Norte, The End of History

Though several of his films skirt around and pick up themes and situations from the Russian author’s most venerated work, Norte is Diaz’s first full-throated stab at Crime and Punishment. His Raskolnikov is Fabian (Sid Lucero), a brilliant drop-out law student introduced in the film’s rangy first scene spouting off his own personal philosophy, one that twists the ethical ambivalence of the postmodern moment towards an essentialist view that demands the negation of those things he deems “wrong.”