Eager to impress the esteemed-yet-cutthroat news reporter Diane Heger (Tracee Ellis Ross), ambitious journalism student Mia Scott (Bel Powley) desperately competes for her attention. With increasing pressure from Diane to outperform her peers, Mia finds a new angle for her latest story about an unsuspecting subject: precocious teen Igor Nowak (Jacob Tremblay). But her new approach involves manipulating his story — and the truth itself.

This kinetic drama is guided by the skillful hand of debut feature filmmaker Roxine Helberg, who delicately balances the fiery push and pull of her two leads. While Tracee Ellis Ross stuns with a magnetically austere turn, Bel Powley finds an alarming level of cunning to drive her character. With these two women pushing each other to their moral limits for the sake of a compelling story, journalistic integrity gets muddied in this timely piece that scandalizes at each beat.––Dominique Oneil

Roxine Helberg