New to Streaming: Hard Truths, Nickel Boys, Broken Rage, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, and More.

      Every week, we spotlight notable titles that have recently arrived on streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week's picks below and previous collections here.

      The Adamant Girl (P. S. Vinothraj)

      While rural narratives have become increasingly popular in various sectors of Indian cinema, P.S. Vinothraj has established a distinct niche with Koozhangal (Pebbles) and his subsequent film, Kottukkaali (The Adamant Girl). He intricately dissects family and community interactions in rural settings with unsettling insight, as his camera consistently follows and intersects the unfolding events. There are bursts of dialogue and emotion interwoven with prolonged moments of reflection where even a single glance can be enlightening. Soori and Anna Ben, both seasoned actors in Tamil cinema, serve as excellent representations of the gender dynamics at play. Vinothraj has refreshingly avoided preachiness or overt messages, allowing The Adamant Girl to respect its audience enough to interpret what they observe at their own pace. – Soham G.

      Where to Stream: VOD

      Black Dog (Guan Hu)

      Set in a dilapidated, desolate city in northwest China, Guan Hu’s Black Dog depicts a world where human life has nearly vanished, leaving canines as the primary inhabitants. The story takes place in 2008, just weeks before the Beijing Summer Olympics, yet the capital feels recondite in both time and distance; a mural celebrating the event appears so faded that one might mistake it for a relic from decades past. Oil once lay beneath the nearby hills until the reserves were depleted, prompting waves of migration that transformed this anonymous area at the Gobi Desert's edge into a parched ghost town, dominated by the pets left behind by its former inhabitants. Dogs are omnipresent; from the barren areas surrounding the city to its labyrinth of forsaken buildings, they navigate this unsettling landscape as quiet, ominous watchers—more reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic nightmare akin to Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later than a whimsical fantasy like Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs. – Leonardo G. (full review)

      Where to Stream: VOD

      Broken Rage (Takeshi Kitano)

      The film unfolds in two chapters, beginning as a crime thriller before shifting styles and revisiting the first segment scene-by-scene through a more surreal lens. Kitano stars in both segments as a hired assassin. Flawless in the first part and haplessly awkward in the second, he portrays “Mouse,” a hitman whose usual pattern of violence is disrupted when police enlist him to infiltrate a drug cartel. Despite the tonal contrasts, humor is woven throughout both halves. Even in the ostensibly more serious first, Kitano’s script operates with a childlike reasoning: it takes merely a few punches in a choreographed fight with another infiltrator for Mouse to earn the favor of the mobsters he’s spying on. His solitary killer persona offers a comedic take on the unassailable assassins he has portrayed in the past (consider Otomo from his Outrage series). However, the commitment to humorously critique his onscreen identities is something I haven't seen from him since 2005’s Takeshis’, which, while comical, became engulfed in self-indulgent digressions. This is far from the spirit of Broken Rage. This is not only an exceptionally funny film—the kind that had audience members around me at the press screening bursting into laughter just minutes into it—but also a sharp critique of the discourse that has positioned the director’s comedic and serious impulses as opposing forces. – Leonardo G. (full review)

      Where to Stream: VOD

      Flow (Gints Zilbalodis)

      Being a pet owner can often lead to a certain level of anxiety, influenced by one’s personality. For instance, after leaving my apartment to attend the screening of the film I'm writing about, I worried I hadn’t closed my bathroom door. If left ajar, my two lovely senior cats could wander in and consume toxic flowers. While this may seem like a common concern—akin to the worry of leaving an oven on—animal-loving individuals often find their minds plagued by intrusive thoughts. After calming my nerves about my cats’ potential bathroom escapade, those anxieties pivoted to the digital creature central to Flow. – Ethan V. (full review)

      Where to Stream: Max

      From Ground Zero

      From Ground Zero is a film that ideally wouldn’t need to exist, and it cannot be discussed as if it were a typical production. This anthology of 22 shorts is Palestine’s entry for the Best International Film Oscar and has rightfully secured a place on the shortlist of 15 titles. Like any anthology, some segments are more polished than others, though critiquing this feels disingenuous; art created in a war zone carries an urgency that eclipses typical dramatic flaws. As the title suggests, these are reports from an unfathomable living hell, and the mere