SF IndieFest: Dead Souls

CLOSING NIGHT

Filmmaker expected for post-screening Q&A!

In Alex Cox’s “last film” the mysterious Strindler appears in a small Arizona desert town. It is 1890, the year of the Census. He is paying money for the names of Dead Mexicans. No one knows why…

Dead Souls is the kind of singular, politically sharp, formally inventive Western that actually justifies taking a classic novel and moving it into a new context. It has a unique visual identity, a clear and current political backbone, and enough stylistic personality to stand apart from both traditional Westerns and flat “issue films.” The adaptation isn’t a gimmick. Cox genuinely engages with Gogol’s core idea—dead bodies turned into abstract “souls” on paper—and makes it painfully relevant to the history and present of immigration policy and state violence. The combination of desert locations, confident mise-en-scène, strong pacing, and an animated inner-life sequence makes this feel like a late-career statement from a director who still knows how to be risky. It speaks directly to questions of borders, bureaucracy, and who gets counted as human—without sacrificing cinematic pleasure or craft. – Lucy Hanna, SF IndieFest