Augustine Frizzell’s directorial debut, Never Goin’ Back, was an irreverent stoner comedy about two high-school-dropout waitresses which, though imperfect, felt fun and fresh.

Administrators, officials and lobbyists in the orbit of Nevada’s higher education system shared a common refrain coming out of this year’s legislative session: It could have been worse.

In director Jeanne Leblanc’s latest film, a small town in Québec on the verge of recovering from a communal tragedy is shaken further once they find out that a local girl, 13-year-old Magalie, is pregnant and unwilling to reveal who the father is.

Now, more than a year later since the coronavirus pandemic began, the prospect of re-entering the classroom en masse is fast-approaching reality for tens of thousands of Nevada students, including thousands who have never set foot on their own school campus.

The line between life and death is a fine one, and it is sometimes difficult to identify. Although one government has found it necessary to warn its citizens to refrain from playing doctor by trying to determine whether a family member has died, even physicians, nurses, paramedics, and other professionals sometimes have trouble pinpointing the cause of death or, indeed, even whether death has actually occurred. The thought that medical experts could pronounce living people dead may seem astounding, but this declaration actually happens much more often than we might think.