DIRECTOR ANDREA ARNOLD’s new film, Bird, which she both wrote and directed, premiered at NewFest, New York City’s annual LGBTQ+ film festival. It’s an unsparing yet sympathetic look into the hardscrabble life of the tough but vulnerable twelve-year-old Bailey, played by newcomer Nykiya Adams, an interracial girl who more-or-less presents as a boy, and her rambunctious father, “Bug,” played with screen-stealing gusto by the Irish actor Barry Keoghan, who recently rocketed to fame in Saltburn.

Challengers stars Zendaya (already a Gen Z icon because of her role as Rue Bennett on Max’ lurid Euphoria series) as Tashi, Josh O’Connor (a young King Charles III on The Crown) as Patrick, and the lesser-known Mike Faist (a standout in the role of Riff in Spielberg’s West Side Story) as Art.

Each story [in Conversion] is told in stages through the course of the film, which also examines the particular hold of conversion therapy in religious communities and its powerful reach through charismatic male leaders like Alan Chambers and Joe Dallas of Focus on the Family, and McKrae Game of Hope for Wholeness.