Assassination Nation

Director: Sam Levinson
Screenwriters: Sam Levinson

Institute History

  • 2018 Sundance Film Festival

Description

High school senior Lily and her crew of besties live in a haze of texts, posts, selfies, and chats—just like the rest of us. So when a provocateur starts posting details from the private digital lives of everyone in their small town of Salem, the result is a Category 5 shitstorm. We’re talking browser histories, direct messages, illegal downloads, secret text chains, and way, way, way worse. People get angry. Like, “rampaging murder posse” angry. And Lily finds herself right in the middle.

Writer/director Sam Levinson returns to the Sundance Film Festival with an unflinching, unrelenting, undeniable picture of what it’s like to be alive and online this very second. Together with a talented cast, he’s created a wickedly fun and irrepressibly stylish exploration of the ugliest parts of human nature. The result is so insane that it feels prescient: a searing parable on the verge of becoming breaking news.

— J.K.

Screening Details

Credits

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