CLUB ZERO (2023)

At an international boarding school, an unassuming, yet rigorous, Miss Novak (Mia Wasikowska) joins the teaching staff to instruct a new class on “conscious eating.” Her impressionable teenage students each have their own reasons for joining the class – to improve fitness, reduce their carbon footprint, or get extra credit. Although early lectures focus on mindful consumption, Miss Novak’s discussions soon become increasingly disordered and extreme. A suspicious headmistress, concerned parents and the failing health of her students lead everyone to question the inscrutable Miss Novak’s motivations for teaching the class. As a few devoted pupils fall deeper under her cult-like tutelage, they are given a new, even more sinister goal to aspire to – joining the ominous “Club Zero.”

Combining a pitch-black comedic sensibility with elements of body horror, CLUB ZERO satirizes contemporary inclinations toward myopic insularity and blind faith brought on by anxieties regarding food, consumerism and environmental catastrophe. “Riddled with uncomfortable dialogue, audacious sequences, and a piercing score,” this “future cult classic” (Screen Rant), which had its world premiere in competition at Cannes, is the latest from Austrian writer/director Jessica Hausner, one of Europe’s most fearless and provocative auteurs.