First Winter

2012

1h 31m

Drama

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Reviews

44%

Audience Score

50+ Ratings

Stranded at a remote farmhouse with no heat, no power and a dwindling food supply, the people of a yoga retreat face the possibility that they may not survive.

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Stephen Holden

New York Times

It haunted me the first time I saw it and even more so the second time.

Rated: 4/5

Nov 15, 2012

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Andrew Schenker

Village Voice

Dickinson's anti-dramatic methodology proves ill-suited to the task of generating narrative interest.

Nov 13, 2012

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Nick Schager

Slant Magazine

The film's interests are mainly relegated to wallowing in the frigid-starvation-suffering of its protagonists.

Rated: .5/4

Nov 8, 2012

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Dennis Schwartz

Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews

A disturbing nightmare flick on the down side of life on a hippie commune in the sticks.

Rated: B-

Oct 3, 2015

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Audience Member

Not a plausible story for anyone who has ever canned their own food or stocked their own firewood. The amount of firewood in their stack would not have lasted two days. Why would you cook in a fireplace when there is a perfectly good two-eye cook stove in the basement? What kind a food poisoning could you get from a can of peaches that would kill you? As someone who has been canning food for over 20 years, I can't imagine anything but mold growing in a high-acid canned fruit, and bad peaches SMELL and LOOK bad! I can't imagine being in that situation without setting out to see if anyone else is alive in the neighborhood. And--watching the characters continually walking past derelict buildings that would make perfectly good firewood is just painful! Hanging blankets in the windows and finding the most interior room with a fireplace for communal survival would make a lot of sense. Obviously clean people heating buckets of water with 2 sticks in an open fireplace for bathing in a tub does not. When it is THAT cold, you do NOT take off your clothes--even for sex--take it from one who has been there. On the other hand, this movie is engaging and beautifully filmed. It held my attention to the unsatisfying ending and I returned to review some scenes. Definitely worth the watch and would love to see more of this man's work.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

02/22/23

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Audience Member

Highly recommended. Haunting, beautiful and unflinching in its basilisk gaze on the consequences brought about by the chasm between the expression of our cultural values and the core nature of the human experience.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/26/23

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Audience Member

Camera shots captured exterior winter landscape in Upstate NY beautifully.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

01/18/23

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Audience Member

It's a hipsteri-fic kind of entertainment, where a bunch of weird, bearded dudes and their laid-back girlfriends try to survive through a rough winter (looking like a strange, colossal apocalyptic nightmare, where nothing spectacular really happens, yet we still have to be convinced that there is no way those people can escape from the deserted mad-house located somewhere far in the vast snow fields). Given their perverse attitude towards the sex-infused, drug-filled routine, they aren't able to reveal all their true feelings when placed in front of a grave tragedy - shortage of food, and then the death of one of their friends. Beautifully shot and enhanced by some poetic visuals, First Winter comes as an intriguing, worrisome look at the behavior of young people during a crisis. Strangely, it's also an interesting encounter with - what could be called - some kind of a bizarre sect, where everything is a big mystification organized by the guru of the whole group. Look for yourselves, as Benjamin Dickinson created an inviting film that might tire some because of too many unneeded longueurs, and satisfy others due to its fascinating camera work.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/26/23

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Benjamin Dickinson

Director

Lindsay Burdge

Marie

Paul Manza

Paul

Jennifer Kim

Jen

Samantha Jacober

Sam

Matthew Chastain

Matt

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Synopsis

Stranded at a remote farmhouse with no heat, no power and a dwindling food supply, the people of a yoga retreat face the possibility that they may not survive.

Director: Benjamin Dickinson
Screenwriter: Benjamin Dickinson
Production Co: Ghost Robot, RSA FIlms
Genre: Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Oct 17, 2017
Runtime: 1h 31m

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