STRAY DOLLS

Official Selection, 2019 Tribeca Film Festival

It’s the middle of the night in middle America, and young undocumented South Asian immigrant Riz (Geetanjali Thapa) scores a much needed gig as a cleaning lady at the seedy Tides Plaza no-tell motel owned by opportunistic, Fleetwood Mac-loving, Polish-accented Una (Cynthia Nixon). Riz’s new roommate and co-worker Dallas (Olivia DeJonge), a blonde runaway with an accent to match, is equal parts nasty and nice. Posters of Dolly Parton plaster their motel room, and bottles of nail polish are scattered about the vanity along with lines of cocaine and pilfered pills. Dallas dreams of getting out of town and opening a nail salon. Riz– new to the country, but no stranger to life in the unsavory underbelly–dreams of Niagara Falls, a new start, and the American promise of opportunity. As their lives spin slowly out of control and they enmesh in one another’s fates, the two become unlikely partners, looking for a road to freedom in an amoral world.

In her moody feature debut, Indian American filmmaker Sonejuhi Sinha refreshes the crime genre, inserting a young immigrant woman with complex desires and flaws into a gritty and at times brutal portrait of an American generation in dire straits.

–Jumanah Albahri