The Sweet East

Lillian is a high school student from South Carolina, an angelic but rather passive and aloof girl who has arrived in Washington D.C. on a school trip. In a bar, her fellow students entertain themselves with karaoke while she retreats to the toilet. At that moment, an armed madman storms into the bar , after which great panic breaks out. The anarchist punk Caleb, also in the bar, manages to escape her via underground tunnels, after which she ends up in a house full of anti-fascist activists. It is the beginning of an absurd journey down the US East Coast, during which she meets the strangest types: from far-right supporters of all sorts of conspiracy theories to hip and excited filmmakers who see a movie star in her. Without hesitation and open-minded, Lillian moves through all these worlds that are completely new to her.

Debuting director Sean William Price combines an Alice-in-Wonderland-like adventure with a cross-section of contemporary American society in this utterly wonderful coming-of-age story. Talia Ryder convinces as Lillian.