X
- 2025
- R
- Amazon MGM Studios
- 1 h 55 m
- 2025
- R
- Amazon MGM Studios
- 1 h 55 m
Summary Aishe (Sebiye Behtiyar), a Uyghur woman trained by her military father, migrates to New York City where she finds herself laboring in Chinatown’s underground kitchens. She fatefully encounters Skinner (Fred Hechinger), a young American soldier who has just returned from three tours in the Middle East. While falling in love, they discover...
Directed By: Bing Liu
Written By: Martyna Majok, Atticus Lish
- 2025
- R
- Amazon MGM Studios
- 1 h 55 m
- 2025
- R
- Amazon MGM Studios
- 1 h 55 m
Preparation for the Next Life
83
User Score Available after 4 ratings
tbd
Where to Watch
Coming Soon
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Summary Aishe (Sebiye Behtiyar), a Uyghur woman trained by her military father, migrates to New York City where she finds herself laboring in Chinatown’s underground kitchens. She fatefully encounters Skinner (Fred Hechinger), a young American soldier who has just returned from three tours in the Middle East. While falling in love, they discover...
Directed By: Bing Liu
Written By: Martyna Majok, Atticus Lish
Where to Watch
Coming Soon
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim Based on 12 Critic Reviews
83
92% Positive
11 Reviews
11 Reviews
8% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim Based on 12 Critic Reviews
83
92% Positive
11 Reviews
11 Reviews
8% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Sep 5, 2025
The adaptation frames the relationship it depicts less as a romance than as the intersection of two individuals in their own moments of transition. It’s a much better movie for it, though I’d guess that one of the reasons it’s getting such a quiet release is that it’s not a desperate melodrama about people trying to save each other.
Sep 4, 2025
Preparation for the Next Life is all the more potent for choosing naturalism over melodrama and sensitivity over sentiment.
User Reviews
tbd
Aug 29, 2025
Liu points his lens at life and life does the work, guided by a masterful screenplay and tender performances.
Aug 28, 2025
Other attributes carried over from Liu’s nonfiction work are his restraint and avoidance of sentimentality in a slow-burn, heavily observational drama whose unhurried pacing requires patience. But there’s a haunting quality to the melancholy story that stays with you, and despite what often seems like a bleak outlook, it finds resonant notes of hope.
Sep 5, 2025
Reckoning with the sacrifices that people make to survive in this country, and with the ugliness of what real love can sometimes resemble, [Liu] emerges with an achingly honest meditation on the loneliness of building a life for oneself.
Aug 28, 2025
One small, shrewd decision after another allows Preparation for the Next Life to sustain its naturalism to the end.
Aug 30, 2025
Preparation for the Next Life emerges as a poignant and empathetic examination of the challenges faced by young people in America. Through Bing Liu’s sensitive direction and Sebiya Behtiyar’s standout performance, it tells the story of two survivors bound by love but trapped in circumstances beyond their control.
Oct 5, 2025
An essential element of any love story is chemistry between the lead characters, even if it takes an unconventional form. Regrettably, however, that’s exactly what’s missing in director Bing Liu’s debut narrative feature, based on the novel by Atticus Lish. Told in the form of a narrated letter/journal entry to her late film, the film chronicles the unlikely love story of Aishe (Sebiye Behtiyar), an ambitious, sharp-witted twentysomething Uyghur woman who illegally immigrates to the US, and Skinner (Fred Hechinger), a troubled young American soldier who just returned stateside after three tours of duty in the Middle East and is now apparently unsuccessfully battling PTSD. They meet by chance in New York, where Aishe toils to make ends meet working long hours in a Chinatown restaurant and Skinner tries to sort out his life and his mental state. Together they embark on a rollercoaster romance with a series of breakups and reconciliations as Aishe tries to decide on marriage or a life of solitude, peace of mind and independence, all the while staying ahead of immigration authorities, and Skinner seeks to find a stable existence that may or may not involve the love of his life, depending on his mood, focus and ever-changing inclinations for a steady, traditional relationship. To be honest, the basic premise behind this release is inherently something of a stretch, made worse by a narrative that becomes meandering and redundant after a time. But the bigger issue here is that I never bought the sincerity of the connection between the protagonists, right from the moment they met and at virtually every turn during the course of their on-again/off-again partnership. The reason? Despite her inexperience with romance, Aishe seems far too smart and determined to chart the course of her life to put up with Skinner’s unpredictability and capriciousness. In fact, after their first emotionally tense confrontation, I was astounded by their subsequent reconciliation, given that she seems like the type who would have walked away and not looked back without a second thought. Granted, an immigration-driven marriage might resolve some of the issues of her legal status in the US, but with Skinner? It’s true that she has an apparently deep sense of compassion for his condition, but, being the fiercely headstrong individual that she is, I can’t see that empathy being enough in itself to make her want to stay with him on a long-term basis. What’s more, Aishe’s back story often feels incomplete, and Skinner’s is even more nonexistent, an aspect of the story that makes their actions and responses all the more perplexing at times. In all, this offering is half-baked and implausible across the board, making for a screen romance that’s unengaging and unrealistic, one not worth the time.
Report
Production Company
- Amazon MGM Studios
- Finding Leo Productions
- Orion Pictures
- PASTEL
- Plan B Entertainment
Release Date Sep 5, 2025
Duration 1 h 55 m
Rating R
Genres
Awards
Gotham Awards
• 2 Nominations
