Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan’s award-winning lo-fi pandemic comedy NEW STRAINS begins its U.S. theatrical rollout next month from MEMORY with screenings at Roxy Cinema New York (June 13), Nitehawk Cinema Williamsburg (June 15 & 16), and Los Angeles’ Now Instant Image Hall (June 21 & 22), with a North American digital release to follow on Friday, July 19.
Synopsis: Kallia and Ram have just begun their first vacation as a couple, and they’re already bickering. Though a strange new illness is on the brink of exploding into a pandemic, and despite Ram’s protestations, Kallia insists that they are going to have a fun week in New York City. Within hours of their arrival, a nation-wide lockdown is announced, ruining their plans. Over the course of their stay, they descend to absurd depths of jealousy and co-dependence. Is their childish behavior simply the result of cabin fever, or is it something more?
Shot during the COVID-19 lockdown in New York City, Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan —a married filmmaking couple who both teach in addition to their creative filmmaking, often collaborating in numerous capacities and roles— relied on improvised dialogue, a decades-old camcorder, no operator, and a full cast of non-professional talent. Shaw and Kamalakanthan wrote, starred, directed, shot, and edited the feature that been praised as “a glimmering indie diamond” (Screen Slate). NEW STRAINS was produced by Shaw and Kate Stahl for Parori Productions. The film world premiered at the 2023 Rotterdam International Film Festival, where it took home a Special Jury Award in the Tiger Competition. Most recently, it screened at the inaugural Los Angeles Festival of Movies and MoMI’s First Look film festival in NYC.
In addition to the film’s anticipated release, the NEW STRAINS original soundtrack, featuring a score by composer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Will Epstein, will release on June 5 on Spotify and Apple Music. The music was written, composed, recorded, and mixed from his Woodstock home using an odd bevy of instruments including several vintage toy keyboards, an iPhone, and his own distorted voice. On his work, Epstein said, “In the score, I wanted to reflect the tactility of the filmmaking, of feeling both handmade and composed. I opted to use instruments in that spirit – ones that could be construed as toys, like Casio keyboards, an old Yamaha sampling keyboard, and an iPhone for the drum machine. Utilizing these old machines for purposes other than they were intended brought the score into an uncanny, dreamy space. Alongside this approach, we were interested in creating strong thematic melodies in a classical-Hollywood tradition which created a fun dichotomy with the very homemade feel of the music and film.”
