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"White Girl"
U.S. Dramatic Competition
HHH
A college kid gets in way over her head in "White Girl," a drama swimming in a party scene fueled by sex and drugs. Leah (Morgan Saylor) is a college sophomore in New York, where she and her roommate Katie (India Menuez) have just moved into a new apartment in a tough Queens neighborhood. Leah's trouble starts when she invites up Blue (musician Brian "Sene" Marc), the local drug dealer. Leah hooks Blue up with her magazine-editor boss (Justin Bartha) to sell cocaine to Manhattan club-hoppers — but when Blue gets busted, Leah becomes determined to get him freed, no matter the cost. Writer-director Elizabeth Wood, who says she based the story on her own life experience, is unflinching in her depiction of the cauldron of rough sex and copious drug use in Leah's rapidly deteriorating life. Saylor, recognizable as the terrorist's daughter in "Homeland," grows up in a big way here, pouring body and soul into an intense, unflinching story of a 19-year-old descending into an urban nightmare.
— Sean P. Means
"White Girl" screens again in the 2016 Sundance Film Festival: Sunday, 9 p.m., Sundance Mountain Resort Screening Room; Monday, 8:30 a.m., Prospector Square Theatre, Park City; Thursday, 9:45 p.m., Eccles Theatre, Park City; Friday, 9:15 p.m., Tower Theatre; Saturday, 4 p.m., Redstone Cinema 2, Park City.