I saw “Here” this past spring when it had a brief run at the IFC in Greenwich Village. The film depicts the intense relationship shared between an American cartographer Will [Ben Foster] and an Armenian photographer Gadarine [Lubna Azabel] who has just returned to her homeland after spending several years abroad. After a few chance encounters together, Gadarine agrees to help Will with his GPS-to-land mapping assignment. Thus begins their road trip across the Armenian countryside – the honesty of the film is what impressed me most.

The film has a very poetic ebb and flow. The travels of Will and Gadarine progress in a very natural manner. From the rest stop to visiting friends to the border crossing into Nagorno-Karabakh, the films brutal honesty sets it apart from the standard road trip romance. The characters they encounter along the road to Karabakh and back are actual locals. By casting people familiar with the land and its customs as themselves, the film is transformed into a dream-like documentary…It is a film that needs to be watched or rather experienced…