Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

In the shadows of the bright lights of Las Vegas, and not long after the election of Donald Trump, it’s last call for the beloved bar known as the Roaring 20s; a group of regulars drink, commiserate, flirt, goof around, and say goodbye to an era. That’s the premise, at least—the reality is as unreal as the world the bar’s “regulars” are escaping.

Past Wexner Center guests Bill and Turner Ross rented a bar in New Orleans and carefully selected a group of nonactors to gather for this unscripted but fictional send-off. Through this bold conceit, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets captures a cultural moment—a mosaic of disparate lives teetering between dignity and debauchery, reckoning with the past as they anxiously face the future, and singing as their ship goes down.

Natives of Sidney, Ohio, the Ross brothers are recognized among today’s most adventurous documentarians with films such as 45365, Tchoupitoulas, and Contemporary Color. One of the most acclaimed works at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is their most vibrant and form-busting project to date—an elegiac portrait of a tiny world fading away but still warm and beating with the comfort of togetherness. (98 mins., digital video)