New (2024)

Zhenia Kazankina’s ‘New’ attempts a meditative exploration of digital alienation and the erosion of personal history, anchored by Daria Mureeva’s intensely internal performance. Kazankina employs a stark, almost Brutalist visual style—all cold concrete and muted light—which perfectly captures the film’s pervasive sense of existential dread. The sound design is masterful, utilizing industrial hums and fragmented voices to generate true psychological unease. However, the film frequently mistakes opacity for profundity. Its deliberate, slow-burn pacing, while initially effective in building atmosphere, eventually curdles into tedium during the second act, demanding too much patience for often meager narrative rewards. While the thematic ambition is laudable, the uneven execution and overly oblique dialogue prevent 'New' from achieving the resonance its central performances promise.