Upstream Color

Kris, a young woman, is attacked and dosed with a substance derived from a strange plant, leaving her without a clear hold on her own life. She later meets Jeff, who appears to have gone through something similar, and the two are drawn together as they try to piece together what was done to them. Their bond unfolds inside the life cycle of an organism that does not age, passing between people, pigs and orchids, and their sense of who they are grows uncertain as they struggle to recover the scattered remains of their lives.

Upstream Color is the second film directed by Shane Carruth, following Primer (2004). Carruth wrote the screenplay and produced with Ben LeClair and Casey Gooden, and he also plays Jeff opposite Amy Seimetz as Kris. The cast includes Andrew Sensenig, Thiago Martins, Carolyn King and Mollie Milligan. The film runs 96 minutes and was released in the United States in April 2013.

The film holds a critics' rating of 8 out of 10 from 145 reviews, noticeably higher than its audience scores: 6.5 out of 10 on IMDb from around 36,000 votes and 6.3 out of 10 on TMDB from 832 votes. That gap suggests critics responded more strongly to its experimental approach than general viewers did.