DRAGONSLAYER

Dragonslayer draws a definitive portrait of a new generation of kids growing up in the rotting suburbs of inland California by following one of them, a skater named Josh “Skreech” Sandoval, over the course of a typically turbulent year. Set to an indie rock soundtrack of music from Brooklyn-based Mexican Summer & Kemado Records, Dragonslayer is a punk-rock manifesto to youth, love, and surviving life in the suburbs after the decline of western civilization.

I wasn’t really looking to make a skateboard film at all.When I met Josh he had a lime-green mohawk and was wearing a matching Screamers T-shirt, in honor of the L.A. punk band that never recorded an album. He looked malnourished and lost, and claimed he was on five tabs of acid. It was impossible to talk to him. His head was lost in the clouds. Then I saw him skate. I think Josh is like a lot of kids from his generation – smart enough to know a potentially bleak future looms and scrambling to figure out a way to survive in it. He’s also on a wavelength all his own. One of the things I love about Skreech is that he’s really the least likely star of a movie. (Tristan Patterson)