Lisa Laman's Highlights from Oak Cliff Film Festival 2026

An image from Cramps! A Period Piece

The 15th annual Oak Cliff Film Festival in Dallas, Texas has drawn to a close. This staple of the Dallas, Texas film scene (which heavily involves locations like the Texas Theater and Bishop Arts Theatre Center for screenings) is always a joy to attend, and I'll always be grateful that it was the very first film festival I attended back in 2019. However, what kind of motion pictures did this film festival provide this year? I decided to deliver a trio of bite-sized reviews of three notable motion pictures I caught during my Oak Cliff Film Festival 2026 experience. 

None of these are exactly the same movie, but they do all reflect the kind of audacious and unique features that the Oak Cliff Film Festival prides itself on screening. Read on for a trio of breakdowns of recent indie movies and here's to whatever the Oak Cliff Film Festival provides in 2027!

She Keeps Me Young

It's always amusing when random movies from a specific year end up feeling like they're cut from the same creative cloth. In the case of 2026 movies, we now have a trio of motion pictures with dry verbal comedy playing upon familiar mainstream cinematic molds. First came The Napa Boys, then Maddie's Secret, and now She Keeps Me Young. Though no performer is in all three movies, an assortment of actors do appear in two of these three productions (Nik Dodani is in Napa Boys and Young, for instance). She Keeps Me Young's pop culture frame of reference is harder to pin down than Napa Boys skewering legacy sequels and Maddie's Secret being an extension of Lifetime movies. If you squint, though, this feature does feel a wayward child of various 2010s indie comedies.

Writer/director Doron Max Hagay's She Keeps Me Young (which he co-wrote with Blair Beeken and Katy Fullan) follows Michelle (Beeken), whose drifting through life after her husband went missing. This 40-something woman unexpectedly strikes up a friendship with high schooler Bridget (Shay Rudolph), who goes to her dance class. Much to the chagrin of Michelle's long-time bestie Kelly (Katy Fullan), this unlikely duo becomes inseparable. 

She Keeps Me Young features plenty of amusing performances, with Beeken exuding such tangible and engaging humanity in her lead role. Katy Fullan is a blast inhabiting the adversarial and jealous best buddy archetype, while John Early and Patti Harrison are (per usual) hilarious in their supporting turns. Much of Young is competently made and the best gags (like a visual punchline about a lesbian softball team) are effective rib-ticklers. There are a few too many dry spells in She Keeps Me Young, though, and the overall movie unfortunately suffers from being less than the sum of its parts. Its aesthetic and humor constantly reminding one of superior 2026 comedies like Napa Boys and Maddie's Secret doesn't help either. There's amusement and effective acting here, but those virtues struggle adding up to something especially memorable.

Cramps! A Period Piece

An amalgamation of John Waters’ movies, Pee-Wee Herman sets, the wit of SpongeBob SquarePants seasons 1-3, genuine pathos, and Steve Rambo-esque line deliveries all told with lots of gory practical effects, vibrant colors everywhere (those vibrant backdrops!), and rich 35mm film. Such a bizarre-sounding concoction was screened on the second Oak Cliff Film Festival night in the form of Cramps! A Period Piece.

With this title, writer/director Brooke H. Cellars demonstrates a clear love and deep knowledge of cinema history. Even beyond the aforementioned motion picture influences, there are details like protagonist Agnes Applewhite (Lauren Kitchen) talking to a mannequin in her room. This reflection of Agnes' loneliness echoes similar conversations with an attic-bound mannequin from Samuel Fuller's The Naked Kiss. However, Cramps! A Period Piece is far more akin to Todd Haynes' Poison than Ghostbusters: Afterlife and The Flash in its harkening back to old media. Cellars and company are using the bedrock of pre-existing art to create something vibrantly new and not just a big-screen rerun.

Cramps! chronicles the saga of suppressed young woman Agnes Applewhite, who yearns to escape her controlling mother (Brooklyn Woods). Securing a job at a local salon with newfound pals Laverne (Martini Bear), bubbly Satanist Teddy (Wicken Taylor), and Holiday (Michelle Malentina) starts to get her confidence going. Alas, her menstrual cramps (which her mother forbids her from talking about and doctors are dismissive of) begin taking over her life and possibly unleashing a literal monster on everyone around her.

Cramps! A Period Piece looks so lovely with its lusciously colorful sets and radiant costumes. It's all a vibrant feast for the eyes filtered through some sharply precise camerawork (there's even recurring split-diopter shots, which are always welcome). Cellars echoes "Weird Al" Yankovic and Boots Riley in realizing the most outlandish material hits better when it materializes through potent artistic craftsmanship. It's also impressive how Cramps! consistently delivers loopy performances and biting barbs without sacrificing audiences taking Agnes seriously as a person. Her journey and vulnerabilities are handled with real emotional heft. Oscillating between absurdist comedy and raw, strained mother/daughter dynamics doesn't render the film a jagged mess. 

This tonal flexibility instead reflects how these relationships can have you laughing one minute and crying the next. Lauren Kitchen excelling playing Agnes no matter what mold Cramps! A Period Piece throws at her also makes the nuanced tone joyful to absorb. Equal parts heartfelt and unhinged, Cramps! A Period Piece is a remarkable feature-length directorial debut. 

Los Lobos: Native Sons

I've been the first to criticize how the America documentary has become a showcase for celebrities. The streamers especially inundate audiences with docs that are basically cozy press releases reinforcing the public-friendly histories of famous faces rather than the proletariat-focused impulses of great documentaries like Hoop Dreams, Time, or the works of Barbara Kaplan. That history makes it all the more surprising how much I deeply enjoyed the new music documentary Los Lobos: Native Sons. Maybe it's just because I wasn't as familiar with this band as the centerpieces of other recent celebrity documentaries. Maybe it was those toe-tapping Los Lobos tunes doing the heavy lifting. Whatever clicked here, Native Sons is a celebrity documentary done right.

Los Lobos is a band that originated in East Los Angeles and includes long-standing members like David Hidalgo, Louie Pérez, Cesar Rosas, and Conrad Lozano. Their sound is deeply rooted in Mexican-American traditions and aesthetics (right down to them often doing covers of famous Spanish-language medleys), but what's great about Los Lobos is that they can't be pinned into one genre. Sometimes they're channeling serious rock energy. On other albums, they suddenly spin into experimental territory. Creative dexterity dominates their musical exploits as much as crafty craftsmanship.

Directors Douglas Blush and Piero F. Giunti capably reflect this variety and, most importantly, the underdog spirit of Los Lobos. That's a quality that makes Native Sons significantly more compelling than many modern band or celebrity documentaries. Last year's Becoming Led Zeppelin, for instance, eventually spiraled into feeling static with the interchangeable anecdotes about the titular band's exploits. Los Lobos, meanwhile, clawed and scraped their way to notoriety. For much of the runtime, the group is just an East Los Angeles fixture doing music for weddings and other events. There's an underdog ambiance making it transfixing to watch the group chronologically recount their respective careers.

Also underlining the feature's endearing nature is an emphasis on how art produces profound ripple effects going well beyond its creators. Sometimes this materializes through standard talking head interview segments with famous faces (ranging from Cheech Marin to Tom Waits) recounting how various Los Lobos tunes impacted them. Most memorably, though, are anecdotes like how the original tune Los Lobos made for the movie Desperado has become a mariachi culture staple. Meanwhile, the group's work on the movie La Bamba (which involved one of the band members providing the singing voice of Ritchie Valens) formed a vital friendship with Valens' sister.

Los Lobos: Native Sons especially excels as a movie reflecting art creating a chain-link connection from the past to the present. Los Lobos tunes were built on classic Mexican ditties while the band's biggest hit (a cover of "La Bamba") kept the spirit of Ritchie Valens alive. Other Native Sons segments, meanwhile, show Los Lobos tracks influencing modern artists of all stripes. Given how often Mexican-American lives are erased and dehumanized in American culture, this fusion of the past, present, and future in this documentary is extra moving. Throw in how engaging the Los Lobos members are as interview subjects and a cavalcade of memorable songs (how is every tune on that Kiko album so excellent?!?), and it's no surprise Los Lobos: Native Sons stands heads and shoulders above typical 2020s celebrity/musician documentaries.