Viewer Advice: Contains depiction of suicide and high-impact suicide themes.

Underground auteur Joel Potrykus returns with a mind-bending and hilariously shocking trip into the existential terror of middle age.

Estranged from family, veritably directionless and in trouble with the law, middle-aged pals Derek (Potrykus) and Marty (Joshua Burge, The Revenant) find themselves wandering deep into the Michigan forest – less as true adult men, more as overgrown adolescents lost in an identity crisis. They’ve made an unsettling choice, but not everything will go to plan. Soon, one of them will return home to face the consequences.

Fans of Potrykus’s singularly skuzzy universe will recognise these characters from his breakout hit Buzzard (MIFF 2014), though his latest film – and first longform work since Relaxer (MIFF 2018), which starred Burge as well – also functions as a standalone piece. Shot on evocatively low-budget 16mm and featuring perhaps the first ever soundtrack to combine opera singer Maria Callas and heavy metal band Sepultura, Vulcanizadora plunges Potrykus’s familiar misfits into mid-life terror, mixing his dark, absurdist humour with a bleak but unforgettable contemplation of time’s passage.

“A dark, hilarious, and contemplative new vision … like the punk rock cousin of Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy.” – The Film Stage