It stars Sarita Choudhury and Erin McMurtry as Shareen Lightfoot and Claire Mayakovsky, two lesbian parents who are drawn into a corporate conspiracy involving the Fresh Kills Landfill.
Shareen and Claire discover that the multinational GX Corporation is responsible for the pollution and Honey's disappearance, and become involved in an effort to hack and expose the company with sushi chef and hacker Jiannbin Lui, and poet and dishwasher Miguel Flores.
An environment in which the inability to access the media of change causes the uprising of low-fi activism and hacker mentality, or “hacktivism” if you will.In a review for The Los Angeles Times, critic Kevin Thomas offered praise for Cheang's direction and Hagedorn's writing, noting that the film's "interaction of a deteriorating environment, burgeoning cyberspace and mounting urban paranoia [...] create a vividly contemporary background" for a "gentle lesbian love story.
[6] Conversely, Janet Maslin of The New York Times offered praise for the film's soundtrack but described Fresh Kill as "aimless, arty self-indulgence carried to a remarkable extreme,"[7] while Nathan Rabin of The A.V.
"[12] In her analysis of Fresh Kill, Gina Marchetti notes how the film depicts "the emancipatory potential of the digital," offering "hope for seizing the means of communication by reflecting on its own production and providing an image of radical media empowerment to inspire others.