STRAW 2025: A Mother’s Silence Was Louder Than a Siren
A haunting look at grief, survival, and a mother’s quiet collapse in a world that never gave her room to fall.

A newly married woman leaves her wealthy husband for a lover who mysteriously disappears. Things start to unravel and become life-threatening on a trip to the husband's family estate.
A haunting look at grief, survival, and a mother’s quiet collapse in a world that never gave her room to fall.
In Jeymes Samuel's history-infused, neo-spaghetti western, Black women are center stage with a fresh hip hop mixtape keeping rhythm in the backdrop.
Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion is a fan-favorite, as are some of the more science fiction angled movies like 28 Days Later or World War Z. I recently watched the 1995 Wolfgang Peterson-directed movie, Outbreak for the first time, which is currently available on Netflix.
Overall, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is plagued by numerous flaws, both from a quality and from a diversity standpoint. The film relies on gore and loud sounds to drown out its flat script, flatter dialogue, and one-dimensional characters.
Nick Rowland’s She Rides Shotgun is a blistering, blood-soaked road thriller that doubles as a bruised love story between a haunted ex-con (a career-best Taron Egerton) and the daughter he barely knows (astonishing newcomer Ana Sophia Heger). Fueled by white-knuckle chases, razor-tense shootouts, and quiet moments of aching tenderness, the film captures both the terror and fragile beauty of survival. It’s gritty, heartbreaking, and unforgettable—a father-daughter odyssey destined to leave audiences shaken.
Wilde’s coming-of-age comedy directorial debut is simultaneously hilarious and entertaining, and remarkably heartfelt and relatable.