PIFF Playlist: Streaming Recommendations

The list below represents a selection of films from the PIFF Programming team which are currently available to be streamed online. Where multiple streaming venues were available, all currently known options have been listed. 

Inside a vertical prison system, inmates are assigned to a level and forced to ration food from a platform that moves between the floors. Directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, The Platform is a twisted social allegory about mankind at its darkest and hungriest.

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In a day-glo-colored, bizarro version of suburbia where adults wear braces on their already-straight teeth, everyone drives golf carts, and children magically turn into golden retrievers, soccer moms and best friends Jill (Jocelyn DeBoer) and Lisa (Dawn Luebbe) are locked in a passive aggressive battle-of-the-wills that takes a turn into the sinister when Lisa begins systematically taking over every aspect of Jill’s life—starting with her newborn daughter. Meanwhile, a psycho yoga teacher killer is on the loose, Jill’s husband (Beck Bennett) has developed a curious taste for pool water, and Lisa is pregnant with a soccer ball. That’s just the tip of the gloriously weird iceberg that is the feature debut from writers-directors Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe, a hilariously demented, Stepford Wives-on-acid satire destined to be an instant cult classic.

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What happened to Carolyn Harper? Part suburban nightmare, part neon-soaked teenage fever dream, this tantalizing mystery traces the wave of fear and distrust that spreads across a small Midwestern town in the wake of a high school girl’s mysterious disappearance. As the loneliness and darkness lurking beneath the veneer of everyday life gradually comes to light, a collective awakening seems to overcome the town’s teenage girls—gathering in force until it can no longer be contained. Unfolding in a hallucinatory haze of lushly surreal images, Knives and Skin is a one-of-a-kind coming-of-age noir that haunts like a half-remembered dream.

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In the twilight of the 1950s, on one fateful night in New Mexico, a young, winsome switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) and charismatic radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) discover a strange audio frequency that could change their small town and the future forever. Dropped phone calls, AM radio signals, secret reels of tape forgotten in a library, switchboards, crossed patchlines and an anonymous phone call lead Fay and Everett on a scavenger hunt toward the unknown.

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In late 2014, a low-res video of a person in a clown mask emerging from underneath a sleeping child’s bed appears on YouTube. The description below the video claims that the clown is named “Wrinkles,” that he lives in southwest Florida, and that he’s been hired by the child’s parents to frighten her for misbehaving. The video goes viral. Soon, more mysterious videos of Wrinkles scaring children appear online, along with a phone number to hire him for “behavioral services.” Wrinkles becomes internet lore – a whole genre of YouTube videos of kids filming themselves calling him appears online, and over a million messages are left at the number. Voicemails range from disturbing to hilarious to terrifying: parents use the number to terrify their children, kids who are obsessive fans of creepy clowns reach out to make a new friend, children threaten to inflict wildly creative violence if he comes anywhere near them. But who is Wrinkles, and why is he doing this? With incredible access to the mastermind behind the mask, Wrinkles the Clown is a cryptic and playful exploration of these questions, as well as an inside look at myth-building and the unpredictable spread of imagination in the Internet age. 

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A bizarre retro comedy shot entirely on VHS, VHYes takes us back to a simpler time, when twelve-year-old Ralph mistakenly records home videos and his favorite late-night shows over his parents’ wedding tape. The result is a nostalgic wave of home shopping clips, censored pornography, and nefarious true-crime tales that threaten to unkindly rewind Ralph’s reality.

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After a tragic event, Juha develops an unexpected but powerful connection with a dominatrix named Mona. But his dangerous addiction to suffocation will lead them both down a wild, freaky path towards emotional enlightenment. 

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Every year, almost 40,000 people are killed by guns in America. Each shooting devastates and forever changes the victim’s family and friends. The new feature documentary, Behind the Bullet, explores a side of gun violence that’s rarely talked about- the impact a shooting has on the shooter. The film answers the question, what does shooting and killing someone do to a person whose intentions are good. Each subject in the film tells the story of how the pull of a trigger, changed them emotionally, physically, psychologically, and spiritually. The complexity of each scenario plays out as they describe the conflicting emotions and moral injury that comes after a self-defense shooting, an accidental shooting or an unintentional shooting.

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After a traumatic event, two Indigenous women in Vancouver are brought together and form a deep bond despite leading different lives.