If you look up Crestone, Colorado on Google Maps, you’ll find your pin surrounded by vast desert valleys, rocky mountains, and, if you look real close, clouds of weed smoke coming from a few abandoned, dilapidated shacks. This is Crestone and what might sound like isolation to the highest degree, is considered nirvana to the heavily tattooed group of twenty-something-year-old guys living out their dreams among acres of nothingness.

Set to a psychedelic score from Animal Collective, Crestone is a jivey, avant-garde look at the reality of novice Soundcloud rappers like @highmynamesryan and @champloosloppy who live and work together in the middle of the desert, hoping their big break is around the corner. The monotony of their daily lives is broken up by growing weed and making music that they post on social media, a routine that is skillfully captured by the group’s old high school friend, director Marnie Ellen Hertzler.

Crestone is an exciting debut feature release from Hertzler, whose multi-media approach serves as a solid jumping ground into the depths of the human desire for friendship and fame. For eight days and nights, we’re absorbed into their post-apocalyptic world, where we’re equally awed by the beautiful golden hour light and horrified at the ketchup on ramen noodle dish that constitutes dinner.

Like lost boys out of a storybook, Crestone artfully blurs the lines of fact and fiction (much like social media itself), begging us to question how much we would be willing to physically pay for intangible things like “fame.” More than just a profile piece on the hopeful artists of tomorrow, Crestone is a psychologically engaging thought piece about recreating ourselves and living authentically.

Distributed by Utopia, Crestone is now available to rent on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+.