EMPTY METAL
Empty Metal
Adam Khalil & Bayley Sweitzer, 2019
Catalog No.: FTF-084
Length: 83 minutes
Set in the abusive police state of the contemporary United States, EMPTY METAL follows five groups of characters, each emblematic of a different extreme political ideology, as they attempt insurrection against the status quo: a queer noise band is coerced into a dangerous assassination plot by a family of militant Native Americans who are aided by a Rastafarian computer hacker who is old friends with a Buddhist hermit whose son is a local militia leader. This tangled web of marginalized voices is as diverse and contradictory as the nation that spun it, but there is a common thread: all the characters teeter on the dull knife blade that is contemporary American politics, but they refuse to fall right or left. Instead, they lash out from the soul, and under the radar, in an attempt to achieve what their mainstream predecessors have yet to accomplish.
And all the while, the drones are watching...
Directed by Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer
Written by Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer
Produced by Steve Holmgren, Tiffany Sia, Andrew Fierberg, Héctor Velarde, Alex Lazarowich
Edited by Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer
Music by Leila Bordreuil, Doug Hock, Eliane Radigue, Bill Nace, Dreamcrusher, Christopher Latina
Cast: PVSSYHEAVEN, Sam Richardson, Austin Sley Julian, Alex Esco, Wendel “Oba” Scott, Mazikeen LaGuerre, Irma LaGuerre, Jon Nandor, Paweł Wojtasik
Festivals: Art of the Real Festival, IndieMemphis, Chicago Underground Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival,imagineNATIVE Festival, Afterimage Film Festival, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Cine Las Americas Film Festival, Eastern Oregon Film Festival, Images Festival, Tacoma Film Festival, FICUNAM Film Festival
WATCH THE FILM
PRESS
“Empty Metal rewrites the rules of filmmaking.”
-Matthew Monagle, The Austin Chronicle
“Expresses a kind of irrevocable reckoning that has been centuries in the making.”
-Pamela Cohn, Filmmaker Magazine
“Khalil and Sweitzer have become today’s rising political filmmakers worthy of watching.”
-Paolo Kagaoan, In The Seats
“A terrific new film. Pointed in its politics and inspiring in its imaginative reach.”
-Steven Zultanski, Frieze
“A willfully agitational work for exasperated times.”
-Jon Dieringer, Screenslate
“The film is chaotic and one of the more original political films of the last year.”
-Peter Goldberg, Slant Magazine