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A fairly crowded pack of new specialties hads to theaters this weekend, including features directed by veterans and newcomers. Lynn Shelton tapped multihyphenate Jay Duplass to star (and co-write) along with Edie Falco in her latest, Outside In, which will play limited runs in L.A. and New York ahead of an on-demand launch. Roadside Attractions/Stage 6, meanwhile, are bringing to this side of the Atlantic the Brit comedy Finding Your Feet with Timothy Spall, Loanna Lumley and Imelda Staunton, set for more than a dozen runs in its opening weekend before expanding to about 500 locations in April. Alan Cumming and Zachary Booth star in Vincent Gagliostro’s directorial debut After Louie, which is opening with a New York exclusive via Freestyle Digital Media, and Andie MacDowell and Chris O’Dowd star in Russell Harbaugh’s Love After Love, which is getting a day-and-date release via Sundance Selects.

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After Louie, the debut feature film from artist and AIDS activist Vincent Gagliostro that stars Alan Cumming, has been acquired by Freestyle Digital Media. The drama will now bow theatrically March 30 in New York day-and-date with VOD. Cumming plays Sam, a New York artist and activist for Act Up (Gagliostro was a founding member) who lived through the early years of HIV/AIDS and is struggling with survivor's guilt. He meets Braeden (Zachary Booth) at a bar, and the…...

With his devilish smirk and playful demeanor, Alan Cumming has always been a charmer. Exuding an uncommon blend of boyishness and gravitas in high-profile roles like “Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion” and “The Good Wife,” to his tour-de-force one-man “Macbeth” on Broadway, Cumming has built a reputation as one of the most versatile, provocative, and charismatic actors working today. Which is why it’s unsettling to see him play a character who is, as he put it, “kind of not very nice.”

The film is “After Louie,” and the role is Sam Cooper, a prickly visual artist who spends his days paying for sex with younger men and sifting through archival footage of a friend who died of AIDS. Based on the experiences of writer/director Vincent Gagliostro, Sam is one of the lucky few survivors who lived through the AIDS epidemic and came out the other side.

For gay men who marched on the frontlines in the battle for civil rights, acceptance and survival through the AIDS crisis, the seeming indifference of younger generations to those sacrifices and struggles can be corrosive. The desire to raise awareness, to keep painful memories alive, and to reinforce the origins of freedom for people born into an era in which HIV is a manageable illness and gay marriage a legal right, is a legitimate impulse and a vital story worth telling. In his first feature, director Vincent Gagliostro dives with obvious personal investment into his own past to address head-on...

Thanks to the members of Act Up (The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), being HIV-Positive is no longer a death sentence. But what happened to survivors of the initial wave of the AIDS epidemic, those members of the lost generation we never lost? Does the younger generation afford these survivors the respect they deserve, and could it ever be enough? These are the questions at the heart of “After Louie,” a moving new film from original Act Up member Vincent Gagliostro.

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Alan Cumming plays Sam, an activist and artist living in New York City. He spends his days editing footage of his friend William, who died of AIDS. His friends (Sarita Choudhury and Patrick Breen) have moved on to lead relatively happy lives, but Sam remains stuck in the past. His only relationships...