Bored of the current glut of bigger-is-better prequels, sequels, and remakes at cinemas? Miss the days of Cinema Nouveau, when art-house movies were actually available in South Africa?
"A Ghost Story" and "Raw" is now streaming on Showmax, and just in time for Halloween! Both arthouse favourites have a 91% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.
"Raw" shocked Cannes in 2016, winning the FIPRESCI Critics Prize, then became the talk of Toronto, where audiences reportedly walked out, threw up, and fainted.
The no-under-18 horror movie went on to win 16 more awards for 30-something French writer-director Julia Ducournau. It was the fourth highest-ranked foreign film and the fifth highest-ranked first feature in Indiewire’s Critics Poll last year.
Garance Marillier stars as Justine, a brilliant 16-year-old student starting out at veterinary school. Everyone in Justine's family is a vet. And a vegetarian. After Justine is forced to eat raw meat for the first time as part of a first-year hazing routine, she starts to explore the pleasures of the flesh - in all its forms.
"A Ghost Story" reunites the stars of Lowery’s breakout feature, "Ain’t Them Bodies Saints" Oscar winner Casey Affleck stars as a recently deceased man, now a ghost shrouded in a white sheet, while Oscar nominee Rooney Mara plays his grieving widow.
After premiering at Sundance, "A Ghost Story" won 11 international awards and was named one of the top 10 independent films last year by the National Board of Review in America.
Rolling Stone hailed it as “one of the most moving films of the year… Hypnotic and haunting… You’ve never seen anything like it.”
A Ghost Story is coming first and only to Showmax on 18 October 2018.