I want a dream audit. Courtesy of SIFF

While viewing the very independent, very homegrown feature from co-writers and co-directors Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney, I longed for a serenely cool theater filled with other (probably very stoned) moviegoers. The film is gentle and kooky, set in a dystopic future that aesthetically borrows from the '80s. Demons, Nick Cave-like creatures, VHS tapes, buckets of fried chicken, and fedora hats populate the film that takes its time to unspool before you. It's a world I felt like would be best experienced communally, in the dark church of the theater.

BUT! Strawberry Mansion makes delightful home viewing too. It follows James Preble (Audley), a lonely government "dream auditor" in 2035 tasked with going through other people's dreams and taxing them. We meet him in the middle of an uncomfortable dream of his own where he's trapped in a pink room and aggressively marketed fried chicken by an annoying dream visitor.

Totally chill. All Sorts/SIFF 2021

All Sorts follows a protagonist named Diego, played by Eli Vargas, who is desperately in need of work (relatable). He manages to catch a break, getting a position at a dreary yet peculiar business called Data-Mart. Trapped in the confines of a bland office, Diego meets June (Greena Park). The two form a bond, and then they quickly get involved in an underground speed filing competition where they begin to make their way up the ranks. It's wonderfully absurd and silly.

Castañeda shot the locally produced film around Yakima in 2018, taking around a month and getting a big assist from a successful Kickstarter campaign. Castañeda's first feature film, Cement Suitcase, was shot in and around the Tri-Cities, as well as Yakima. Castañeda now goes back and forth to Los Angeles, though he says he's always enjoyed coming back to Washington to cast people from the area.

"We were able to cast from Granger and not because that was more convenient; those were the best actors," Castañeda recounts to me over a video call. "Maybe because this is such an ensemble piece with just really different kinds of characters, I think that character shines through from real people."

The cast making up that ensemble had similarly gone out to try to make it elsewhere, but the Pacific Northwest ended up being their tether.