Exhibit #8 (2022) (Netherlands)

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Adin and Aisha arrived to the Netherlands from Bosnia when she was four and he was thirteen. Refugees on their own, they were in a shelter for years and then as they were finally about to be adopted, Adin disappeared. Now, Elias has taken a job documenting Aisha’s story and her quest to figure out what became of her brother. The opening home video from 1999 paints a picture of a disturbing fate that may have befallen the young man. The authorities assume he fled back to Bosnia and don’t seem to really give a fuck about a missing person who ain’t Dutch. They are invited to go back to the shelter where Aisha spent years she can’t really remember. Before they even arrive there, we find out that some unseen creep is secretly filming the young woman and the cameraman. The duo soon become as unsettled as us when their time at the refugee facility points to secrets, lies and a coverup. What the hell is going on and are the two sympathetic leads going to be able to come out of this experience alive? Come on. You’ve been here before. It’s found footage. You know where this is going. There’s also no doubt that the place is up to no good before the thirty minute mark hits because the movie decides to let us all play along on equal footing as everything spirals out of control. Gorgeous Nastaran Razawi Khorasani is great in the lead, balancing desperation, intelligence and the slightest bit of hope but also grounding herself in the reality of the situation. Claudio Magaña Torres is also well cast as the ambitious documentarian who is dedicated to the story but also may be a little too naive to see how much danger he and his subject are in. They make for a refreshingly solid team of found footage protagonists who actually have some chemistry… which makes the inevitability of where it’s leading all the more unfortunate. I usually don’t have much patience for genre outings that base themselves around dark-web-red-room-snuff bullshit but thanks to an excellent pair of leads and a focus on a group of people that are sadly looked over in my preferred genre, this one works.