Suncoast

Doris is in her last year of school and has spent years caring for her brother, who has brain cancer. When he is moved into a hospice she starts living an ordinary teenage life for the first time: parties, friends, a first night at somebody else's house. At the same time she and her mother come apart. There is a real life behind it. Laura Chinn lost her own brother to brain cancer, and the Florida hospice he was in was the same one where Terri Schiavo lay. The most private moments of a family were therefore reached by walking past protesters and camera crews at the door, and the film puts that strangeness at its centre. Nico Parker plays Doris, Laura Linney the mother, and Woody Harrelson the widowed protester keeping vigil outside. It premiered at Sundance in 2024. Its flaws: the coming of age thread falls into familiar shapes, and the politics of the Schiavo case are left on the surface. Who it is for: viewers who want grief and adolescence told together. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the political dimension.