For four years beginning in 2003, a group of eight artists, art students, and friends ventured to create their own space in the bowels of the Providence Place Mall. Jeremy Workman’s documentary Secret Mall Apartment seeks to tell the nearly unbelievable true story of the apartment, but it quickly morphs into a portrait of how art and creativity can shape a group of people. Michael Townsend, an artist and teacher at RISD, spearheaded the project after discovering a small, undeveloped area within the mall, and he quickly makes it a kind of clubhouse for his friends to share ideas, and also play PlayStation.

It’s amusing how quickly the gang adapts to making the “apartment” their own hidden space. They subsist on food from the food court and popcorn from the movie theater. At one point, they raise the idea of getting a PO Box within the mall, so they can receive mail and make it an official address. But the heart of Secret Mall Apartment is a look at Michael’s belief that art can be anything you make, whether it’s murals of masking tape in a children’s hospital or an ad-hoc apartment with stolen electricity. Michael is an easily likable figure, even when his obsession with the apartment essentially ruins his marriage, so when the inevitable happens and the apartment is discovered, you’re still rooting for him. There isn’t much thematic weight to the film overall, but it’s a good time peppered with humor and insight about the arts, so it ultimately feels like a worthwhile endeavor.

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The last gasp of summer is rendered with care and vitality in Jared Isaacs’ An Autumn Summer, a freewheeling look at a group of friends’ gradual realization that things may never be the same, for better and worse. But Isaacs, who writes and directs, rarely injects drama where it doesn’t belong, instead choosing to let his young actors see where the scene takes them. It feels as if they were given mostly free reign to improvise, and it makes this summer getaway in the northern Michigan lakeside feel like a natural extension of their lives and rituals, rather than a film with a predetermined beginning, middle, and end. Though the plot is less important here, it’s centered on Kevin (Mark McKenna) and Cody’s (Lukita Maxwell) romance, as college looms and they fear they could lose everything they have.

Isaacs’ dialogue occasionally feels a little writerly, and perhaps he could have cut the film down from its 98 minute runtime. This is a film where conversations span the gamut from college parties to the Big Bang to dreams of marriage and children, all with abundant theater kid energy. Maxwell and McKenna are the standouts and emotional anchors of the film, but Louise Barnes, Katie Baker, Tony Horton, Julian Bass, and Jun Yu make each of their characters feel distinct, and less like different mouthpieces for Isaacs to use.  An Autumn Summer may be Jared Isaacs’ directorial debut, but it’s a supremely confident film that belongs at the top of your Heartland watchlist.

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At only 78 minutes, Love, Danielle gets a number of sentiments right about life with cancer, but could stand to expand a bit more on its themes. In the opening minutes of the film, we learn that Danielle (Devin Sidell) has been diagnosed with a BRCA1 genetic mutation, which puts her at higher risk for ovarian and breast cancer. She then has to choose whether she wants to have preventive surgery to remove her breasts and ovaries, in spite of her desire to have children. Given that the film follows Sidell’s real-life experience with BRCA, and her co-screenwriter credit along with Steve Sears, the film feels like an accurate, genuine depiction of those who go through this very unique phenomenon. But as if BRCA wasn’t enough, Danielle’s sister Amy (Jaime King) is going through her own cancer journey, and she has to deal with lingering familial trauma from her absentee father (Barry Bostwick) and her uber-picky mother (Lesley Ann Warren).

First-time director Marianna Palka mostly avoids the quirkiness that comes with the cancer dramedy, instead exploring Danielle’s relationships with her family and loved ones. Sidell is disarmingly vulnerable in her performance, never shying away from the uglier sides of having cancer, and the specific guilt of having a treatable form when someone you love is suffering. More often than not, a film is better served when it doesn’t belabor a plot point or character beat, but here is a case where the film would have benefitted from more room to breathe. Still, Love, Danielle gets the emotions right in a genre where shortcuts are too frequently taken.

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The Worlds Divide opens with a title card declaring that the film was entirely drawn and animated by one person, writer-director Denver Jackson. Though it’s almost fully unnecessary, it can be seen as both an excuse for any shortcomings, and a humble-brag for what’s to come. Though the animation is undoubtedly impressive in its intricacies, it still needs some refinement that could have come from at least a second set of eyes. The issues which plagued Jackson’s previous film The Crown of Babylon (which played at Heartland in 2021), mostly the inaccurate lip syncing, continue here, but Jackson still retains his knack for original sci-fi storytelling.

The film concerns Natomi (voiced by Breanna Pearl), who lives in a dystopian dictatorship where no plants or vegetables have grown for ages. She’s transported by her father to a distant world called Esluna, where he’s seen as a kind of god, and various forces try to destroy her. She learns she has unique powers and teams up with a ragtag crew – including a robotic teddy bear – to return her home. Jackson wears his influences on his sleeves, from Star Wars to The Matrix and the films of Studio Ghibli. This, along with an almost punishingly convoluted plot and a nearly 2-hour runtime, makes the film harder to sit through than it should be, but there’s no denying Jackson can craft engaging action set pieces. It’s a miracle for any independent animated film to see the light of day, so it’s even more miraculous for one made from a single person. But that won’t stop me from wishing The Worlds Divide was a more engaging film.

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Sometimes an original sci-fi property doesn’t need a crazy, high-concept premise to succeed. Saturn starts with a simple enough hook: a planet suddenly appears in the sky. But director Eric Esau’s film uses this sci-fi backdrop more as a way to explore more dramatic tensions brought to the surface by the unexpected development. The film mostly becomes a weepy familial drama between a man named James (Dominic Bogart), his wife Sarah (Piercey Dalton), and their son George (Elijah Maximus), in the imminent days before the end of the world. Without delving into spoilers, Saturn looks at what it means to be a hero, and the cost of self-sacrifice. We rarely see the planet, so we’re left with its implications, and what regular people would do in the face of unprecedented circumstances.

Esau’s script, which he co-writes with Anna Esau and Douglas Haines, leans into ancient mythology, as we learn that James is a “shepherd”, an ancient being responsible for protecting Earth. So, with the arrival of the planet, he has to choose between saving humanity, or abandoning Earth and escaping with his family to another planet. Even a passing glance at a regional film festival will reveal that low-budget sci-fi can easily lead to embarrassing disaster, so Saturn immediately gains points for not stepping on rakes at every turn. The film looks great, even when it’s as dimly lit as the later seasons of Game of Thrones. Though the meat of the film could stand to be more compelling, it’s hard not to recommend an original idea made with care like this.

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You’d think a production featuring the likes of Elizabeth Deschanel and Sam Trammell would feel like more than a micro-budget indie, but such is not the case with the sci-fi dud ReEntry. Remember the plot point in Annihilation where Oscar Isaac inexplicably returns from a void, only to find himself barely functioning as a human or relating to his wife, Natalie Portman? This is essentially the structure for first-time director Brendan Choisnet’s film, working from Daniel Nayeri’s script, but it removes any nuance or menace from the proceedings.

Deschanel plays Elenore, the wife of Lucas (Trammell), a scientist who disappears for a year after going into a portal to another dimension. He returns one year later, and she begins to suspect he’s not who she remembers. Cracks begin to form as she wonders how she can move on, if he’s not the man she’s come to love. Thankfully, without spoiling, Choisnet doesn’t belabor the point until the finale, and the second half provides a sort of interesting rumination on love. It’s just too bad that neither Lucas nor Elenore are terribly interesting as characters, nor do Descanel or Trammell give the kinds of performances that rise above the middling material.

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