Stinking Heaven

Nathan Silver's fifth feature film takes place at a halfway house for recovering addicts in suburban New Jersey circa 1990. Run by married ex-junkies Jim and Lucy, the communal home is a hub of more-or-less harmless dysfunction, where residents sleep together, shower together, work together selling kombucha out of a van, and recount their visceral low points on video in humiliating therapy sessions that tend to foster suspicion instead of solidarity. But as the frayed nerves of the group are further unraveled by the arrival of Ann, the ex-lover of one of the housemates, true chaos ensues. ("I'll never shake the quote 'Hell is other people,'" Silver has said of his concerns as a filmmaker.) (Denver International Film Festival)