Nightvision: Future cult classics
A Muslim filmmaker, hoping to gain insight into his fraught relationship with his family and religion, visits an isolated Buddhist monastery in Japan. There, monks endure extreme tests of devotion and their mantra—"You can achieve anything if you're willing to die for it"—is not just sacred, but literal. When the filmmaker is asked to leave after disrespecting the space, he meets a rebel monk with a weakness for heavy metal and ice cream, and the two bond over a love of dessert and a shared search for enlightenment. This quirky and dryly funny hybrid reveals the secret lives of Buddhist monks and the secrets and lies the filmmaker himself is keeping. By offering an irreverent and relatable message about following faith to the letter, Crows Are White refers all those who struggle to be devout and adhere to the rules of their religion to the fact that there is always a caveat, a hack or a loophole. Angie Driscoll