A curmudgeonly biologist (Robert Longstreet - The Haunting of Hill House, Halloween Kills) and his slacker graduate students (Whitmer Thomas & Zach Weintraub) muddle their way through a summer research project. Deep in the Appalachian woods, they encounter a group of mystical backpackers who disrupt their lives in beautiful and surprising ways. Part hilarious stoner comedy and part transcendental meditation on mysticism and love, A Dim Valley is a delightful ethereal journey into the cycle of love.

Helen, a young forest lookout, invites Charlie to come live and work with her. But this is an odd job in an odd Maine village, for Helen soon explains she can predict financial movements by looking at footage of the forest. Described as a “digital-pastoral,” and influenced by the disorientating cinema of Kiyoshi Kurosawa & Raúl Ruiz, this hermeneutical puzzle brings us back to basics: asking how we are to interpret (its) images. Endearingly ambitious, beguilingly stylized, a debut that plays with our every expectation.