Broken

A girl witnesses the beating of a timid boy named Rick by their neighbor Mr. Oswald, whose troubled daughter has falsely accused the boy of sexual assault. The beating begins a tragic series of events. The girl, Skunk to her friends, is witness to it all. Severely diabetic, she faces the terrors of a first year at secondary school and the joys of a first love. Rick has suffered a breakdown from his beating and is institutionalized. The violent Oswald family feel they must break others to hide their own pain, and Skunk watches her neighborhood begin to crack and crumble. Then one of the Oswald girls becomes pregnant and Rick, whose rage is chained only by his medication, is coming home for a weekend. It leads to an explosion of shocking violence. Skunk, unaware of the horrors unfolding around her, walks right into the middle of them. Balancing moments of great tenderness and harrowing darkness, BROKEN is a masterful film that shows how the power to heal is in the most broken among us. -C.R.