Foreign Parts

A busy, complicated world within the space of few unlovely city blocks.

The observational spirit of Frederick Wiseman hangs over the initial scenes of Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki's heartbreaking doc about the auto shops and junkyards of Willets Point, Queens.

Foreign Parts engages in sociological inquiry without narration or contextual handholding, utilizing incisive, striking aesthetics (a panorama of hanging side mirrors, worn shoes trudging through grimy puddles) to elicit potent subcultural immersion.

... a work of salvage anthropology that never insists on any particular kind of political stance until after the full reality of what they've recorded and subsequently edited has settled in.