When an aspiring actress in a military role-playing facility falls in love with a soldier cast as an insurgent, their unsimulated emotions threaten to derail the performance.

Welcome to Atropia: an invented city constructed to exercise Western imaginations and soldiers. Mostly home to war games rendered in dazzling 4D (smells included), Atropia is just close enough to Los Angeles to double as a film set — and just far enough away that the performers who live on-site to bring the bustling faux-Iraqi streets to life are not exactly flourishing in their acting careers. This mirage of a place is a bizarre, liminal construction of writer-director Hailey Gates, whose incisive satire and clever wit are on full display. Co-stars Alia Shawkat and Callum Turner are joined by Chloë Sevigny, Tim Heidecker, and more in this completely original, surprisingly romantic, and sharply amusing directorial debut.—Ash Hoyle

Available in person. Also available online for the public (January 30–February 2) and credentialed press and industry (January 29–February 2).