s Next section. Multi-hyphenate Pete Ohs was a co-writer as well as the director of photography for Obex. He speaks in his capacity as cinematographer below, describing the goals and influences for the film’s look and explaining how his close friendship with Birney informed the film. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and […]

The post “It Was Always Fun, But Not Necessarily Easy”: Dp Pete Ohs on Obex first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Magnify has acquired the international and U.S. sales rights to “Obex” ahead of its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Directed by and starring “Sylvio” and “Strawberry Mansion” filmmaker Albert Birney, “Obex” is a black and white fantasy film that marks Birney’s first live-action directorial effort.

Written by Birney and Pete Ohs, the film follows Connor Marsh (Birney), a man living in seclusion with his dog Sandy. One day he begins playing the titular Obex, a state-of-the-art computer game. When Sandy goes missing, the line between reality and the game blurs and Conor must venture into the

strange world of Obex to bring her home.

“[This] is a surreal and fantastical journey through time and space — a wild ride filled with

wonders, unexpected characters, and thrills along the way,” said Magnify SVP tof Global Sales

Lorna Lee. “We’re incredibly excited to champion the heart-forward, humorous and imaginative

cinema of Albert Birney.