Stockade

With Stockade, filmmaker Eric McGinty has finely crafted a Polanski-like thriller that unravels beautifully in a Machiavellian slow boil, which centers around Ahlam (Sarah Bitar), a Lebanese painter trying to finalize her visa. She’s working odd jobs to stay afloat, all while making the paintings she hopes will bring her fame on the New York art scene. But, with money tight and her visa situation precarious, Ahlam is compelled to accept a job from the vague and aloof Paul (Guy de Lancey), who, because of an injury, needs Ahlam to take a package to his Kingston home. There, she is to await the coming of a man named Richard (Eric McGinty), who will take said package and return it the following day.

Paul refuses to divulge the contents of the package, but he knows Ahlam is strapped for cash and so offers to compensate her a full month’s rent if she will take the gig, no questions asked. Ahlam reluctantly agrees. Still, she doesn’t feel so unsettled about traveling upstate alone when she happens across Zora (Bahar Beihaghi), who happens to be headed in the same direction. Their reunion is awkward. Both women were once students together at the same art school but never truly developed a friendship. Still, Ahlam agrees to exchange phone numbers with a promise to hook up for lunch as they will be in the same area.

Ahlam’s journey is a lonely one, and when she arrives at Paul’s Kingston home, all she is met with is an eerie silence, which, as she waits for Richard, only fuels her curiosity for what Paul’s package contains. So, finding a roll of packing tape in a kitchen drawer, Ahlam opens it, stunned to uncover that it contains an ancient Middle Eastern artifact. Soon, the cagey Richard finally arrives, greeting Ahlam with suspicion and consternation, stating that Paul did not communicate this change in plans. Ahlam tells him all she knows before Richard finally enters, takes the package, and tells her he will return.

“…with money tight she is compelled to accept a job delivering a mysterious package…”

Ahlam then passes the time by contacting Zora, who is working on a mural in a nearby county. They spend the day together, sharing a meal and then finally drinks, which leads to an unexpected romantic encounter that seems to have been brewing between them since they reentered each other’s lives.

When Paul doesn’t reappear the following day, Ahlam’s aggravation grows. Unable to get in contact with Paul or even Zora, she waits until two strangers, Eun-Me (Ho-Jung) and Keith (Guy Camilleri), appear, demanding Paul’s package. Ahlam tells them to leave, but the couple overpowers her, dragging her off to a basement dungeon until she tells them what they want to know.

McGinty’s script, direction, and performance as the mysterious Richard blend the real and surreal so well that it’s hard at times to see where reality and the character’s perception of certain situations intersect in this splendidly complicated web of art and intrigue. Sarah Bitar’s quiet yet emotionally explosive performance as Ahlam is magnetic and a fine counterpoint to Guy de Lancey’s duplicitous Paul in this professionally captured picture, as colorful and textural as Ahlam’s impressionistic, surrealist paintings. Stockade has a stripped-down Great Expectations quality to it. Blending cloak and dagger with the precarious nature of accepting gifts from phantom benefactors.