Night Has Come. 2024. Peru. Directed by Paolo Tizón. US premiere. In Spanish; English subtitles. 95 min.

The process of converting pimply faced teenagers into killers, so disturbingly depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and Frederick Wiseman’s Basic Training, is also the theme of Paolo Tizón’s portrait of an elite military unit in Peru, a powerful mediation on innocence and experience, and fragility and brutality. Callow young men, escaping girlfriend problems and estranged parents back home, are subjected to grueling physical and mental tests to determine their preparedness for surveillance, counterinsurgency, and combat missions in the VRAEM, Peru’s “cocaine valley,” a hotbed of drug trafficking and violence. Shot in a sulfurous chiaroscuro, a fog of war, that seems to enshroud the men in moral uncertainty, Night Has Come has perhaps quite fittingly earned the admiration of the Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa.

E-Four Specialist. 2025. USA. Directed by Kevin Jerome Everson. 16mm. World premiere. 3 min.

Pleas Everson, Jr., a cousin of the award-winning filmmaker and artist Kevin Jerome Everson, recounts his experiences as an armored tank operator during Operation Desert Storm.

Location: The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2