Atropia (film)

The film follows an aspiring actress working for a military role-playing facility, posing as a fictional country known as Atropia.^[4][5][6]

• Alia Shawkat as Fayruz
• Callum Turner as Abu Dice
• Zahra Alzubaidi as Noor
• Tony Shawkat as Mayor
• Jane Levy as Nancy
• Tim Heidecker as Hayden
• Lola Kirke as Candy
• Chloë Sevigny as Pina
• Phil Burgers as Lackey
• Chloe East as Medic Grimes
• Gilberto Ortiz as Private iPod
• Sal Lopez as Jerry
• Shaholly Ayers as Maria
• Gil Perez-Abraham as Private Wyatt
• Tim Blake Nelson as Mr. Speaker
• Channing Tatum as The Actor

Produced by Frenesy Film Company with Luca Guadagnino as producer, the film is directed by Hailey Gates in her feature length debut that was shot in July 2023.^[7] That year, the film had received Californian tax credits for production.^[8] The film is based on Gates' 2019 short film, Shako Mako, which was produced as part of Miu Miu's Women's Tales series of shorts directed by women and featured Alia Shawkat.^[9] That short followed an actress on the set of a replica foreign village on Fort Irwin National Training Center, used by the American military to train soldiers prior to combat. The cast on Atropia again includes Shawkat, with Callum Turner and Chloë Sevigny confirmed in the cast in February 2024.^[10][11] Tim Heidecker was announced to be part of the cast in November 2024.^[12] In January 2025, it was revealed that Channing Tatum made a cameo appearance in the film.^[13]

Atropia premiered on January 25, 2025 at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. In October, Vertical acquired North American distribution rights to the film, giving it a theatrical release in the United States on December 12, 2025.^[14][15]

Atropia had its New York City premiere at The Downtown Festival on October 10, 2025. The sold out screening was followed by a conversation between Hailey Gates and filmmaker Douglas Keeve.^[16]

It also competed in New Directors Competition at the São Paulo International Film Festival and had screening on 18 October 2025.^[17]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 42% of 50 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Atropia's satirical farce of a militarized industrial complex is buoyed by Alia Shawkat's committed performance to a point, but ultimately succumbs under the weight of its own pretense."^[18] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 53 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.^[19]