Suncoast, the first major directorial work from Laura Chinn, is a coming-of-age film. Its heroine is Doris (Nico Parker), a sweet girl who struggles against the harshest of realities: her brother, Max (Cree Kawa), has brain cancer. He lives in coma vigil (also known as a vegetative state), in the same hospice where Terri Schiavo has been kept alive. Protesters crowd the parking lot outside, roused by the right-to-life legal battle between Schiavo’s husband and her family. Suncoast juxtaposes Doris’s feelings about her brother’s sickness with the activism surrounding Schiavo. And then there are those in her own life who want to influence her—an activist named Paul (Woody Harrelson); her friends; and, in the major performance of the film, her mother, Kristine (Laura Linney). Kristine demands control; Max’s cancer prevents her from accessing it. Doris is caught in the middle. —Jack Sullivan