Big Picture Big Sound

The Reaper, Gabriel Serra

White Earth, J. Christian Jensen

Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1, Ellen Goosenberg Kent and Dana Perry

Joanna, Aneta Kopacz

Our Curse, Tomasz Sliwinski

Powerful stuff, but after watching all of them, you will be so depressed that you might need to swallow a bunch of anti-depressants. I'll go with "Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1" as the winner.

The Reaper. Bleak, bleak, bleak, and it might turn an avid carnivore into a vegan. Takes you inside a Mexican slaughterhouse and into the life of a man who has been executing animals for 25 years. The camera wanders around the slaughterhouse and it's not an appetizing thing to witness. If this doesn't make you uncomfortable, you're probably not in a right state of mind. Still, it is very well-made and much like a car accident, it is difficult to look away.

White Earth. Absolutely stunning looking, but it also paints a bleak picture. It's about how the oil industry has affected a small section of North Dakota. We watch the people who have been drawn there from all over, in the hopes of making money for their families. It's more of a good-looking film than a riveting one.

Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1. Nothing special to look at, but it packs an emotional right cross to the jaw. It takes you inside the office of hotline operators who answer the phones of distraught veterans contemplating suicide. We watch and listen as the operators attempt to save the lives of men at the end of their rope. Harrowing.

Joanna. In this Polish entry, a young mother is dying from cancer. She lives with her husband and five year old son. The focus is on her relationship with her son. It feels like a video blog being set up for her son to see her after she is no longer with her family. It's very understated and beautiful and extremely difficult to not feel for all three of them.

Our Curse. Another Polish entry about health issues surrounding a member of a three-person family. This time, the one in poor health is a newborn suffering from a disease that will be with him for the rest of his life. The first half of the film has the camera pointed at the parents seated on the couch discussing their infant, who is in the hospital. The second half brings the arrival of the newborn to the house. This one didn't grab me like "Joanna" did.