“Mustang,” the debut film from director Deniz Gamze Erguven, sounds like it should be about a wild untamed horse, and while in reality it follows five young sisters, in many ways the title is the perfect description for the defiance and spirit the girls show towards their repressive world.

The orphaned girls are being raised in a strict community by their grandmother and uncle in Northern Turkey. The film opens on the last day of school, as the five girls bid tearful goodbyes to a teacher moving to Istanbul. As the day comes to a close the girls decide to take the long way home  so they can run through the beach and celebrate with their classmates. When innocent piggy back games are mistaken for inappropriate behavior by a neighbor, however, their playful world is shattered. In the words of youngest sister Lale (Günes Sensoy), “everything turned to shit.”

Their scandalized neighbor accuses the girls of pleasuring themselves on the shoulders of their male classmate and grandmother in turn, sends them to be examined by a doctor to prove their virginity. Things only get worse from there when their uncle beats them for acting like whores and removes anything that might “pervert them” from the house. All make-up, computers, and telephones get locked away as the first step in an isolation that gradually ramps up as the film progresses.

The girls are forced into shapeless brown dresses while a parade of aunts comes through the house, in a non-stop Home Ec workshop that Lale’s voiceover refers to as a “wife factory.” After the girls sneak out of the house together to attend an all-female football match, the wedding plans intensify and the two oldest sisters, Sonay (Ilayda Akdogan) and Selma (Tugba Sunguroglu) are married off in a double ceremony. While the remaining sisters continue without the older two, it is revealed that Uncle Erol is molesting Ece (Elit Iscan), and after a period of behavior Lale refers to as “dangerous” Ece unexpectedly kills herself. With only Nur (Doga Zeynep Doguslu) and Lale left in the house, Nur becomes the next in line to be married off. The night of the wedding Lale takes a stand, staging an escape that leads both Lale and Nur to Istanbul where they are reunited with their teacher.

The “Virgin Suicides” comparison is inevitable, as much for the premise as for the details of the film itself. The dreamy cinematography of the opening scenes echoes “The Virgin Suicides,” though in this film the girls aren’t seen through anyone else’s lens. Instead the audience sees them as they are—teenage girls. “Mustang’s” tone abstains from wispy meditation and instead gives a direct and naturalistic narrative that laments the girls’ woes while also celebrating their rebellion in the face of a repressive environment.

The title reflects the girl’s collective spirit. The sisters find a way to break past every roadblock their family sets in their way, continuing to do things on their own terms. Though Sonay and Selma are pushed into marriage, Sonay negotiates with her grandmother and happily marries her boyfriend. Ece’s suicide functions as her choice not to participate in the life her family has laid out for her, and Nur and Lale choose to run away. Of the five, only Selma concedes to a life she doesn’t want.

The film masterfully depicts simultaneously both the prison that patriarchal values create and the power within each individual to subvert the system.

“Mustang” is now playing in limited release.

Written By: Deniz Gamze Erguven & Alice Winocour

Directed By: Deniz Gamze Erguven

Starring: Günes Sensoy, Ilayda Akdogan, Tugba Sunguroglu, Elit Iscan, & Doga Zeynep Doguslu

Grade: A

“Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” the debut feature by Chloe Zhao, explores the complicated and emotionally fraught relationship between a community and their home. The film screened at AFI FEST on November 10^th.

The film, shot and largely cast on location, follows two siblings living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the months immediately following their estranged father’s death — a famous rodeo cowboy who before his untimely death, had very minimal involvement in their lives.  He spent much of his time drinking and impregnating other women, he had fathered 25 kids by nine or so “so-called wives.”

As the film begins the siblings learn their father’s just died a predictable drunkard’s death in an accidental fire. The story develops as a slice-of-life where we slowly get a picture of life on the reservation through Johnny (John Reddy) & Jashaun’s (Jashaun St. John) experiences.

The two rely on each other for support, having grown up without their father and a mother that is generally absent from view, Johnny takes over the role of caretaker.  He sells bootlegged alcohol to make money. The cinematography reflects the emptiness felt throughout the reservation, with frequent shots of wide-open landscape. The cloud looming over the horizon is Johnny’s plans for his future—he wants to move to Los Angeles with his girlfriend Aurelia (Taysha Fuller) once they graduate to follow his dream of being a boxer while she attends college.

Though obviously torn over the decision to leave the reservation and his family, Johnny is aware that the options open to him if he stays on the reservation are limited. In the face of that future, Johnny begins bootlegging on a larger scale to save the money necessary for his move though it puts him in dangerous situations and on the radar of rival bootleggers. It also takes much of his time away from Jashaun.

With Johnny more and more absent, Jashaun begins spending time with a new friend, Travis (Travis Lone Hill), who’s been newly released from prison. In exchange for the promise that he’ll make her a pow-wow dress, Jashaun helps him with his small business selling clothing hand-painted with his designs.

After Johnny and Jashaun find out about their dad’s sexual escapades they start connecting with their half-siblings at various points in the film. Jashaun seeks out the half-brother who her father had lived with, and finds closure in a conversation about their father. Another half-brother seeks Johnny out and continually offers him a job in his stepfather’s garage to get him out of bootlegging. The alternative family bonds explored in the film illustrate at once the lack of parental presence yet also the strong sense of community on the reservation.

Eventually the confrontation between Johnny and the rival bootleggers comes to a head, leaving him beaten and his car torched, erasing his chances of getting to Los Angeles. In the end, Johnny doesn’t leave with Aurelia, and the film closes with him reflecting on the bonds that will leave him tied to the reservation, whether he stays or goes.

In an AFI fest Q&A, Zhao spoke about her experience as someone without a strong sense of home due to the fact that she moved around a lot as a child. She stated that she wanted to make a film that explored the ways in which a person’s home could be “freeing and trapping at the same time.” The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is a particularly poignant setting for such an exploration; the reservation is the home that has been forced upon the community, and in many ways reflects the injustices that have been thrust upon Native American communities. Characters such as Travis reflect the incarceration cycle on the reservation, and the presence of bootleg alcohol throughout the film highlights the community’s struggle with alcoholism. It would have been easy for Zhao to only paint a negative picture of the reservation, but of course “home” is always more complicated than meets the eye.

Written and Directed By: Chloe Zhao

Starring: John Reddy, Jashaun St. John

Grade: B+

The AFI FEST came to a close today and after a week of movie marathoning, the Jury and Audience awards were chosen.

“Land and Shade” took home the New Auteurs grand Jury Award. The film, a debut from writer director Cesar Augusto Acevedo, is a portrait of a family in rural Colombia. The jury, which consisted of Inkoo Kang (TheWrap), Sheri Linden (The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times), and Nigel M. Smith (the guardian), awarded the film for “its visual eloquence, formal rigor and emotional power.”

Also receiving a jury award was “Disorder,” with a Special Jury Mention for Direction. “Desde Alla” received a special mention for Screenplay. “Boys” and “World of Tomorrow” each took home Grand Jury Awards for Shorts, live action and animated, respectively. Many shorts were honored with special mentions: “Rate Me” (Directed by Fyzal Boulifa) for innovative storytelling, “The Reagan Shorts” (Directed by Pacho Velez) for Nonfiction Filmmaking, “Teeth” (Directed by Tom Brown and Daniel Grey) for Screenwriting, and “Manoman” (Directed by Simon Cartwright) for creative vision.

“Landfill Harmonic,” a documentary about a poor community in Paraguay who turn waste into unique instruments or an orchestra, received an audience award for World Cinema. “Mustang,” a story about five sisters locked in their Turkish home after being deemed scandalous, received high praise, winning the New Auteurs Audience Award.

In the American Independents category, James Mond’s “James White” took home the Audience Award. Mond’s directorial debut starring Cynthia Nixon (Sex in the City) and Christopher Abbot (Girls) is a drama about a young self destructive New Yorker who has to deal with his mother’s fight with a serious illness. “Ma,” by director Celia Robison-Hall captivated audiences with her dialogue-free film about a virgin birth, and won the Breakthrough Audience Award.

The festival program featured 130 films – 77 features and 53 shorts- from 45 countries. Categories included: Galas/Tributes (5 films), Special Screenings (8), American Independents (9), New Auteurs (11), World Cinema (29), Midnight (3), Breakthrough (5), Cinema’s Legacy (5), Presentations (2) and Shorts (53).

The stars of the upcoming film “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” came out for a special screening, Wednesday, at the Chinese Theater. HTS was on the red carpet talking to the cast about their characters, their coolest day dreams and what it’s like working with Ben Stiller. Check out the video below.

The AFI Film Festival has a lot to offer in the way of gala films and seasoned actors, but while the big event on Friday was the premiere of “August Osage County” at the Chinese Theater, other more fun things were happening in the theater next door. Hollywood’s up-and-coming actors gathered to discuss success, their craft, and Internet stalking for AFI’s Young Hollywood Roundtable.

The panel brought Brie Larson (“Short Term 12″), Miles Teller (“The Spectacular Now”), Michael B. Jordan (“Fruitvale Station”), Dane DeHaan (“Kill Your Darlings”), and Greta Gerwig (“Frances Ha”) together, with Los Angeles Times’ entertainment reporter Amy Kaufman moderating, to discuss a number of topics that ranged from inspirational, to awkward, to just plain hilarious. Check out the highlights:

On their first big Hollywood moment:

Kaufman started off the night by asking the group when they experienced their first Hollywood moment. Dane DeHaan, who co-starred in the 2012 film “Lawless” before landing roles in “Kill Your Darlings” and “The Place Beyond the Pines,” said he first felt like he had made it when his agent bought him a plane ticket to Cannes for the film’s premiere.

“When Lawless was going to Cannes, they were going to take everyone except for me because everyone else was a lot more famous than I was,” DeHann said. “So my agent bought me a plane ticket and the first night I was there I slept on a line producer’s futon, but I had this really cool tux and then I did the red carpet. That night [after the premiere] Jessica Chastain had to go back to finish shooting “Zero Dark Thirty” so she gave me her hotel room for the night and it was like… um… palatial and that was my first big Hollywood moment.”

Brie Larson said she had her first Hollywood moment at the tender age of seven. “My first job… I was seven years old and I was doing a fake Barbie commercial for Jay Leno,” Larson said. “It was Malibu Mudslide Barbie –this is real– and I was so excited about the opportunity to work, and they put your name on the door and it was my first time ever seeing Brie Larson– because that’s not my real name– so it was like this fake name on the door in Los Angeles. And they had like wardrobe which was like – a t-shirt—and it was really exciting and I remember thinking ‘I made it.’ And I had no idea I wasn’t even close.”

On using/resisting social media:

All three men on the panel use Twitter, but both Gerwig and Larson have decided to opt out. Gerwig described herself as a bit of a social media stalker. “I’m like an old woman,” she said. “I read people’s Twitters, but I don’t get their feeds. I just read all of them. I like that. I like Jessica Chastain’s Facebook page very much. She’s so nice, and she’s so happy. I stalk people all the time via their things, but I feel like maybe if I was on it then they would know. I just want to be behind a shield.”

On the difference between acting in independent films and blockbusters:

Every actor on the panel has experienced working on both indie films and big blockbusters and they said there are some noticeable differences between them.

DeHaan, who will appear in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2″ this coming May, said the biggest difference to him is time. “I think that’s the main difference [with big budget films]. It buys you time. You have six months to make a movie instead of 24 days so you can spend an entire day working on two pages. You can explore everything, rather than having to do it two or three times and then move on, hoping that you got it.”

Teller, who just finished shooting the highly anticipated “Divergent” with “The Spectacular Now” co-star Shailene Woodley, said he likes how much say he gets as an actor in independent films. “[Shooting smaller films], to me, it feels more like a student film. Obviously I’m not trying to take away from the quality of work they’re doing. The directors that I’ve worked with on smaller films are much more collaborative from my experience. You really feel like a big part of it. On the bigger films that I’ve worked on, for certain things it’s more of a visual presentation. I like staying active. I like being on the go. I think it builds an energy to it…I like the feeling that you and everybody else are making this thing together.”

 On auditioning for roles:

When talking about auditions, Teller recalled talking to his agent about why he wasn’t getting work. “I remember when I was first auditioning for stuff, I wasn’t booking anything and my agent said, ‘Well, you gotta start working out. Or you gotta start doing your hair.'”

After giggling over the idea of someone telling Teller to “do his hair,” Larson recalled receiving similar feedback from casting directors. “For so many auditions, I get, ‘It’s great. It’s really great, but could you come back in a mini skirt… Could you come back in a jean mini skirt?”

Then she said to Gerwig, “Do you get that?”

“No,” Gerwig deadpanned. “They don’t want to see me in a mini skirt. I always get like after an audition – so are you funny?”

 On disastrous auditions:

Though the panel wasn’t really willing to discuss their worst auditions Gerwig did seem upset over never booking a role on Law & Order. “I’m like the only actor in New York who’s never ever been on any Law & Order and I’ve auditioned for so many of them. And the sad thing is I love Law & Order. I love it, I see it all the time, I’m into all the detectives and all the different iterations. I’m really obsessed with it. And they always say to me, ‘like you seem like you’re making fun of the material’ … and I’m like I take this shit so seriously.”

 On watching themselves on screen:

“Miles doesn’t watch his own movies ever,” Jordan said to break a lull in the conversation. While he wasn’t totally serious, Teller did say watching himself on screen is odd. “I mean you watch it, it’s just you don’t see the movie, at least I don’t see the movie at all. You work on a movie for however long, you have all these memories associated with it and then for that to be condensed down to like an hour and half or two hours is just so weird,” Teller said. “And I hate it, I think I’m terrible, and I think everyone else is fantastic.”

Jordan agreed for the most part. He said he’s seen “Fruitvale Station” four times to date, but he found himself thinking “that’s annoying” when he first saw it.

Gerwig recounted a job where she sat naked in a bathtub playing a trumpet, “I just remember the last shot of the movie in the bathtub … and it was sort of like, well, kill your vanity now. But like you really understand why Orson Welles ate so much because it’s so traumatic. Like after you see yourself you sort of want to go eat a whole roast by yourself.”