New Flesh for the Old Ceremony

A beautiful actress struggles to connect with her disfigured co-star on the set of a European auteur's English-language debut.

"No Refunds" is a visceral, tangled descent into the transactional dynamics of intimate encounters, told through the language of bodies, sheets, and reflections, where the purchase of queer sex work is laid bare. As the filmmaker simultaneously takes on the roles of client and audience, the boundaries between documentary and performance fade, unraveling the artifice at the heart of sex work and the act of filmmaking.

A claustrophobic plunge into the dystopian heart of darkness inspired by the director’s own detention, "Tomorrow Was War" unspools on a fraught New Year’s Eve in a Russian police state. Shura, a trans man hiding in plain sight, dreads his prying neighbors and the inevitable knock at the door. As the night fractures, so does the narrative — steered by the officer who arrested him, an architect of memory who twists history, truth, and identity to his will.