Julia has lost her job, moved into a rental home and is trying to stay sober while rebuilding a life that still feels dangerously unstable. Then the packages begin to arrive.

In Russell Goldman’s Sender, Julia receives delivery after delivery from Smirk, a fictional online retail giant, each one containing something she insists she never ordered. The objects are random, banal and unnervingly personal, as if someone — or something — knows exactly how to disturb the fragile order she is trying to create. Customer service offers no answers, the driver seems far too helpful, and Julia’s search for the anonymous sender pulls her deeper into suspicion.

What follows is part paranoid thriller, part cursed shopping experience and part dark comedy about recovery under surveillance. Bizarre and anxiety-fuelled, Sender makes one thing clear: sometimes the scariest thing at your door is free shipping.

Russell Goldman is a filmmaker from Virginia whose genre-defying work follows obsessive characters towards increasingly nightmarish ends.

His short films, including Burn Out, Closing Time and Return to Sender, have screened at festivals around the world, including Fantastic Fest, Fantaspoa, Frameline, New/Next, Rooftop Films, Sidewalk, Uppsala and Woodstock.

Sender, his first feature film, premiered in competition at SXSW in March 2026.