WESTERN World Cinema

The provocatively titled WESTERN follows Meinhard, a stoic and terse man who begins work with a German construction crew on a site in the remote Bulgarian countryside. Cultural rifts between the rowdy German workers and their unwelcoming Bulgarian neighbors soon become flashpoints of macho hostility and violence, and Meinhard finds himself in the uneasy middleground between the two sides. Filmmaker Valeska Grisebach examines and exposes the institutional strictures which serve to prop up notions of masculinity, and the toxic behaviors at once celebrated and nurtured by the titular classic film genre. Grisebach joins Maren Ade (TONI ERDMANN) as part of a new German auteur movement with this searing portrait of one man’s journey into the masculine and nomadic construction industry. – Lane Kneedler