Shu Lea Cheang's audacious feature-film debut is a lethal comedy swimming through a torrent of toxic international treachery. Fresh Kill tells the story of two young lesbian parents (Sarita Choudhury and Erin McMurtry) in Manhattan, caught up in a global exchange of industrial waste via contaminated sushi. As a ghost barge bearing nuclear refuse circles the planet in search of a willing port, household pets begin to glow ominously and then disappear; people start speaking in tongues. The crisis escalates when a multinational corporation is implicated, the couple's daughter mysteriously vanishes, and a group of young New Yorkers strike back in an unlikely alliance with activists in the developing world. Cheang (a veteran of Paper Tiger TV and well known for her video installations) and screenwriter Jessica Hagedorn have conjured a trippy, extraliterary dimension (set to a) striking score by Vernon Reid, with wicked cameos by performance art stalwarts Ron Vawter, Karen Finley, Laurie Carlos, and Robbie McCauley.-Lawrence Chua, SFIFF '94