News

Exclusive: Magnify has bolstered its Cannes sales slate with international rights to Pete Ohs’ recent SXSW genre-bender The True Beauty Of Being Bitten By A Tick.

The Narrative Spotlight premiere stars Zoë Chao, whose credits include Bubble & Squeak, as a young woman whose idyllic rural escape unravels after a tick bite triggers a series of unsettling transformations.

The cast includes Callie Hernandez, Jeremy O. Harris (The Sweet East), and James Cusati-Moyer (Maestro).

Ohs, Hernandez, Harris, Chao, and Cusati-Moyer co-wrote the screenplay, and the producers are Ohs, Hernandez (Invention), Harris (Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play.), and Josh Godfrey...

Celebrating the independent filmmaking spirit of NYC, the Lower East Side Film Festival returns this Thursday as the 15th edition runs through May 5. Featuring the Opening Night selection, the New York Premiere of Pete Ohs’ SXSW selection The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick, the lineup also includes Joel Vargas’ Sundance and New Directors/New Films selection Mad Bills to Pay, and Amy Landecker’s For Worse, starring Bradley Whitford, Nico Hiraga, Missi Pyle, Gaby Hoffmann, and Ken Marino. Ahead of this anniversary, we’re pleased to exclusively debut a new trailer celebrating 15 years of the festival.

John Fink said his SXSW review of The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick, “It might help to know the creative process going in. Tick was made collaboratively by its main cast: as Ohs explained during the SXSW premiere, they isolated on location at a country home where they...

Mubi will exclusively debut Courtney Stephens and Callie Hernandez’s semi-autobiographical conspiracy film “Invention” on streaming in North America. The specialty streamer will release the feature on its platform during the summer, following its limited theatrical engagement beginning Friday in New York City at Metrograph.

A collaboration between writer-director Stephens and writer and star Hernandez, the 16mm-shot “Invention” incorporates archival footage of Hernandez’s real father, an alternative medicine physician who died of Covid in 2021. Hernandez plays “Carrie,” a woman who must navigate her own grief after she inherits an odd healing doohickey from her late father. The film’s cast also features other indie filmmakers, such as Caveh Zahedi, Joe Swanberg and James N. Kienitz Wilkins.

“Invention” debuted at the 2024 edition of the Locarno Film Festival, where Hernandez won the Pardo for best performance in the Filmmakers of the Present Section of the fest. Since Locarno, the film had...

The 15th anniversary of the beloved Lower East Side Film Festival (Lesff) has a star-studded lineup. IndieWire can announce that Lesff 2025 will open with the New York premiere of Pete Ohs’ “The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick” May 1. The festival will conclude May 5 with Lola Rocknrolla’s true crime documentary “The Big Johnson” about drag queen Dean Johnson.

“Our Opening and Closing Night films are proof that indie filmmaking packs a punch,” Roxy Hunt, Lesff Co-Director and CEO of Bfd Productions, said. “Pete Ohs and Lola Rocknrolla are true badass filmmakers, telling stories that are daring, original, and unapologetic. At a time when Hollywood is playing it safe and overlooking bold, visionary voices, independent film is where authentic stories have the freedom to break through. Lesff has always been about championing that spirit, and this year is no different.”

“The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick...

What is grief if not living in the liminal space between mourning and coping, of life and death itself? Courtney Stephens’ fiction and autobiography hybrid film “Invention” blurs fact and fiction as it centers on the aftermath of actress/co-writer Callie Hernandez’s own father’s death.

Director Stephens and Hernandez both are credited for the script, with Hernandez also starring in it (the duo also produce together). Hernandez won the Pardo for Best Performance in the Filmmakers of the Present at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival.

The official synopsis for the film reads: “The film fictionalizes the aftermath of Hernandez’s father’s death using a real archive of varied TV appearances he made as an alternative health doctor in the late ’90s through 2020. The fictional storyline revolves around the patent of an experimental healing device that becomes his daughter’s (played by Hernandez as the character of ‘Carrie Fernandez’) sole inheritance.

This year’s South by Southwest Film and TV Festival was a more star-studded affair than ever. Big movie stars from Nicole Kidman to Ben Affleck and Jenna Ortega descended on the city of Austin, TX to celebrate the premieres of their latest projects. Meanwhile, the festival also served as an exciting showcase of some of the most promising up-and-coming talents in the indie film scene.

From blockbusters to indie gems, this writer saw a total of 51 movies at this year’s SXSW Film and TV Festival. Although narrowing it down to our top ten was challenging, we have decided which films we think you don’t want to miss — whether they come out a few weeks from now or are still looking for a distribution deal.

And if you keep reading after our top 10, you’ll catch some of our additional thoughts on other films that we saw at this year’s festival.

Although LGBTQ representation was few and far in between among the headliners at this year’s SXSW, several indie darlings broke the industry’s cis-heteronormative mold to stand out.

From Special Jury Award winner Fucktoys, multi-hyphenate Annapurna Sriram’s bold celluloid fever dream of a feature debut, to The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick, co-writer/director Pete Ohs’ captivating model for cooperative filmmaking, there’s a glimmer of hope that the future of the industry lies in the hands of a new generation of marginalized folk with the right amount of passion, vision and ingenuity.

While catching up with Sophia Bush about her upcoming One Tree Hill revival in the works at Netflix, the actress emphasized the importance of LGBTQ representation in media as the Trump administration continues to dismantle Dei.

“I think 2025 sucks for everyone, to be clear, but what I think is worrisome, particularly for us,...

Another SXSW Film Festival has drawn to a close, and with it comes our final dispatch from this year’s insanely packed fest for genre premieres and anticipated titles.

Among the fest’s highlights this year were Babak Anvari’s Hallow Road, an inventive genre-bender that begins as a road thriller before slyly morphing into something else entirely. The high concept haunted house movie Good Boy will make you fall hard for one of the best dog actors to come along in a while, while The Surrender presents grief through a visceral, violent lens.

As for headliners, directors Christopher Landon and Eli Craig delivered festival crowd pleasers with Drop and Clown in a Cornfield respectively, while Death of a Unicorn‘s sense of humor proved more divisive.

Catch up on all of our SXSW 2025 coverage and reviews here.

Our final dispatch from SXSW 2025 offers a review roundup that highlights some...

Falling somewhere between a horror film and dark comedy about wellness crazes, The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick is, like director Pete Ohs’ previous Jethica, a film that suggests watching a play within a movie. Both features are difficult to discuss without spoilers––they seem to operate on a wavelength beyond genre boxes.

It might help to know the creative process going in. Tick was made collaboratively by its main cast: as Ohs explained during the SXSW premiere, they isolated on location at a country home where they would write three scenes at a time, film and analyze said scenes, and then move forward. The result is a kind of mumblecore version of an Ingmar Bergman film that feels both loose and heavily controlled. But if you’re not on the film’s wavelength it may feel like a disjointed mess. Like the wellness cures offered by...

Life’s already a circus, right? You’re juggling work, relationships, and your own existential dread, and then someone suggests you go to the countryside for a peaceful escape. You’re thinking fresh air, calm vibes, and maybe some organic veggies on the side. But instead, what you get is a series of weirdly overenthusiastic conversations, a questionable bowl of soup, and—oh yeah—a tick bite that might just turn your whole world upside down.

Well, welcome to The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick, a film that promises tranquility but delivers tension, weirdness, and a whole lot of strange vibes. Director Pete Ohs isn’t just playing with horror here—he’s toying with your mind, nudging you into a world where nothing feels quite right. Like a bad trip to a wellness retreat, it leaves you questioning everything.

Zoë Chao in The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick...

Life is rough. It can often feel like we’re each living in our own little horror story, with the mounting pressures of the day-to-day and the exhaustion of the world around us. We try to find ways to alleviate these daily pains, but these anxieties frequently take the wheel of our lives. The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick gets into that claustrophobic nature of life, the fear that we can’t shake, and the attempt to get to a place without those types of pressure. Director Pete Ohs (2022’s Jethica) even starts his latest film with a quote from Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom: “A life lived in fear is a life half-lived.” That constant burden is a compelling feeling to center a film around, but The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick loses both steam in this exploration and focuses more on the strange than this sentiment.

Our chronic need for self-care can sometimes feel like its own illness. Whether you’re slapping on your daily deodorant or attending a weekly therapy session, “taking care” of yourself means managing the symptoms of being a living-breathing person… forever. It’s annoying, time-consuming, and, in the world of wellness marketing, a lucrative and consumable constant. In “The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick,” filmmaker Pete Ohs examines snake oil culture as a means for exploiting both anxiety and fear.

Co-written by the director/editor/producer and the movie’s four lead actors, this sunny-yet-claustrophobic nightmare asks if the faux “healing” mentality — seen here as a stranger-danger version of a weekend getaway you only think you know — is really what’s making modern people sick. Foregoing the influencer-inspired sheen of something like the beauty thriller “Skincare,” this decidedly strange SXSW premiere follows the grieving Yvonne (Zoë Chao) into...

Wellness culture takes sinister form in “The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick,” a horror-adjacent domestic drama that can’t quite sustain its tongue-in-cheek delights. Directed by Pete Ohs (“Jethica”), and co-written by Ohs and his four lead actors, the ultra-indie SXSW discovery’s wry tone is accompanied by strange characters and even stranger sound design, and yields a wildly enjoyable initial half. However, like its grieving lead character lost in her millennial malaise, it loses itself down a rabbit hole of metaphors.

After Yvonne (Zoë Chao) experiences a personal tragedy — the surprising details of which are hinted at over a phone call, before gradually coming to light — she drives to the isolated, woodland home of her old college friend Camille (Callie Hernandez), only to discover a pair of surprise guests when she expected time alone. Camille’s real estate agent Isaac (Jeremy O. Harris) and his partner A.

The Overlook Film Festival returns to “America’s most haunted city” from April 3 to 6. A cat on its ninth life, the annual event in New Orleans was founded almost a decade ago to celebrate scary movies and immersive horror experiences. This year, the festival lineup emphasizes tradition — honoring Shudder’s 10th birthday at its opening night party, programming a retro series with “Ash” director Flying Lotus, offering a conversation with genre literary legend Joe Hill, and more.

“I feel like we are standing at the crossroads of horror history,” said Michael Lerman, co-founder and director of film programming. “This year really showcases the old and new guard coming together. We have astounding debuts from exciting newcomers. We have veteran masters that keep reinventing themselves with new work. And we’re just getting started so stay tuned for more.”

From narrative films like “The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick...

There’s no question that SXSW has outdone itself this year in terms of genre programming. The festival is kicking off its 31st year this Thursday in Austin, Texas, unleashing a dizzying slate of premieres and events, with a surprising emphasis on horror, sci-fi, and thrillers.

SXSW 2025 has filled its Headliner section, a programming track dedicated to the biggest gala film events and premieres with star power, with highly anticipated genre titles that include Flying Lotus‘s sci-fi horror movie Ash, Christopher Landon‘s ode to Brian De Palma in upcoming thriller Drop, and A24’s nightmare comedy Death of a Unicorn. But there’s so much more to discover beyond the big red carpet premieres. Not even the Midnighter category, which is dedicated to genre film, can contain the sheer volume of offerings.

This year’s SXSW features horror, thrillers, and sci-fi premieres across all categories, ensuring a robust...

Pete Ohs is bringing the horrors of domesticity to the screen in his third collaboration with Jeremy O. Harris. Ohs, who previously edited Harris’ documentary “Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play.” and is helming the upcoming indie “Erupcja” starring Harris and Charli Xcx, directs and co-writes SXSW feature “The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick.” This is the first film to be released by Harris’ new production company, bb².

Zoë Chao leads “The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick” as a grieving woman who spirals into paranoia after being (as the title teases) bitten by a tick while on vacation. Chao co-wrote the film with Ohs, Harris, and fellow actors Callie Hernandez and James Cusati-Moyer. Ohs, Hernandez (in her third collaboration with Ohs after by “Obex” and “Jethica”), and Harris and Josh Godfrey of bb² all produce as well.

The official synopsis reads: “After a tragic event,...