This article was first published on January 31, 2025 out of the Sundance Film Festival. Atropia is now in select theaters.

There’s an inherent farce to the U.S. government, or so Hailey Gates suggests in her debut feature film, Atropia . Based on her 2019 short film Shako Mako , Gates expands her exploration of fake towns established by the American military for training purposes and the actors cast as townspeople — and potential terrorists — in those training scenarios. At the heart of both the short and Atropia is Alia Shawkat’s Fayruz, whose Iraqi heritage and commitment to character lend her an overwrought self-seriousness played for laughs. That obscene quality, both in the baseness of the humor and the earnestness of the film’s central romance amidst all the (fake) blood a

See Full Page