Alia Shawkat, Atropia, Blessing Oluwole, California, Callum Turner, Channing Tatum, Chloe Sevigny, comedy, Dash Melrose, film festivals, Gilberto Ortiz, Hailey Benton Gates, Jamie McShane, Jane Levy, June Carryl, Lola Kirke, movies, reviews, Sundance, Sundance Film Festival, Tim Blake Nelson, Tim Heidecker, Zahra Alzubaidi
February 6, 2026
by Carla Hay
Directed by Hailey Benton Gates
Some language in Arabic and Spanish with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in Barstow, California, in 2006, the comedy film “Atropia” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Arabic, Latin and black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: An actress employed at a war simulation facility struggles to get respect from those around her.
Culture Audience: “Atropia” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and aimless comedies that aren’t nearly as funny as they think they are.
“Atropia” should be called “Atrocious,” to serve as a warning about this awful and mishandled comedy. This long-winded movie takes place in a war simulation facility, where everyone is weird and neurotic, but not in a way that’s funny or clever. The movie’s concept had a lot of potential to be hilarious, but the terrible screenplay, messy direction and lackluster performances make “Atropia” an unappealing flop.
Written and directed by Hailey Benton Gates, “Atropia” had its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize, which is considered the festival’s top award. All this proves is that when only a handful of people on a festival jury get to decide what is “the best,” there’s a good chance that the jury’s judgment is very off the mark and not reflective of what a larger group of industry people would have chosen. “Atropia” will definitely be known as one of the worst movies to win this Sundance prize. (For context, “Atropia” was also competing against far superior Sundance movies in 2025, such as “Twinless” and “Sorry, Baby.”)
“Atropia” takes place in 2006, in the desert city of Barstow, California, The movie was filmed on location in California. “Atropia” begins by showing what looks like a scene taking place in a residential area in Iraq. U.S. Army soldiers are patrolling everywhere outside. One of the soldiers aggressively asks one of the local residents, “Where’s the owner of this truck?”
Tensions flare on the streets between the soldiers and the local residents, some of whom are insurgents. The tensions escalate into a shootout between the soldiers and the insurgents. A woman named Fayruz Abbas (played Alia Shawkat) has been observing this conflict and starts wailing on the street when she sees people injured or dying.
This chaos isn’t real, though. And this place isn’t really Iraq. It’s actually a war simulation facility called The Box, sprawled over 6,000 acres in Barstow. At this facility is a recreation of what is supposed to resemble a country like Iraq. Instead, the fictional nation at this facility is called Atropia, and the people are pretending to live in an Atropian city called Medina Wasl. The behind-the-scenes infrastructure of Atropia is built like a combination of a military base and a movie set.
In the middle of the simulated shootout, someone shouts for the nearby cameras to stop because the fake improvised explosive device (IED) didn’t detonate when it was supposed to detonate. Fayruz expresses her annoyance because it means that she and the other role players have to go through this shootout again. Fayruz Abbas isn’t this actress’ real name, and she’s American, not from the Middle East. Fayuz Abbas is the name she was assigned to role play as this Middle-Eastern character, who apparently doesn’t do much in Medina Wasl but sort fruits and vegetables and watch other people fight.
“Atropia” does not reveal the real names of many of the characters. And you won’t learn much about Fayruz, even though she’s the story’s main protagonist. Fayruz mentions at one point in the story that she’s estranged from her family because her relatives do not approve of this “role playing” job that she has. What you will learn about Fayruz is that she likes to whine and complain a lot because she’s unhappy with her life and unhappy with herself.
How much of an annoying complainer is Fayruz? There’s a scene in the movie where Fayruz is washing some dishes. And then, she talks out loud to the dishes to complain that she’s jealous of the dishes because they get more water and more care than she gets.
“Atropia” has a rambling tone where several people in this large ensemble cast are shown saying a few things that are supposed to be funny but aren’t. And then, it’s on to the next scene where some more people spout some more nonsense. And so on. And so on. The movie doesn’t care to reveal anything substantial about anyone.
Fayruz has a female co-worker role playing as someone named Noor Fouad (played by Zahra Alzubaidi), who has been assigned to portray someone who sells DVDs on the streets of Medina Wasl. Fayruz and Noor are supposed to have a semi-friendly rapport, but their conversations are vacuous and superficial. Fayruz and Noor mostly talk about the fake personas that they and other co-workers have been assigned for their role playing. Abu Saif (played by Tony Shawkat, Alia Shawkat’s real-life father) is the role player depicting the egotistical mayor of Medina Wasl.
A few supervisors at The Box—such as an androgynous manager named Coco (played by June Carryl) and a tough-talking military guy listed in the end credits only as Mr. Speaker (played by Tim Blake Nelson)—show up from time to time to utter forgettable lines of dialogue. But there’s no real sense that anyone is really in charge at The Box, and this is just a place where people are stuck in the desert and doing a lot of time-wasting improvising for lives that they’re pretending to have. It all becomes so tedious to watch after a while.
Who actually pays to simulate being in a war zone in a desert? Apparently, a lot of wannabe U.S. Army soldiers who want to live out their video game fantasies. Two “recruitment specialists” named Hayden (played by Tim Heidecker) and Pina (played by Chloë Sevigny) are tasked with screening potential clients before they can be approved to participate in this war simulation facility. Heidecker and Sevigny share headline billing for “Atropia,” but their screen time is less than 10 minutes in the movie.
An early scene in “Atropia” shows Pina rejecting a female potential client, who actually used to be in the U.S. Army, but she was discharged after she lost her right leg in combat during the Iraq War. As soon as she tells Pina and Hayden this information, Pina says that this Army veteran can’t be a part of the simulation because she doesn’t want to trigger anyone’s PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) with reminders of being in a war zone.
“Atropia” has several characters with missing limbs, as a way of showing that The Box hires people with these disabilities to make the war zone look more “authentic.” Many of the applicants who want to role play as soldiers also have missing limbs. It’s intended to be satirical but it comes across as disrespectful to people who have these disabilities in real life, to make them the punchline for some not-funny-at-all jokes in a bad movie.
Another worker at The Box is a U.S. army official named Segall (played by Jamie McShane), who trains Army recruits with the ranking of private. Segall is a checklist of every movie stereotype of a military man who is supervising rookies: He shouts and barks commands as if he’s disciplining unruly brats. He struts around as if he owns the place. And he acts like being feared is the same thing as being respected.
The recruits under his command are all men in their 20s with names like Private Freeburn (played by Dash Melrose), Private Duque (played by Blessing Oluwole) and Private Gomez (played by Gilberto Ortiz), who has the nickname Private iPod because he plays a lot of music on his iPod. You won’t learn anything meaningful about these people either. Gomez and Freeburn like to sing pop/rock songs from the 1990s and 2000s, such as Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do” or Phantom Planet’s “California,” as if they like doing karaoke in the middle of training sessions. Freeburn is a war movie cliché of a wide-eyed and naïve rookie who’s about to have his innocence shattered by the horrors of war.
Supporting characters come and go and have no real impact on the story. A role player named Nancy (played by Jane Levy) is assigned to depict a war journalist, but her only purpose to her employers is to put her in low-cut tops and tight clothing, just so the “recruits”can lust over her. A woman named Candy (played by Lola Kirke) doesn’t do anything in the movie but banter with Fayruz over meaningless things.
Channing Tatum shows up for about 10 minutes in “Atropia,” to portray an unnamed movie star who visits The Box to do research for a role he’s doing in an upcoming movie. It’s a celebrity cameo that fizzles out with limp attempts at comedy. Tatum is also featured in an end-credits scene that’s also underwhelming and not funny at all.
“Atropia” (which drags on for 103 minutes, which is too long for its slight plot) misses many opportunities to have smart satire of the anti-terrorist paranoia and American patriotism fervor that fueled the U.S.’s military action in the Middle East after the tragedy of 9/11. “Atropia” also could’ve had some interesting character studies about the types of people who pay to be in these war simulations. Another possibility would be for the movie to have an angle that explores the greed of people who profit from these war simulation facilities. You’ll find none of these creative ideas in “Atropia.”
Mostly, “Atropia” is about Fayruz being confused or miserable. Fayruz likes being an actress, but she’s emotionally conflicted about this dead-end simulation job because she’s been stuck playing someone who’s supposed to be just a bystander. Fayruz feels as if she’s underpaid, overworked and underappreciated. In hopes of getting a better acting job somewhere else, Fayruz films herself on the simulation set so she can put together a video reel of her recent work.
Unfortunately, a lot of “Atropia” is about Fayruz’s bizarre and very unsexy “romance” with an American co-worker, who has been assigned to role play as a Middle Eastern insurgent called Abu Dice (played by Callum Turner), but he’s very unconvincing. What Abu really wants to do is be a U.S. Army soldier. Fayruz and Abu are attracted to each other, but their “courtship” has stops and starts that’s a lot like drunk boxers circling each other in the ring before deciding who’s going to pounce first.
What this means is “Atropia” has several scenes where Fayruz and Abu can’t quite decide how far they want to sexually go with each other. The first time Abu tries to kiss Fayruz, she lets him kiss her for a few seconds, and then she pushes him away. They have awkward conversations where they play mind games about how much they might or might not be attracted to each other. And then they might grope and kiss a little more until things progress into where you think it will go, but none of it looks believable because Alia Shawkat and Turner have no chemistry together.
Fayruz is a chronically insecure complainer. Abu is just a dimwitted creep. During one of their many off-putting conversations, Abu tells Fayruz that when he was serving in the military, he spent his masturbation time in portable toilets, so now he can only get an erection when he smells a lot of defecation. Ironically, it’s another way to describe why anyone might like this dull and repugnant movie, which is full of crap.
Vertical released “Atropia” in New York City on December 12, 2025, with an expansion to more U.S. cities on January 23, 2026. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on February 27, 2026.