Harris Dickinson, Beach Rats 

In a pocket of Brooklyn stuck in the 20th century, Frankie is barely keeping afloat. His dad has cancer; his mother keeps prodding him about the girls in his life while he has anonymous sex in the woods with older men. Playing the disaffected Brooklynite is Harris Dickinson, a young actor from South London. It is Dickinson’s first American feature film role, and he has since been cast in Fox’s upcoming YA film The Darkest Minds opposite Amandla Stenberg.  

Danielle Macdonald and Siddharth Dhananjay, Patti Cake$

Australian actor Danielle Macdonald might just be our new favorite rapper—or at least she is when she's in character as Patti Dombrowski, a.k.a. Killa-P, a.k.a. Patti Cake$, a New Jersey bartender with a talent for witty wordplay recited over boom-bap beats. Another stand-out in Geremy Gasper's unexpectedly uplifting film is Siddharth Dhananjay, who plays Patti's BFF and hypeman Hareesh. 

Jasna Fritzi Bauer, Axolotl Overkill

Jasna Fritzi Bauer's performance as the seductive, troubled teen Mifti in Axolotl Overkill is so seamless that you would never guess the German actress is 27 rather than 17. Bauer met Overkill writer and director Helene Hegemann five years ago at the launch party for Interview Germany, and it didn't take long for Hegemann to realise that age is nothing but a number. 

Trevor Jackson, Burning Sands

Like last year's Goat, Burning Sands examines the toxic culture of fraternity hazing. At the center of the film is Zurich, a freshman at an predominantly black college, played by American Crime's Trevor Jackson. Unlike some of his peers, Zurich doesn't need to be associated with a fraternity: he is already a popular athlete with a girlfriend he loves and plenty of friends. But there are other factors influencing Zurich's decision, including concerns about his future after graduation and a desire to succeed where his father, a one-time pledge who never made it past hell week, failed. Burning Sands will be available via Netflix beginning March 10. 

Timothée Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name

Adapted from André Aciman's novel of the same name, Call Me By Your Name is a beautiful, lyrical coming-of-age romance. NYU student and Homeland alum Timothée Chalamet is Elio, a French-American-Italian-Jewish 17-year-old who falls in lust—and then in love—with Oliver (Armie Hammer), a family friend spending the summer at Elio's parents' Italian home. The New York native already has three other films slated for this year, including Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird, Hot Summer Nights with Emory Cohen, and Scott Cooper's Hostiles with Rosamund Pike, Christian Bale, Jesse Plemons, and Ben Foster.

Florence Pugh, Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth's Katherine is not a straightfoward part to play. On the one hand, it is easy to understand Katherine's frustration as the young, bored wife of an entirely unappealing older landowner; on the other hand, the way in which Katherine reacts to her situation is increasingly cold, callous, and cruel. Though the film premiered at Toronto in September, it screened again last week at Sundance in the "Spotlight" category, and is due out later this year via Roadside Attractions. Pugh has two more films in post-production: The Commuter with Liam Neeson and Vera Farmiga, and Hush with Ben Lloyd-Hughes.

Josh O'Connor and Alec Secareanu, God's Own Country


When we first meet Johnny (Josh O'Connor), the protagonist of God's Own Country, he is stuck in a directionless cycle of self-destruction. With all his school friends away at university, Johnny still lives on his family farm with his gruff father, severely weakened by a recent stroke, and stoic grandmother. He tends to the cows and the sheep by himself; self-medicates every night at the local pub; has transactional, emotion-free sex with random men; and wakes up, bleary-eyed and vomiting, to begin again. Then, Johnny meets Alec, played by Romanian actor Alec Secareanu. As the relationship between the two young men quickly evolves both physically and emotionally, what began as a gritty, bleak depiction of a failing way of life evolves into a beautiful, hopeful love story. While God's Own Country is only Secareanu's second English language film, you may recognize the Cheltnam-raised O'Connor from Stephen Frears' The Program and Florence Foster Jenkins, and dark British indies such as Bridgend. Over the weekend, the film's writer-director Francis Lee was awarded the World Cinema Dramatic competition's Special Jury Award For Directing.  

Jason Mitchell, Mudbound

As Eazy-E in Straight Outta Compton, Jason Mitchell stole the show. While Dee Rees's Mudbound is an entirely different film—a drama about two families, one black and one white, in the post-war South—Mitchell's performance is equally, if not even more impressive. The 30-year-old actor stars opposite Garrett Hedland and Carey Mulligan as Ronsel, a veteran struggling upon his reutrn to an unchanged, deeply segregated Mississippi after serving in Europe. 

Natalie Paul, Crown Heights

Over the weekend, Crown Heights, the true story of a wrongfully convicted man named Colin Warner, took home the U.S. Dramatic competition’s Audience Award. While LaKeith Stanfield is certainly excellent as Warner, we’ve been following the Californian actor for some time. An actor we were less familiar with, however, is Natalie Paul, who plays Warner’s wife Antoinette. Next up, Paul will appear in the HBO series The Deuce opposite James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal.  

O'Shea Jackson Jr., Ingrid Goes West

O'Shea Jackson Jr. looks so much like his father Ice Cube that it is tempting to dismiss his convincing performance in Straight Outta Compton. As Dan Pinto, the charming, Batman-obsessed aspiring screenwriter in the dark comedy Ingrid Goes West, however, O'Shea proves that he is more than a one-note actor.