"The Liberation," directed by Guy Nattiv, had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, drawing praise for reimagining the cult-thriller genre through a female-driven lens while remaining deeply personal. The film is inspired by the real-life story of Nattiv's grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who later in life drifted away from her family after falling under the influence of a cult, an experience the director has fictionalised as a tribute to cult survivors and their families.

Set in the early 1980s, the film stars Carrie Coon as Rita Cooper, an outwardly ordinary suburban New Jersey bank manager and mother who is the sole survivor of her family's internment in a Nazi concentration camp. Rita's life unravels after she meets Ricki (Lily James), a magnetic younger woman who runs an all-female rural commune, and gradually falls under her sway despite her husband Reuben's (Tracy Letts) objections. The story's second strand follows Rita's daughters, Jo (Odessa Young) and Ella (Bella Ramsey), who infiltrate the commune to try to bring their mother home, a mission that turns into a tense, thriller-paced race against time when a health emergency strikes.