Hollywood is in shock over the sudden death of Angus Cloud. The breakout “Euphoria” actor died at age 25 following mental health struggles and drug addiction.
HBO released a statement through the “Euphoria” Twitter handle, saying “We are incredibly saddened to learn of the passing of Angus Cloud. He was immensely talented and a beloved part of the HBO and Euphoria family. We extend our deepest condolences to his friends and family during this difficult time.”
Sam Levinson, the creator of “Euphoria,” wrote in a statement to Deadline that Cloud was “too special” and talented to die so young.
“There was no one quite like Angus. He was too special, too talented and way too young to leave us so soon,” said Levinson wrote in his statement. “He also struggled, like many of us, with addiction and depression. I hope he knew how many hearts he touched. I loved him. I always will.
HBO released a statement through the “Euphoria” Twitter handle, saying “We are incredibly saddened to learn of the passing of Angus Cloud. He was immensely talented and a beloved part of the HBO and Euphoria family. We extend our deepest condolences to his friends and family during this difficult time.”
Sam Levinson, the creator of “Euphoria,” wrote in a statement to Deadline that Cloud was “too special” and talented to die so young.
“There was no one quite like Angus. He was too special, too talented and way too young to leave us so soon,” said Levinson wrote in his statement. “He also struggled, like many of us, with addiction and depression. I hope he knew how many hearts he touched. I loved him. I always will.
- 7/31/2023
- by Wilson Chapman and Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
When You Finish Saving The World Trailer — Jesse Eisenberg‘s When You Finish Saving The World (2022) movie trailer has been released by A24. The When You Finish Saving The World trailer stars Julianne Moore, Finn Wolfhard, Billy Bryk, Alisha Boe, Jack Justice, Jay O. Sanders, Eleonore Hendricks, and [...]
Continue reading: When You Finish Saving The World (2022) Movie Trailer: Julianne Moore & Finn Wolfhard star in A24’s Drama Film...
Continue reading: When You Finish Saving The World (2022) Movie Trailer: Julianne Moore & Finn Wolfhard star in A24’s Drama Film...
- 11/29/2022
- by Rollo Tomasi
- Film-Book
On Tuesday, A24 released the first official full-length trailer for the upcoming coming-of-age comedy-drama film “When You Finish Saving The World,” which sees Jesse Eisenberg stepping up to the director’s chair for the first time as a feature filmmaker. He also serves as the screenwriter on the film.
The film follows a high school student named Ziggy who performs original folk-rock songs for an adoring online fan base. This concept mystifies his formal and uptight mother, Evelyn, who runs a shelter for survivors of domestic abuse.
You can watch the trailer here:
It stars Julianne Moore, Finn Wolfhard, Alisha Boe, Jay O. Sanders, Billy Bryk, and Eleonore Hendricks. It was produced by Dave McCary, Emma Stone, and Ali Herting under the production banner Fruit Tree.
“When You Finish Saving The World” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2022, and is scheduled to be released in theaters by A...
The film follows a high school student named Ziggy who performs original folk-rock songs for an adoring online fan base. This concept mystifies his formal and uptight mother, Evelyn, who runs a shelter for survivors of domestic abuse.
You can watch the trailer here:
It stars Julianne Moore, Finn Wolfhard, Alisha Boe, Jay O. Sanders, Billy Bryk, and Eleonore Hendricks. It was produced by Dave McCary, Emma Stone, and Ali Herting under the production banner Fruit Tree.
“When You Finish Saving The World” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2022, and is scheduled to be released in theaters by A...
- 11/29/2022
- by Caillou Pettis
- Gold Derby
"Ziggy, are you happy?" A24 has revealed an official trailer for Jesse Eisenberg's feature directorial debut called When You Finish Saving The World, which first premiered 2022 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It is being released by A24 in theaters in exactly a year from its initial premiere, in January 2023 starting out in art house cinemas. Evelyn and her oblivious son Ziggy seek out replacements for each other as Evelyn desperately tries to parent an unassuming teenager at her shelter, while Ziggy fumbles through his pursuit of a brilliant young woman at school. Starring Academy-Award winner Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard, with Billy Bryk, Alisha Boe, Jack Justice, Jay O. Sanders, Eleonore Hendricks, and Catherine Haun. Featuring original music by Emile Mosseri, Finn Wolfhard, and Jesse Eisenberg. I first saw this at Sundance (read our review) and it's good, but not a knock out. There is some smart commentary...
- 11/29/2022
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Exclusive: Mubi has recently wrapped production on Zia Anger’s feature film debut, My First Film, starring Odessa Young and Devon Ross.
The film is an adaptation of Anger’s critically acclaimed live cinema performance piece of the same name.
Related Story Park Chan-wook On How A Language Barrier Became "Central Element" Of His Film – Contenders L.A. Related Story Mubi Founder Efe Çakarel Talks Strategy Behind 'Decision To Leave' Acquisition – Toronto Industry Talk Related Story Canadian Director Patricia Rozema's Early Films Enjoy Revival As Kino Lorber, Mubi Take Rights To 4K Restorations
The movie is a deeply personal examination of cinema, body, truth and storytelling, centering on a young filmmaker (Odessa Young) as she recounts the story of struggling to make her first feature. Fact bleeds into fiction, and the past, present, and future converge to create a modern myth that redefines and expands the very act of creation.
The film is an adaptation of Anger’s critically acclaimed live cinema performance piece of the same name.
Related Story Park Chan-wook On How A Language Barrier Became "Central Element" Of His Film – Contenders L.A. Related Story Mubi Founder Efe Çakarel Talks Strategy Behind 'Decision To Leave' Acquisition – Toronto Industry Talk Related Story Canadian Director Patricia Rozema's Early Films Enjoy Revival As Kino Lorber, Mubi Take Rights To 4K Restorations
The movie is a deeply personal examination of cinema, body, truth and storytelling, centering on a young filmmaker (Odessa Young) as she recounts the story of struggling to make her first feature. Fact bleeds into fiction, and the past, present, and future converge to create a modern myth that redefines and expands the very act of creation.
- 11/21/2022
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
“Euphoria,” the teen drama created by Sam Levinson, became a hit largely thanks to the power of social media. But that level of attention — the series is HBO’s second-most-watched of all time behind “Game of Thrones” — doesn’t come without its drawbacks.
Angus Cloud, who plays “Euphoria’s” warmhearted drug dealer Fezco, has found himself largely misunderstood by many of his fans, who often assume he’s just like his character in real life. In an interview for the cover of Variety’s Power of Young Hollywood issue, Cloud opened up about these comparisons.
“It does bother me,” Cloud, 24, says, “when people are like, ‘It must be so easy! You get to go in and be yourself.’ I’m like, ‘Why don’t you go and do that?’ It’s not that simple. I brought a lot to the character. You can believe what you want. It ain’t...
Angus Cloud, who plays “Euphoria’s” warmhearted drug dealer Fezco, has found himself largely misunderstood by many of his fans, who often assume he’s just like his character in real life. In an interview for the cover of Variety’s Power of Young Hollywood issue, Cloud opened up about these comparisons.
“It does bother me,” Cloud, 24, says, “when people are like, ‘It must be so easy! You get to go in and be yourself.’ I’m like, ‘Why don’t you go and do that?’ It’s not that simple. I brought a lot to the character. You can believe what you want. It ain’t...
- 8/10/2022
- by Selome Hailu
- Variety Film + TV
Although Jesse Eisenberg is well known to movie audiences due to starring in films like Zombieland and his Oscar-nominated role in The Social Network, he is becoming a force elsewhere in the arts with a series of plays, short stories, and New Yorker pieces all now leading to a smart, funny, knowing and entirely accomplished first feature as writer and director. When You Finish Saving the World, making its world premiere tonight at the (virtual) Sundance Film Festival, puts a different spin on familial relationships as it travels on two tracks centering on an activist-workaholic-socially concerned mother whose disappointment with her teenage son’s more frivolous pursuits leads her in surprising directions, just as that boy tries against all odds to pursue a bright and desirable girl at school who is deeply involved in political causes. It is a very funny conundrum for both mother and son as they venture...
- 1/21/2022
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
Caleb Landry Jones would like you to know he’s not a tortured artist. The confusion is understandable: A decade into his career, the Texas native has been the guy selling viruses for fun and profit (“Antiviral”), the homeless heroin addict (“Heaven Knows What”), a ruined soldier (“Queen and Country”), the even-creepier son in a racist family (“Get Out”), and the dude who gets thrown out a window by Sam Rockwell in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” To be fair, he also made a 2010 appearance on the Nickelodeon show “Victorious,” in which he played “Adorable Guy.”
Those characters, however, are not Jones.
“I think people want to put that on [me], because it’s easier. I don’t know, but maybe there is a bit of it,” Jones told IndieWire when asked about the perception that he’s that kind of dude in real life. “I think it’s easy for people to do that,...
Those characters, however, are not Jones.
“I think people want to put that on [me], because it’s easier. I don’t know, but maybe there is a bit of it,” Jones told IndieWire when asked about the perception that he’s that kind of dude in real life. “I think it’s easy for people to do that,...
- 7/10/2018
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Caleb Landry Jones’ role in “To the Night,” Austrian writer-director Peter Brunner’s competition entry at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, caused the actor no shortage of ups and downs.
The energetic 28-year-old Texan, who has taken on a wide range of roles with directors including David Lynch, the Coen brothers, Martin McDonagh and Sean Baker, admits the part of Norman was particularly taxing.
“Yeah, I can cry a lot,” Jones says, laughing. “After making the movie it wasn’t too hard to be in touch with the emotions – they were all really surface level for about a good half a year.”
He maintains that he never quite lost himself in the madness of his character, but admits “there were times I was glad we didn’t do another take afterward. I was exhausted, I was tired most of the time. But then this was good.”
An obsessive artist trapped...
The energetic 28-year-old Texan, who has taken on a wide range of roles with directors including David Lynch, the Coen brothers, Martin McDonagh and Sean Baker, admits the part of Norman was particularly taxing.
“Yeah, I can cry a lot,” Jones says, laughing. “After making the movie it wasn’t too hard to be in touch with the emotions – they were all really surface level for about a good half a year.”
He maintains that he never quite lost himself in the madness of his character, but admits “there were times I was glad we didn’t do another take afterward. I was exhausted, I was tired most of the time. But then this was good.”
An obsessive artist trapped...
- 7/6/2018
- by Will Tizard
- Variety Film + TV
To the Night Trailer Peter Brunner‘s To the Night (2018) movie trailer stars Caleb Landry Jones, Eleonore Hendricks, Abbey Lee, Jana McKinnon, and Christos Haas. To the Night‘s plot synopsis: “Norman has never come to terms with the fire that, in his childhood, took away all those closest to him. His inner sorrow and feelings of [...]
Continue reading: To The Night (2018) Movie Trailer: Caleb Landry Jones’ Childhood Fire Trauma Haunts His Adult Life...
Continue reading: To The Night (2018) Movie Trailer: Caleb Landry Jones’ Childhood Fire Trauma Haunts His Adult Life...
- 7/1/2018
- by Rollo Tomasi
- Film-Book
Long before Robert Pattinson took a risk on them by starring in the gritty heist movie “Good Time,” sibling directors Josh and Benny Safdie spent a decade making scrappy, low-budget movies on the streets of New York. Now, they’ve been to Cannes three times, won fans from Hollywood executives and Martin Scorsese alike, and set up their own production company.
Just a few weeks after “Good Time” landed acclaim in competition at Cannes, a big studio project offered them a project. And they said no.
“It’s been a strange confluence of events,” said Benny in an interview a few days before the movie’s release in New York. “It’s just weird, because now there are a lot more people asking us questions—“
Josh, who’s a year and half older at 33, cut in. He does that a lot. “All of a sudden, everyone’s like, ‘Oh, you speak our language.
Just a few weeks after “Good Time” landed acclaim in competition at Cannes, a big studio project offered them a project. And they said no.
“It’s been a strange confluence of events,” said Benny in an interview a few days before the movie’s release in New York. “It’s just weird, because now there are a lot more people asking us questions—“
Josh, who’s a year and half older at 33, cut in. He does that a lot. “All of a sudden, everyone’s like, ‘Oh, you speak our language.
- 8/19/2017
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
It’s probably safe to say that, up until now, no lucid person had compared a Safdie brothers film to the work of Michael Mann. Indeed, it may still be a stretch, though Good Time — the New York siblings’ latest eye-popping, pill-popping, attention-deficit character study — could feasibly be described as just that. It’s in parts a heist movie (iconic masks included) and a chase movie, but not an homage in any sense — more an evolution, like a 21st-century fast-food hybrid that mixes trash television and drug culture with Day-Glo-splattered night-time cinematography and throbbing synthesizers, thanks to a standout score from Oneohtrix Point Never.
We open on a very Mannian helicopter shot that leads to an unmistakably ’80s title card. Robert Pattinson gives the performance of his career thus far as Connie Nikas, a wired, erratically dangerous, and unpredictable pariah who looks like he could use a good night’s sleep.
We open on a very Mannian helicopter shot that leads to an unmistakably ’80s title card. Robert Pattinson gives the performance of his career thus far as Connie Nikas, a wired, erratically dangerous, and unpredictable pariah who looks like he could use a good night’s sleep.
- 5/27/2017
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
You always remember your first time. I was there when the two pees in a pod, Ronald Bronstein and Eleonore Hendricks were included in Quinzaine for Go Get Some Rosemary (renamed Daddy Longlegs).
Continue reading...
Continue reading...
- 5/25/2017
- by Eric Lavallée
- IONCINEMA.com
Caveh Zahedi: "I think honesty is the most subversive thing you can do in this world." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
An episode spoofing Spike Jonze and Viceland with Emmy Harrington as "Slut Machine" from Caveh Zahedi's spine-chilling The Show About The Show was a highlight of this year's Tribeca Film Festival N.O.W. Showcase.
Person to Person director Dustin Guy Defa (in Matías Piñeiro's Hermia & Helena), Eléonore Hendricks (Peter Brunner's To the Night with Caleb Landry Jones), Alex Karpovsky (Jess Bond's Rosy with Stacy Martin), Kentucker Audley (Celia Rowlson-Hall's Ma and Charles Poekel's Christmas, Again), Sam Stillman, editor Peter Rinaldi, Applesauce director Onur Tukel and his cinematographer Jason Banker, Amanda Field, and even IndieWire's Eric Kohn have been seduced by the creator to play themselves or others.
"I feel that way about all my films, not just this one. I think they're all a perfect expression of me.
An episode spoofing Spike Jonze and Viceland with Emmy Harrington as "Slut Machine" from Caveh Zahedi's spine-chilling The Show About The Show was a highlight of this year's Tribeca Film Festival N.O.W. Showcase.
Person to Person director Dustin Guy Defa (in Matías Piñeiro's Hermia & Helena), Eléonore Hendricks (Peter Brunner's To the Night with Caleb Landry Jones), Alex Karpovsky (Jess Bond's Rosy with Stacy Martin), Kentucker Audley (Celia Rowlson-Hall's Ma and Charles Poekel's Christmas, Again), Sam Stillman, editor Peter Rinaldi, Applesauce director Onur Tukel and his cinematographer Jason Banker, Amanda Field, and even IndieWire's Eric Kohn have been seduced by the creator to play themselves or others.
"I feel that way about all my films, not just this one. I think they're all a perfect expression of me.
- 5/14/2017
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The Tribeca Film Festival announced programming today for its N.O.W. (New Online Works) section, an inspired array of established and emerging creators who are pushing the boundaries of online storytelling.
Read More: Tribeca 2017 Set to Open With ‘Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives’ Premiere Event at Radio City Music Hall
Top-lining the section is the premiere of “Awake, A Dream from Standing Rock,” a documentary from the Oscar-nominated team of Josh Fox and James Spione and Executive Producer Shailene Woodley. The project is a collaboration with indigenous filmmaker Myron Dewey about the Native-led resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Eli Roth’s Crypt TV will premiere “Monster Madness,” a series of several character shorts; and Op-Docs, The New York Times’ award-winning forum for short, opinionated documentaries, will screen three films at the Festival.
Read More: Tribeca 2017 Lineup: New Films From Alex Gibney, Azazel Jacobs and Laurie Simmons...
Read More: Tribeca 2017 Set to Open With ‘Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives’ Premiere Event at Radio City Music Hall
Top-lining the section is the premiere of “Awake, A Dream from Standing Rock,” a documentary from the Oscar-nominated team of Josh Fox and James Spione and Executive Producer Shailene Woodley. The project is a collaboration with indigenous filmmaker Myron Dewey about the Native-led resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Eli Roth’s Crypt TV will premiere “Monster Madness,” a series of several character shorts; and Op-Docs, The New York Times’ award-winning forum for short, opinionated documentaries, will screen three films at the Festival.
Read More: Tribeca 2017 Lineup: New Films From Alex Gibney, Azazel Jacobs and Laurie Simmons...
- 3/24/2017
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
Tim Sutton is a filmmaker with a distinct visual style, which he brings into the heart of the gun control debate with Dark Night, an entrancing, terrifying exploration of the moments before a horrible event. Following multiple characters living in a Florida town, Sutton paints an American portrait that feels doubly relevant following last year’s election and everything that’s come since. The Film Stage had an earnest conversation with the writer/director about the the business of indie film, how politics affect art and how one casts a film so it feels authentic to the story being told.
The Film Stage: When you jump into a project like this, what’s the research process like?
Tim Sutton: So, research-wise I really tried to limit myself. People have asked if I’ve talked to a lot of people in Aurora or in Denver, and I did not. The work is purely fiction,...
The Film Stage: When you jump into a project like this, what’s the research process like?
Tim Sutton: So, research-wise I really tried to limit myself. People have asked if I’ve talked to a lot of people in Aurora or in Denver, and I did not. The work is purely fiction,...
- 2/6/2017
- by Dan Mecca
- The Film Stage
We all live by rules. Whether they are personal choices to undertake or those put upon us by work or family, we live by them. But sometimes those rules can destroy us.Nathan Silver's fifth feature, Stinking Heaven, takes place in suburban New Jersey, circa 1990. Lucy (Deragh Campbell) and Jim (Keith Poulson) are a young married couple who have structured their home as a community for sober living, themselves addicts on the mend. We enter the home amidst a celebration: the wedding of Betty (Eleonore Hendricks) and Kevin (Henri Douvry), surely a bright new beacon in this house for the healing power of love. But when Betty's old flame Ann (Hannah Gross) shows up, it sends the house into a tumult not everyone will come...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 12/8/2015
- Screen Anarchy
Writer/director Nathan Silver’s latest tale of an improvised family doing its best to wreck itself is one of the year’s most uncomfortable watches. A character drinking bleach is among the milder examples of Stinking Heaven’s emotional ruthlessness. Set in a New Jersey clean living commune in 1990, the film’s cast of characters are utterly merciless to one another. After one man recounts his lowest moment as sucking dick in an alley for $20, only to be beaten into an epileptic fit (and never get the money), another mockingly claims that his lowest moment was beating a man who tried to suck his dick for $20 into an epileptic fit. Sober living has done these people few favors.
Former addicts of all ages and backgrounds populate the Passaic house, which is run by a husband-and-wife team and sells homebrewed kombucha roadside. The fragile stability of the group begins to...
Former addicts of all ages and backgrounds populate the Passaic house, which is run by a husband-and-wife team and sells homebrewed kombucha roadside. The fragile stability of the group begins to...
- 11/16/2015
- by Daniel Schindel
- The Film Stage
A pair of sections that we’ve been covering almost since its inception, the American Film Institute (AFI) announced their selections for the New Auteurs and American Independents line-ups and we’ve got a noteworthy, eyebrow-raising sampling of award-winning items from the Cannes played hellish immigration drama Mediterranea from Jonas Carpignano to Sundance (Josh Mond’s James White) to SXSW (Trey Edward Shults’ Krisha) winners. Since Park City days, our Nicholas Bell has reviewed a good chunk of these titles, but we’ll still likely have a couple of more reviews once the festival begins. Here are the selections and jury members.
New Auteurs Selections (11 Titles)
From Afar – When a middle-aged man is assaulted and robbed by a young criminal, an unlikely relationship develops. Dir Lorenzo Vigas. Scr Lorenzo Vigas. Cast Alfredo Castro and Luis Silva. Venezuela/Mexico. U.S. Premiere
Disorder – Matthias Schoenaerts plays an ex-soldier who becomes locked...
New Auteurs Selections (11 Titles)
From Afar – When a middle-aged man is assaulted and robbed by a young criminal, an unlikely relationship develops. Dir Lorenzo Vigas. Scr Lorenzo Vigas. Cast Alfredo Castro and Luis Silva. Venezuela/Mexico. U.S. Premiere
Disorder – Matthias Schoenaerts plays an ex-soldier who becomes locked...
- 10/15/2015
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Boulevard Starz Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya. Databased on Rotten Tomatoes. Grade: B Director: Dito Montiel Screenwriter: Douglas Soesbe Cast: Robin Williams, Kathy Baker, Roberto Aguire, Giles Matthey, Eleonore Hendricks, Bob Odenkirk, Henry Haggard Screened at: Review 1, NYC,6/1/15 Opens: July 17, 2015 An increasing number of marriages are breaking up when the couple are in their sixties, even beyond. While boredom can be cited as one obvious reason, Dito Montiel’s movie “Boulevard” points out another. According to Douglas Soesbe’s script, Nolan Mack (Robin Williams) and his wife Joy (Kathy Baker) might be considered by many observers to have too long a marriage to see it fall apart when [ Read More ]
The post Boulevard Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post Boulevard Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 7/13/2015
- by Harvey Karten
- ShockYa
Boulevard Trailer. Dito Montiel‘s Boulevard (2014) movie trailer stars Robin Williams, Bob Odenkirk, Kathy Baker, and Giles Matthey. Boulevard‘s plot synopsis: “A devoted husband in a marriage of convenience is forced to confront his secret life.”
Boy, oh boy. It’s hard to make a trailer for this film without it feeling off. Robin Williams hanged himself and slit his wrists. That’s dark. There’s nothing inspiring or positive or hopeful about any of that. We’re told to celebrate his life, and we sure do. We love his films, and we miss his personality.
Robin Williams has always been his best in dramatic performances. I truly believe that. I know he’s a funny-man, a comedian to most, and probably best known as Ms. Doubtfire. But even in that movie, you can see the emotional intellect behind his face. He was a highly intelligent man, and impossible talented.
Boy, oh boy. It’s hard to make a trailer for this film without it feeling off. Robin Williams hanged himself and slit his wrists. That’s dark. There’s nothing inspiring or positive or hopeful about any of that. We’re told to celebrate his life, and we sure do. We love his films, and we miss his personality.
Robin Williams has always been his best in dramatic performances. I truly believe that. I know he’s a funny-man, a comedian to most, and probably best known as Ms. Doubtfire. But even in that movie, you can see the emotional intellect behind his face. He was a highly intelligent man, and impossible talented.
- 6/18/2015
- by Marco Margaritoff
- Film-Book
From the streets to the screen, the unbelievable story of Arielle Holmes is a fascinating example of the rare occurrence when cinema and reality blend almost unnoticeably. New York-based filmmaker duo Josh and Benny Safdie followed Holmes story from her days as a heroin addict living destructively to her film debut starring as a version of herself in a film based on a book she wrote about those very experiences. To call it a miraculous story would be to minimize it, because it's even more improbable than it sounds. Once again, reality overpowers fiction.
Enthralled by Holmes, the Safdie brothers decided to make a film about her life and have her star in it, a choice that might seem risky for some but that felt absolutely correct for the filmmaking team. The result is “Heaven Knows What” an exquisitely raw and ferociously truthful film about people lost in a corrosive lifestyle. Drug addiction and emotional dependency go hand in hand as Harley (Arielle Holmes) tries to regain her boyfriend’s love while finding ways to support her habit and stay alive. Humanizing their characters while never condoning or passing judgment, the directors explore the realities of their lives with a documentary-like visual style that is as vivid as it is heart-wrenching.
An accomplishment both in technique and emotional power, “Heaven Knows What” is an eye-opening experience brimming with unflinching truth. We had the chance to talk to the Safdie team about their latest film and how they manage to put so much of the real world into each frame.
Aguilar: Arielle Holmes is evidently the driving force of this incredibly truthful and bold project. At what point in her journey did you meet her? How did you find her and her story and decided to make a film about it?
Josh Safdie: I found Arielle, that’s what happened really. I was doing research in the Diamond District. I was there for like a year and a half and I thought I knew every person who was a part of the fabric of that street, which is 47th between 5th and 6th, in Manhattan, New York.
One day at the end of the workday I went to the subway with my producer Sebastian Bear-McClard and saw Arielle. When I saw her she was dressed in a really nice dress, which I later found out she spent all of her money on, and she appeared clean because she’d washed herself in a public bathroom that morning. She woke up that morning on the steps of a Buddhist church.
At the time she paid for her habit and for her dress moonlighting as a dominatrix at a place called Pandora’s box. I knew none of this when I met her, all I knew was this was a beautiful girl who had real composure to her and who had a real star quality to her. I wanted to try to find a way to put her in this other movie we were trying to do, but when I met up with her to get to know her better, I soon realized that she had a very different life.
It was the one you see in the film, and we didn’t agree to make this movie until months later. I knew her when she attempted to kill herself, it happened in the time span of me getting to know her. I was just trying to hook her up with other jobs and just be her friend, and I eventfully asked her to start writing about her life. I directed the writing and I paid for it. The book is pretty special, she wrote most of it in Apple stores.
Aguilar: Once you were so invested in her story, was it a logical step to have her star in the film?
Benny Safdie: It was logical
Josh Safdie: Yes, we wanted to make the movie because of her.
Aguilar: Did you have any concerns about the fact that she probably had never acted before?
Josh Safdie: No. Never. That’s not unusual for us. She was a star, we just needed to figure out a way to work with her star quality and find her greatest strengths during the rehearsal period. We put her on camera a lot before we started filming to see how she acted with the camera. We actually found that the more regimen we gave her the better she was. If we just turned on the camera and have her improvise it was Ok, but she needed the structure of a script to be even better.
Benny Safdie: She wanted to take her own emotions to another level.
Aguilar: She is incredible in the film. Is this perhaps her first film of many to come?
Josh Safdie: She did another film in the wintertime, a Sci-Fi, and right now she is acting in another one, a big one.
Aguilar: The rest of the cast is also outstanding. Was there a mix of professionals actors and non-actors? They are all so great is impossible to differentiate.
Josh Safdie: Caleb Landry Jones, who plays Ilya, is an actor. He’s been in “X-Men,” “Byzantium,” “Antiviral,” and others, he is a young Hollywood actor who was introduced to me through one of our casting directors Jennifer Venditti. He was by far the most professional. Then there was Eleonore Hendricks who played a very small role as Erica. Buddy Duress, who played Mike, the dealer, was a real revelation to us. He blew us away with his rawness and his energy. He got arrested the day we finished filming the movie and he was in jail for a year, now he is out and he is in an acting class and he is doing pretty great. He was like a street legend, everyone knew him in the streets, and he’d been in and out of jail his whole life. Oddly enough we had a similar upbringing, so I could have easily made the left when he made the left, instead a made a right, and did what I ended doing. Now I think that he will hopefully make the right. Necro, who plays Skully, is a pretty big underground rapper, who I was a big fan of.
Aguilar: The entire cast disappears completely into their roles. It’s hard to even think these are actors playing a part.
Benny Safdie: The goal is to make it seem like nothing has been done.
Josh Safdie: Testament to the success of the film is when people see the film and think Buddy, playing Mike, is the big professional in the movie. Everyone hears “Oh, there is a big actor in the movie,” because Caleb has a real following, but when people see the movie they think Caleb is the non-professional actor and Buddy is the professional. That’s a real testament to Caleb’s performance as well.
Benny Safdie: It’s a matter of complete immersion into the fabric of that world, and accepting it. At the same it’s also about mixing the professionals and the firs-time actors. We use improvisation as a form of getting the people’s language right. We use it as a tool to get the dialogue perfect. It always sound better when it’s coming from someone’s own voice as opposed to from above, from us. If somebody doesn’t feel comfortable saying it a certain way we change it, and then that makes that person more comfortable.
Aguilar: Surely Arielle’s own experiences informed a lot of your choices. Did she ever come to you and say, “This didn’t happen that way” or “This doesn’t sound right”?
Josh Safdie: That’s funny because when she said that, most of the time it was in accordance to whether or not something happened the way it should have in real life, and we had changed it because it needed to be changed so that somebody watching the movie could feel how she felt. But then that actually helped her because when she started understanding the reasoning behind it and it made her acting even better. She realized, “Ok, I can make myself emotional more extreme to get the point across.”
Aguilar: Shooting a film like this in NYC was probably a great challenge. Did you guys shoot inconspicuously or on the fly to get such a realist and raw visual style?
Josh Safdie: No, it was all very structured because we were shooting a lot of our close-ups from a block away. There was not much freedom to the movements of the actors. Some scenes we did like 13 or 14 takes, sometimes we shot scenes twice. We would shoot them and then we would go back to the same location on another day when we had some free time. We would reshoot the scene if after watching the dailies we felt like it wasn’t quite right.
Benny Safdie: In New York you are not allowed to shoot without a permit if you have a tripod. We pretty much shot the whole movie with tripods or Steadicam, and if you have something like that on the street you need to legally have a permit or you’ll get stopped. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without it, so we had to be very regimented with how we shot just based on the equipment we were using. We had that restriction upon us and for the actors, like Josh said, they had to be on their marks perfectly or else we’d miss it.
Aguilar: The constraints are definitley not noticeable, the city feels and the characters feel completely free.
Josh Safdie: We did not block the sidewalks. we allowed the city to exist as the city, we were just using it to our advantage.
Benny Safdie: At some point you let the city live within the frame and let the actors live on their own within that circle, and it all kind of folds into itself.
Aguilar: Tell me about the film’s structure. The way it starts and the way it ends, it feels like an endless cycle in a sense.
Josh Safdie: That’s the cycle of the lifestyle. You kind of can’t get out of it, it’s almost impossible to get out of it. The reality of that lifestyle is that the two ways out are usually prison or death, or you get cast in a movie and you make that movie [Laughs]. Ariel Pink, a great musician who did a song for the movie and who was also in the film at one point, came to the L.A. premier at AFI Fest, and someone asked him about heroin and his reply was, “ You do heroin and get a movie made out of you.” He said it as a joke because he is a cynical guy, but it’s very rare to get out. Breaks don’t usually come, they are few and far between, and there are a lot of people who are stuck in that lifestyle. It takes a lot of courage to get out of it, and a lot of will power. It’s a trap.
Benny Safdie: It’s a physical addiction to the drug, and then there is the mental addiction to this lifestyle that you think you are living.
Aguilar: It is a lifestyle. Even as chaotic as their lives seem, they do have a certain structure and specific patterns and things they have to do to continue living this way.
Benny Safdie: Exactly, it’s just a different structure. It’s not the one that we follow, but it is a structure. We were just talking about the rent that they have to pay, it's only $15, for the tow of them that’s $30 a night, that’s cheap, that’s nothing. But $30 a night, that’s $900 a month, with that money you can find yourself a pretty descent room.
Josh Safdie: That’s without mentioning their habit, which adds to thousands of dollars a year.
Benny Safdie: And also, who would rent a room to somebody like that? At the same time that’s a lot of money that they are raising, that they are earning by having to get up 8:00 to make sure that they make the morning rush.
Aguilar: The music in the film is something that I really enjoyed and that feels cohesive with the story being told, in particular the ominous track that includes the lyrics, “explore the power of the mind.”
Josh Safdie: That’s funny because there are two pieces of music in the movie that are from Arielle’s life, which her boyfriend, the real Ilya, and Arielle turned me on to. It’s hardstyle music, it’s from a very hardcore electronic scene, and it’s by a very famous DJ called Headhunterz. There is also a big movement in Australia called Melbourne shuffle, which is basically like punk and stomp out music, except that it’s hardcore electronic, but it’s also very beautiful and classical. I consider it to be “Invincible music,” it makes you feel like you are invincible when you listen to it, it’s superhero music. The piece of music you mention, we always say that is diagetic because it’s inside of her head, the movie is just hearing what’s inside of her head.
Benny Safdie: When that track comes in it’s very different than when the music is playing in the beginning of the movie. It comes in and it’s so motivated by what’s happening on screen. It might as well be the sound effects from the park, they are interchangeable.
Aguilar: Did you guys look at any other films that depict addiction to see how it has been represented before?
Josh Safdie: No, we looked to that world itself. If we were looking for any inspiration or any way to be guided, we looked to the world and the characters themselves.
Benny Safdie: We knew there were some pitfalls that other films fall into not just by accident but by the nature of making a movie about somebody who loves a drug. We had conversations about how to film the shooting of the drug, and how to shoot the drug in certain ways to avoid glorifying it, or fetishizing it.
Aguilar: On a more specific note, the film premiered in 2014, but for the theatrical release you include a note in the credits dedicating the film to the real life Ilya, who sadly passed away this year. Is what we see in the film Arielle's premonition?
Josh Safdie: In her writings, Arielle mentions she had a vision in which he had died. She thought he was dead, but in reality he wasn’t. He was in a fire, and he survived the fire. The irony is that Ilya died on April 12th this year under different circumstances.
Benny Safdie: It’s very strange.
Aguilar: The way you approach the subject is so truthful and uncompromising, were you ever concern about audiences having an uncomfortable reaction or that it could be perceived as provocative?
Josh Safdie: I never feel uncomfortable, or dark or heavy. I’m actually very excited by everything in the movie because I kind of previewed a little bit of the mindset that the characters have. I never saw the movie as dark. It is what it is.
"Heaven Knows What" is now playing in Los Angeles at the Acrlight Hollywood and in NYC at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema...
Enthralled by Holmes, the Safdie brothers decided to make a film about her life and have her star in it, a choice that might seem risky for some but that felt absolutely correct for the filmmaking team. The result is “Heaven Knows What” an exquisitely raw and ferociously truthful film about people lost in a corrosive lifestyle. Drug addiction and emotional dependency go hand in hand as Harley (Arielle Holmes) tries to regain her boyfriend’s love while finding ways to support her habit and stay alive. Humanizing their characters while never condoning or passing judgment, the directors explore the realities of their lives with a documentary-like visual style that is as vivid as it is heart-wrenching.
An accomplishment both in technique and emotional power, “Heaven Knows What” is an eye-opening experience brimming with unflinching truth. We had the chance to talk to the Safdie team about their latest film and how they manage to put so much of the real world into each frame.
Aguilar: Arielle Holmes is evidently the driving force of this incredibly truthful and bold project. At what point in her journey did you meet her? How did you find her and her story and decided to make a film about it?
Josh Safdie: I found Arielle, that’s what happened really. I was doing research in the Diamond District. I was there for like a year and a half and I thought I knew every person who was a part of the fabric of that street, which is 47th between 5th and 6th, in Manhattan, New York.
One day at the end of the workday I went to the subway with my producer Sebastian Bear-McClard and saw Arielle. When I saw her she was dressed in a really nice dress, which I later found out she spent all of her money on, and she appeared clean because she’d washed herself in a public bathroom that morning. She woke up that morning on the steps of a Buddhist church.
At the time she paid for her habit and for her dress moonlighting as a dominatrix at a place called Pandora’s box. I knew none of this when I met her, all I knew was this was a beautiful girl who had real composure to her and who had a real star quality to her. I wanted to try to find a way to put her in this other movie we were trying to do, but when I met up with her to get to know her better, I soon realized that she had a very different life.
It was the one you see in the film, and we didn’t agree to make this movie until months later. I knew her when she attempted to kill herself, it happened in the time span of me getting to know her. I was just trying to hook her up with other jobs and just be her friend, and I eventfully asked her to start writing about her life. I directed the writing and I paid for it. The book is pretty special, she wrote most of it in Apple stores.
Aguilar: Once you were so invested in her story, was it a logical step to have her star in the film?
Benny Safdie: It was logical
Josh Safdie: Yes, we wanted to make the movie because of her.
Aguilar: Did you have any concerns about the fact that she probably had never acted before?
Josh Safdie: No. Never. That’s not unusual for us. She was a star, we just needed to figure out a way to work with her star quality and find her greatest strengths during the rehearsal period. We put her on camera a lot before we started filming to see how she acted with the camera. We actually found that the more regimen we gave her the better she was. If we just turned on the camera and have her improvise it was Ok, but she needed the structure of a script to be even better.
Benny Safdie: She wanted to take her own emotions to another level.
Aguilar: She is incredible in the film. Is this perhaps her first film of many to come?
Josh Safdie: She did another film in the wintertime, a Sci-Fi, and right now she is acting in another one, a big one.
Aguilar: The rest of the cast is also outstanding. Was there a mix of professionals actors and non-actors? They are all so great is impossible to differentiate.
Josh Safdie: Caleb Landry Jones, who plays Ilya, is an actor. He’s been in “X-Men,” “Byzantium,” “Antiviral,” and others, he is a young Hollywood actor who was introduced to me through one of our casting directors Jennifer Venditti. He was by far the most professional. Then there was Eleonore Hendricks who played a very small role as Erica. Buddy Duress, who played Mike, the dealer, was a real revelation to us. He blew us away with his rawness and his energy. He got arrested the day we finished filming the movie and he was in jail for a year, now he is out and he is in an acting class and he is doing pretty great. He was like a street legend, everyone knew him in the streets, and he’d been in and out of jail his whole life. Oddly enough we had a similar upbringing, so I could have easily made the left when he made the left, instead a made a right, and did what I ended doing. Now I think that he will hopefully make the right. Necro, who plays Skully, is a pretty big underground rapper, who I was a big fan of.
Aguilar: The entire cast disappears completely into their roles. It’s hard to even think these are actors playing a part.
Benny Safdie: The goal is to make it seem like nothing has been done.
Josh Safdie: Testament to the success of the film is when people see the film and think Buddy, playing Mike, is the big professional in the movie. Everyone hears “Oh, there is a big actor in the movie,” because Caleb has a real following, but when people see the movie they think Caleb is the non-professional actor and Buddy is the professional. That’s a real testament to Caleb’s performance as well.
Benny Safdie: It’s a matter of complete immersion into the fabric of that world, and accepting it. At the same it’s also about mixing the professionals and the firs-time actors. We use improvisation as a form of getting the people’s language right. We use it as a tool to get the dialogue perfect. It always sound better when it’s coming from someone’s own voice as opposed to from above, from us. If somebody doesn’t feel comfortable saying it a certain way we change it, and then that makes that person more comfortable.
Aguilar: Surely Arielle’s own experiences informed a lot of your choices. Did she ever come to you and say, “This didn’t happen that way” or “This doesn’t sound right”?
Josh Safdie: That’s funny because when she said that, most of the time it was in accordance to whether or not something happened the way it should have in real life, and we had changed it because it needed to be changed so that somebody watching the movie could feel how she felt. But then that actually helped her because when she started understanding the reasoning behind it and it made her acting even better. She realized, “Ok, I can make myself emotional more extreme to get the point across.”
Aguilar: Shooting a film like this in NYC was probably a great challenge. Did you guys shoot inconspicuously or on the fly to get such a realist and raw visual style?
Josh Safdie: No, it was all very structured because we were shooting a lot of our close-ups from a block away. There was not much freedom to the movements of the actors. Some scenes we did like 13 or 14 takes, sometimes we shot scenes twice. We would shoot them and then we would go back to the same location on another day when we had some free time. We would reshoot the scene if after watching the dailies we felt like it wasn’t quite right.
Benny Safdie: In New York you are not allowed to shoot without a permit if you have a tripod. We pretty much shot the whole movie with tripods or Steadicam, and if you have something like that on the street you need to legally have a permit or you’ll get stopped. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without it, so we had to be very regimented with how we shot just based on the equipment we were using. We had that restriction upon us and for the actors, like Josh said, they had to be on their marks perfectly or else we’d miss it.
Aguilar: The constraints are definitley not noticeable, the city feels and the characters feel completely free.
Josh Safdie: We did not block the sidewalks. we allowed the city to exist as the city, we were just using it to our advantage.
Benny Safdie: At some point you let the city live within the frame and let the actors live on their own within that circle, and it all kind of folds into itself.
Aguilar: Tell me about the film’s structure. The way it starts and the way it ends, it feels like an endless cycle in a sense.
Josh Safdie: That’s the cycle of the lifestyle. You kind of can’t get out of it, it’s almost impossible to get out of it. The reality of that lifestyle is that the two ways out are usually prison or death, or you get cast in a movie and you make that movie [Laughs]. Ariel Pink, a great musician who did a song for the movie and who was also in the film at one point, came to the L.A. premier at AFI Fest, and someone asked him about heroin and his reply was, “ You do heroin and get a movie made out of you.” He said it as a joke because he is a cynical guy, but it’s very rare to get out. Breaks don’t usually come, they are few and far between, and there are a lot of people who are stuck in that lifestyle. It takes a lot of courage to get out of it, and a lot of will power. It’s a trap.
Benny Safdie: It’s a physical addiction to the drug, and then there is the mental addiction to this lifestyle that you think you are living.
Aguilar: It is a lifestyle. Even as chaotic as their lives seem, they do have a certain structure and specific patterns and things they have to do to continue living this way.
Benny Safdie: Exactly, it’s just a different structure. It’s not the one that we follow, but it is a structure. We were just talking about the rent that they have to pay, it's only $15, for the tow of them that’s $30 a night, that’s cheap, that’s nothing. But $30 a night, that’s $900 a month, with that money you can find yourself a pretty descent room.
Josh Safdie: That’s without mentioning their habit, which adds to thousands of dollars a year.
Benny Safdie: And also, who would rent a room to somebody like that? At the same time that’s a lot of money that they are raising, that they are earning by having to get up 8:00 to make sure that they make the morning rush.
Aguilar: The music in the film is something that I really enjoyed and that feels cohesive with the story being told, in particular the ominous track that includes the lyrics, “explore the power of the mind.”
Josh Safdie: That’s funny because there are two pieces of music in the movie that are from Arielle’s life, which her boyfriend, the real Ilya, and Arielle turned me on to. It’s hardstyle music, it’s from a very hardcore electronic scene, and it’s by a very famous DJ called Headhunterz. There is also a big movement in Australia called Melbourne shuffle, which is basically like punk and stomp out music, except that it’s hardcore electronic, but it’s also very beautiful and classical. I consider it to be “Invincible music,” it makes you feel like you are invincible when you listen to it, it’s superhero music. The piece of music you mention, we always say that is diagetic because it’s inside of her head, the movie is just hearing what’s inside of her head.
Benny Safdie: When that track comes in it’s very different than when the music is playing in the beginning of the movie. It comes in and it’s so motivated by what’s happening on screen. It might as well be the sound effects from the park, they are interchangeable.
Aguilar: Did you guys look at any other films that depict addiction to see how it has been represented before?
Josh Safdie: No, we looked to that world itself. If we were looking for any inspiration or any way to be guided, we looked to the world and the characters themselves.
Benny Safdie: We knew there were some pitfalls that other films fall into not just by accident but by the nature of making a movie about somebody who loves a drug. We had conversations about how to film the shooting of the drug, and how to shoot the drug in certain ways to avoid glorifying it, or fetishizing it.
Aguilar: On a more specific note, the film premiered in 2014, but for the theatrical release you include a note in the credits dedicating the film to the real life Ilya, who sadly passed away this year. Is what we see in the film Arielle's premonition?
Josh Safdie: In her writings, Arielle mentions she had a vision in which he had died. She thought he was dead, but in reality he wasn’t. He was in a fire, and he survived the fire. The irony is that Ilya died on April 12th this year under different circumstances.
Benny Safdie: It’s very strange.
Aguilar: The way you approach the subject is so truthful and uncompromising, were you ever concern about audiences having an uncomfortable reaction or that it could be perceived as provocative?
Josh Safdie: I never feel uncomfortable, or dark or heavy. I’m actually very excited by everything in the movie because I kind of previewed a little bit of the mindset that the characters have. I never saw the movie as dark. It is what it is.
"Heaven Knows What" is now playing in Los Angeles at the Acrlight Hollywood and in NYC at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema...
- 5/29/2015
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Sydney's Buzz
#1. "Heaven Knows What" (May 29) (Film Page) Directors: Ben Safie and Joshua Safdie Cast: Ron Bruanstein, Eleonore Hendricks, Arielle Holmes, Caleb Landry Jones, Yuri Pleskun Criticwire Average: B+ Why is it a "Must See"? Indiewire's review of "Heaven Knows What" dubbed it a must-watch, with chief film critic Eric Kohn calling it, "A bold attempt to explore drug addiction through behavior." The film comes from Joshua and Benny Sadfie ("Daddy Longlegs"), whose visions of New York City are as strange as they are inspired, and it was awarded the International Confederation of Art Cinemas prize at last year's Venice Film Festival. #2. "Slow West" (May 15) (Film Page) Director: John Maclean Cast: Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Rory McCann, Alex Macqueen, Brooke Williams Criticwire Average: B+ Why is it a "Must See"? John Maclean's beautifully lensed and powerfully acted modern western took...
- 4/30/2015
- by Indiewire
- Indiewire
The Tribeca Film Festival of 2015 closed the books on Sunday as it always does, with a day full of screenings of the prize-winning films. And, as I noted on Day Three, it bears noting that the festival’s reputation of being for “indies that aren’t really indies” almost never bears out during the awards ceremony. All of the films that played on Sunday will be launching new talent into American arthouses, rather than showing a new dimension for established stars.
The Tribeca jury gives awards to Actor, Actress, Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography, New Director for each of narrative and documentary, Director for each of narrative and documentary, a special Nora Ephron prize honoring new female filmmakers, Best Documentary Feature, and Best Narrative feature. The Tribeca Audience Awards cover the best narrative film and best documentary as well. I confess to being completely unable to judge good editing, but I will...
The Tribeca jury gives awards to Actor, Actress, Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography, New Director for each of narrative and documentary, Director for each of narrative and documentary, a special Nora Ephron prize honoring new female filmmakers, Best Documentary Feature, and Best Narrative feature. The Tribeca Audience Awards cover the best narrative film and best documentary as well. I confess to being completely unable to judge good editing, but I will...
- 4/29/2015
- by Mark Young
- SoundOnSight
The Tribeca Film Festival began on Wednesday night with the premiere of Live From New York!, Bao Nguyen’s documentary about the history of Saturday Night Live. Although your humble film critic was unable to see that film, the festival will offer more than a hundred movies of various flavors from April 15-26, and in this critic’s opinion, the lineup in 2015 is stronger than any in the last five years. Starting today, this is your place to find a brief run-down of the films that played the festival the day before, either in public screenings or in pre-festival press screenings.
Although it may not sound as entertaining as an oral history of America’s leading sketch-comedy program, Democrats comes surprisingly close. Documentarian Camilla Nielsson was given unprecedented access to two of the framers of a democratic constitution in the country of Zimbabwe: one man representing the government of dictatorial president Robert Mugabe,...
Although it may not sound as entertaining as an oral history of America’s leading sketch-comedy program, Democrats comes surprisingly close. Documentarian Camilla Nielsson was given unprecedented access to two of the framers of a democratic constitution in the country of Zimbabwe: one man representing the government of dictatorial president Robert Mugabe,...
- 4/17/2015
- by Mark Young
- SoundOnSight
Filmmakers Ben and Joshua Safdie have worked together on numerous short films over the years. However, the duo have only worked on one feature film to date, the 2010 film Go Get Some Rosemary. The duo, however, are once again behind a feature film, called Heaven Knows What.
The film, which focuses on a couple in the midst of drug addiction, is based on the story of Arielle Holmes, who also stars in the film, making her acting debut. Holmes used to live in New York City and was addicted to heroin, managing to disengage herself from the drug just months before the movie began filming. Holmes wrote her memoir as she battled through recovery to get clean, which in turn formed the basis for the screenplay for this film. The screenplay itself is written by Ronald Bronstein, who also worked with the Safdie brothers on Go Get Some Rosemary, and Joshua Safdie.
The film, which focuses on a couple in the midst of drug addiction, is based on the story of Arielle Holmes, who also stars in the film, making her acting debut. Holmes used to live in New York City and was addicted to heroin, managing to disengage herself from the drug just months before the movie began filming. Holmes wrote her memoir as she battled through recovery to get clean, which in turn formed the basis for the screenplay for this film. The screenplay itself is written by Ronald Bronstein, who also worked with the Safdie brothers on Go Get Some Rosemary, and Joshua Safdie.
- 3/18/2015
- by Deepayan Sengupta
- SoundOnSight
Heaven Knows What Red Band Trailer. Ben Safdie, Joshua Safdie‘s Heaven Knows What (2014) red band movie trailer stars Ron Braunstein, Eleonore Hendricks, Arielle Holmes, Caleb Landry Jones, and Yuri Pleskun. Heaven Knows What‘s plot synopsis: “Harley loves Ilya. He gives her life purpose, sets her passion ablaze. So when [...]
Continue reading: Heaven Knows What (2014) Red Band Movie Trailer: Arielle Holmes is Addicted...
Continue reading: Heaven Knows What (2014) Red Band Movie Trailer: Arielle Holmes is Addicted...
- 3/17/2015
- by Rollo Tomasi
- Film-Book
Read More: Venice Review: Caleb Landry Jones Anchors Safdies' Must-See Junkie Drama 'Heaven Knows What' Love is like a drug and there may be no greater addiction. The new trailer for Ben and Joshua Safdie's "Heaven Knows What" explores the power of the mind through a manic relationship lived by its star Arielle Holmes. Based on the book by Holmes, "Heaven Knows What" asks, in the midst of addiction, what's stronger: the love affair between two people, or the drugs they so desperately desire? Panic and obsession are showcased in this new chaotic, Red-Band trailer. "Heaven Knows What" premiered in October at the New York Film Festival and stars Holmes, Eleonore Hendricks and Ron Braunstein. The film will be released later this year by RADiUS. Read More: RADiUS Acquires 'Heaven Knows What' Aead of New York Film Festival Premiere...
- 3/16/2015
- by Travis Clark
- Indiewire
Andrew Renzi‘s directorial debut about a third wheel starring Richard Gere, Dakota Fanning and Theo James, Reed Morano‘s relationship testing drama featuring Olivia Wilde and Luke Wilson, Onur Tukel‘s secret unleashed on the airwaves and Gregory Kohn‘s hallucinatory tale with Eléonore Hendricks topling are part of the American independent offerings at the 14th Tribeca Film Festival. Renzi’s Franny and Morano’s Meadowland will be competing in the dozen selected in the World Narrative Competition while Tukel’s Applesauce and Kohn’s Come Down Molly are among the in the Viewpoints sidebar. Here are the selected titles below sans synopsis.
World Narrative Feature Competition (12)
The Adderall Diaries, directed and written by Pamela Romanowsky. (USA) – World Premiere.
Bridgend, directed by Jeppe Rønde, co-written by Jeppe Rønde, Torben Bech, and Peter Asmussen. (Denmark) – North American Premiere.
Dixieland, directed and written by Hank Bedford. (USA) – World Premiere
Franny, directed and written by Andrew Renzi.
World Narrative Feature Competition (12)
The Adderall Diaries, directed and written by Pamela Romanowsky. (USA) – World Premiere.
Bridgend, directed by Jeppe Rønde, co-written by Jeppe Rønde, Torben Bech, and Peter Asmussen. (Denmark) – North American Premiere.
Dixieland, directed and written by Hank Bedford. (USA) – World Premiere
Franny, directed and written by Andrew Renzi.
- 3/3/2015
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
"A sober-living safe house is neither safe nor sober in Stinking Heaven, the fifth feature (and fourth in 3 years) from director Nathan Silver," writes Jesse Knight at Movie Mezzanine. "In New Jersey circa 1990, a young married couple, Jim (Keith Poulson, Listen Up Philip) and Lucy (Deragh Campbell, I Used to Be Darker) run a commune providing refuge for recovering drug addicts of any age who pass the time making and selling bathtub kombucha ('fermented healthy drink')…. It’s Short Term 12 by way of the Marquis de Sade." We're collecting a first round of strong reviews for the film that also features Eleonore Hendricks, Henri Douvry and Hannah Gross. » - David Hudson...
- 1/31/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
"A sober-living safe house is neither safe nor sober in Stinking Heaven, the fifth feature (and fourth in 3 years) from director Nathan Silver," writes Jesse Knight at Movie Mezzanine. "In New Jersey circa 1990, a young married couple, Jim (Keith Poulson, Listen Up Philip) and Lucy (Deragh Campbell, I Used to Be Darker) run a commune providing refuge for recovering drug addicts of any age who pass the time making and selling bathtub kombucha ('fermented healthy drink')…. It’s Short Term 12 by way of the Marquis de Sade." We're collecting a first round of strong reviews for the film that also features Eleonore Hendricks, Henri Douvry and Hannah Gross. » - David Hudson...
- 1/31/2015
- Keyframe
natural history
Dissent was brewing in De Doelen this year. For reasons unbeknownst to the vast majority of attendees at this 44th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the powers that be decided to make all the bars in the fest’s headquarters cashless. Instead of creating some pseudo Marxist utopia, however, this "innovation" resulted in frustration, as night after night, critics, filmmakers and producers waved their fest passes preloaded with Euros at bartenders in hopes of getting a poorly poured beer.
What does this have to do with Iffr as a whole? Well, it all felt suggestive of things to come. According to the ever-reliable internet, there are now more tickets sold during Rotterdam than at Cannes or Venice. (Indeed, there were several screenings during the festival that sold out faster than I expected, leaving me scrambling to re-jig my schedule and sprinting from the Pathé theatre to the Cinerama.
Dissent was brewing in De Doelen this year. For reasons unbeknownst to the vast majority of attendees at this 44th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the powers that be decided to make all the bars in the fest’s headquarters cashless. Instead of creating some pseudo Marxist utopia, however, this "innovation" resulted in frustration, as night after night, critics, filmmakers and producers waved their fest passes preloaded with Euros at bartenders in hopes of getting a poorly poured beer.
What does this have to do with Iffr as a whole? Well, it all felt suggestive of things to come. According to the ever-reliable internet, there are now more tickets sold during Rotterdam than at Cannes or Venice. (Indeed, there were several screenings during the festival that sold out faster than I expected, leaving me scrambling to re-jig my schedule and sprinting from the Pathé theatre to the Cinerama.
- 1/30/2015
- by Kiva Reardon
- MUBI
We all live by rules. Whether they are personal choices to undertake or those put upon us by work or family, we live by them. But sometimes those rules can destroy us.Nathan Silver's fifth feature, Stinking Heaven, takes place in suburban New Jersey, circa 1990. Lucy (Deragh Campbell) and Jim (Keith Poulson) are a young married couple who have structured their home as a community for sober living, themselves addicts on the mend. We enter the home amidst a celebration: the wedding of Betty (Eleonore Hendricks) and Kevin (Henri Douvry), surely a bright new beacon in this house for the healing power of love. But when Betty's old flame Ann (Hannah Gross) shows up, it sends the house into a tumult not everyone will come...
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- 1/25/2015
- Screen Anarchy
John Nein was not always a Senior Programmer at the Sundance Film Festival — it’s only been eight years. When he began at Sundance in 2002 he was always watching movies of course. More than that, like John Cooper said, he just didn’t shut up when he was in the room; he was opinionated and spoke his opinions. He also always liked international cinema as he was born in Ireland and grew up in The Netherlands, Belgium and London where his father worked for international companies. When he was 12 he came to the U.S.
The programmers at Sundance do not have a strict formal assignment of areas they program; they see all the films of all the sections, but like his father, international was always of great interest. The same is true for myself, although out of the 118 feature films selected out of 4,105 feature length submissions, many of the U.S. films look great to me as well. For instance, I am so happy that Matt Sobel’s “ Take Me To The River ” which won the prize at Us in Progress this past November in Wroclaw, Poland at The American Film Festival is in the Next section.
John: This year on Day One, January 22, 2015, the Festival will feature one of each type of film shown at the Festival: one shorts program, a U.S. documentary, a U.S. dramatic, an international documentary and an international dramatic which will be the first ever Lithuanian film in Competition, a lesbian love story that is stylish and smartly directed by Alanté Kavaïté with two fantastic actors, Julija Steponaitytė and Aistė Diržiūtė. Actually " The Summer of Sangaile” is a coproduction of Lithuania, France, and Holland . I think Alanté lives in France.
There ares 29 countries represented and 45 first-time filmmakers.
Sydney: I know the Chileans love Sundance. Last year Alejandro Fernández Almendras said in our interview about “To Kill a Man” that Sundance is very important for Chile. I am also a longtime fan of Sebastian Silva since “The Maid”. Two years ago he had two films, “Crystal Fairy” and “Magic, Magic” in Sundance, so why is this Chilean film not in World Competition but in Next?
John: I’m glad Alejandro said that. Yes we like Chile too. They make many good films. But “Nasty Baby” by Sebastian Silva is a U.S. film, about people living in Brooklyn.
He lives in U.S. and has spent a lot of time here. He knows Brooklyn and yet his curiosity and his view of it is that of an outsider. He knows these people because he watches and listens so well. “
Sydney: “Bridesmaids” star and co-writer Kristen Wiig stars. A short promo of “Nasty Baby” was shown to buyers while it was in post-production in Cannes and Toronto. The Chilean production company of Juan de Dios Larrain and Pablo Larrain, Fabula, produced “No” as well as Sebastian’s later films. Papi Boye and Violaine Pichon’s production and international sales agent Versatile out of France along with the film’s international sales agent Funny Balloons — also based in France – helped finance this U.S. Production.
John: World Cinema is now 10 years old. Overall, the Competition sections have evolved over the years. We have a sense of emerging directors here. We have come of age.
All our films are of emerging filmmakers. Either first time directors or highly anticipated second or third features. Of all the festivals worldwide, Sundance has the strongest program of emerging talent. Watch these filmmakers over the next years. Like “Homesick” by Anna Sewitsky. Her previous film “Happy, Happy” showed at Sundance in 2011 and took the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema. “Happy, Happy” also became the Norwegian Official entry for the Academy Awards® .
Sydney: TrustNordisk sold “Happy, Happy” to more than 50 countries, so they must be poised to sell this one as well.
John: But not all the second and third films are from filmmakers whose first films were at Sundance, although Canada’s “ Chorus” director Francois Delisle showed “The Meteor” at Sundance two years ago.
And “Glassland”, was a very anticipated second film. The first film by director and screenwriter, Gerard Barrett, "Pilgrim Hill” won the Galway Film Festival and was very sought after and was signed with a U.S. agent then. “Sangaile" is also a second feature.
Look at the international films in the Premieres section and you will see some international filmmakers there, like “ Brooklyn” which is an immigrant story directed by John Crowley and written by Nick Hornby whose film “Wild” is now playing .
Sydney: I see from IMDbPro that Hanway has already sold Middle Eastern rights to Front Row Entertainment who must have pre-bought “Brooklyn” in Cannes or Toronto.
John: Of the 12 films in World Cinema the less expected films come from Turkey, “Ivy” by the talented director Tolga Karacelik. This is his second film. His first was “Toll Booth” which Global Initiative distributed in the U.S. The Dp on this was Nuri Bilge Ceylan (“Winter’s Sleep”)’s Dp on “Winter’s Sleep”, Gökhan Tiryaki. It is about guys stuck on a freighter whose company goes bankrupt. Power dynamics play out.
Sydney: Have there been Oscar nominated films in Sundance (Aside from “Whiplash” and “Boyhood”)?
John: Yes, “Man on Wire” was not last year but it was foreign. “Ida” was in Spotlight last year and maybe Sundance increased its visibility. Three others were in Sundance last year:
“To Kill a Man” is Chile’s submission, “Difret” which won the Audience Award is Ethiopia’s submission this year and “Liar’s Dice” from India was in World Competition last year. It is a very artful film. We knew it would do well with the critics, but it did extremely well with the audience too. A couple of films in Spotlight will probably be nominated next year. Watch for them.
Sydney : We haven’t even discussed the World documentaries.
John : Are there any that stand out for you?
Sydney: Yes, “Chuck Norris vs. Communism”, from U.K., Romania and Germany. Chuck Norris?
John: How interesting it is that something like Chuck Norris means something very different to others. It is a sign of cultural differences between us. Chuck Norris shows how independent films built a community of counter culture against an authoritarian government.
Sydney: I also notice that there are six docs from the U.K. Out of 12 films.
John: Yes we noticed and discussed that. U.K. really supports documentary filmmaking. Great work is coming out of the U.K. And many of the films are about different countries, so it doesn’t fit so simply into a U.K. pigeon hole.
Sydney : Yes I see “Chuck Norris” is about Romania, “Dreamcatcher” is about teenage prostitution, “How to Change the World” is about Greenpeace, “Listen to Me Marlon” is about a famous U.S. actor, “The Russian Woodpecker” is about a Ukrainian survivor of Chernobyl.
Thank you John for your insights. I think we have a lot to look at here. Thank you for taking this time to talk with me. See you at Sundance!
For a full list thus far of Sundance films, see below.
U.S. Dramatic Competition
Advantageous / U.S.A. (Director: Jennifer Phang, Screenwriters: Jacqueline Kim, Jennifer Phang) — In a near-future city where soaring opulence overshadows economic hardship, Gwen and her daughter, Jules, do all they can to hold on to their joy, despite the instability surfacing in their world. Cast: Jacqueline Kim, James Urbaniak, Freya Adams, Ken Jeong, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Kim.
The Bronze / U.S.A. (Director: Bryan Buckley, Screenwriters: Melissa Rauch, Winston Rauch) — In 2004, Hope Ann Greggory became an American hero after winning the bronze medal for the women's gymnastics team. Today, she's still living in her small hometown, washed-up and embittered. Stuck in the past, Hope must reassess her life when a promising young gymnast threatens her local celebrity status.Cast: Melissa Rauch, Gary Cole, Thomas Middleditch, Sebastian Stan, Haley Lu Richardson, Cecily Strong. Day One Film
The D Train / U.S.A. (Directors and screenwriters: Jarrad Paul, Andrew Mogel) — With his 20th reunion looming, Dan can’t shake his high school insecurities. In a misguided mission to prove he's changed, Dan rekindles a friendship with the popular guy from his class and is left scrambling to protect more than just his reputation when a wild night takes an unexpected turn. Cast: Jack Black, James Marsden, Kathryn Hahn, Jeffrey Tambor, Mike White, Kyle Bornheimer.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Marielle Heller) — Minnie Goetze is a 15-year-old aspiring comic-book artist, coming of age in the haze of the 1970s in San Francisco. Insatiably curious about the world around her, Minnie is a pretty typical teenage girl. Oh, except that she's sleeping with her mother's boyfriend. Cast: Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgård, Christopher Meloni, Kristen Wiig.
Dope / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Rick Famuyiwa) — Malcolm is carefully surviving life in a tough neighborhood in Los Angeles while juggling college applications, academic interviews, and the Sat. A chance invitation to an underground party leads him into an adventure that could allow him to go from being a geek, to being dope, to ultimately being himself. Cast: Shameik Moore, Tony Revolori, Kiersey Clemons, Blake Anderson, Zoë Kravitz, A$AP Rocky.
I Smile Back / U.S.A. (Director: Adam Salky, Screenwriters: Amy Koppelman, Paige Dylan) — All is not right in suburbia. Laney Brooks, a wife and mother on the edge, has stopped taking her meds, substituting recreational drugs and the wrong men. With the destruction of her family looming, Laney makes a last, desperate attempt at redemption. Cast: Sarah Silverman, Josh Charles, Thomas Sadoski, Mia Barron, Terry Kinney, Chris Sarandon.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl / U.S.A. (Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Screenwriter: Jesse Andrews) — Greg is coasting through senior year of high school as anonymously as possible, avoiding social interactions like the plague while secretly making spirited, bizarre films with Earl, his only friend. But both his anonymity and friendship threaten to unravel when his mother forces him to befriend a classmate with leukemia. Cast: Thomas Mann, Rj Cyler, Olivia Cooke, Nick Offerman, Connie Britton, Molly Shannon.
The Overnight / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Patrick Brice) — Alex, Emily, and their son, Rj, are new to Los Angeles. A chance meeting at the park introduces them to the mysterious Kurt, Charlotte, and Max. A family "playdate" becomes increasingly interesting as the night goes on. Cast: Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman, Judith Godrèche.
People, Places, Things / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: James C. Strouse) — Will Henry is a newly single graphic novelist balancing being a parent to his young twin daughters and teaching a classroom full of college students, all the while trying to navigate the rich complexities of new love and letting go of the woman who left him. Cast: Jemaine Clement, Regina Hall, Stephanie Allynne, Jessica Williams, Gia Gadsby, Aundrea Gadsby.
Results / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Andrew Bujalski) — Two mismatched personal trainers' lives are upended by the actions of a new, wealthy client. Cast: Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders, Kevin Corrigan, Giovanni Ribisi, Anthony Michael Hall, Brooklyn Decker.
Songs My Brothers Taught Me / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Chloé Zhao) — This complex portrait of modern-day life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation explores the bond between a brother and his younger sister, who find themselves on separate paths to rediscovering the meaning of home. Cast: John Reddy, Jashaun St. John, Irene Bedard, Taysha Fuller, Travis Lone Hill, Eléonore Hendricks.
The Stanford Prison Experiment / U.S.A. (Director: Kyle Patrick Alvarez, Screenwriter: Tim Talbott) — This film is based on the actual events that took place in 1971 when Stanford professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo created what became one of the most shocking and famous social experiments of all time. Cast: Billy Crudup, Ezra Miller, Michael Angarano, Tye Sheridan, Johnny Simmons, Olivia Thirlby.
Stockholm, Pennsylvania / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Nikole Beckwith) — A young woman is returned home to her biological parents after living with her abductor for 17 years. Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Cynthia Nixon, Jason Isaacs, David Warshofsky.
Unexpected / U.S.A. (Director: Kris Swanberg, Screenwriters: Kris Swanberg, Megan Mercier) — When Samantha Abbott begins her final semester teaching science at a Chicago high school, she faces some unexpected news: she's pregnant. Soon after, Samantha learns that one of her favorite students, Jasmine, has landed in a similar situation. Unexpected follows the two women as they embark on an unlikely friendship. Cast: Cobie Smulders, Anders Holm, Gail Bean, Elizabeth McGovern.
The Witch / U.S.A., Canada (Director and screenwriter: Robert Eggers) — New England in the 1630s: William and Katherine lead a devout Christian life with five children, homesteading on the edge of an impassable wilderness. When their newborn son vanishes and crops fail, the family turns on one another. Beyond their worst fears, a supernatural evil lurks in the nearby wood. Cast: Anya Taylor Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Lucas Dawson, Ellie Grainger.
Z for Zachariah / U.S.A. (Director: Craig Zobel, Screenwriter: Nissar Modi) — In a post-apocalyptic world, a young woman who believes she is the last human on Earth meets a dying scientist searching for survivors. Their relationship becomes tenuous when another survivor appears. As the two men compete for the woman's affection, their primal urges begin to reveal their true nature. Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie, Chris Pine.
U.S. Documentary Competition
Sixteen world-premiere American documentaries that illuminate the ideas, people, and events that shape the present day.
3½ Minutes / U.S.A. (Director: Marc Silver) — On November 23, 2012, unarmed 17-year-old Jordan Russell Davis was shot at a Jacksonville gas station by Michael David Dunn. 3½ Minutes explores the aftermath of Jordan's tragic death, the latent and often unseen effects of racism, and the contradictions of the American criminal justice system.
Being Evel / U.S.A. (Director: Daniel Junge) — An unprecedented, candid portrait of American icon Robert "Evel" Knievel and his legacy.
Best of Enemies / U.S.A. (Directors: Morgan Neville, Robert Gordon) — Best of Enemies is a behind-the-scenes account of the explosive 1968 televised debates between the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr., and their rancorous disagreements about politics, God, and sex.
Call Me Lucky / U.S.A. (Director: Bobcat Goldthwait) — Barry Crimmins was a volatile but brilliant bar comic who became an honored peace activist and influential political satirist. Famous comedians and others build a picture of a man who underwent an incredible transformation.
Cartel Land / U.S.A., Mexico (Director: Matthew Heineman) — In this classic Western set in the 21st century, vigilantes on both sides of the border fight the vicious Mexican drug cartels. With unprecedented access, this character-driven film provokes deep questions about lawlessness, the breakdown of order, and whether citizens should fight violence with violence.
City of Gold / U.S.A. (Director: Laura Gabbert) — Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jonathan Gold casts his light upon a vibrant and growing cultural movement in which he plays the dual roles of high-low priest and culinary geographer of his beloved Los Angeles.
Finders Keepers / U.S.A. (Directors: Bryan Carberry, Clay Tweel) — Recovering addict and amputee John Wood finds himself in a stranger-than-fiction battle to reclaim his mummified leg from Southern entrepreneur Shannon Whisnant, who found it in a grill he bought at an auction and believes it to therefore be his rightful property.
Hot Girls Wanted / U.S.A. (Directors: Jill Bauer, Ronna Gradus) — Hot Girls Wanted is a first-ever look at the realities inside the world of the amateur porn industry and the steady stream of 18- and 19-year-old girls entering into it.
How to Dance in Ohio / U.S.A. (Director: Alexandra Shiva) — In Columbus, Ohio, a group of teenagers and young adults on the autism spectrum prepare for an iconic American rite of passage — a spring formal. They spend 12 weeks practicing their social skills at a local nightclub in preparation for the dance.
Larry Kramer in Love and Anger / U.S.A. (Director: Jean Carlomusto) — Author, activist, and playwright Larry Kramer is one of the most important and controversial figures in contemporary gay America, a political firebrand who gave voice to the outrage and grief that inspired gay men and lesbians to fight for their lives. At 78, this complicated man still commands our attention.
Meru / U.S.A. (Directors: Jimmy Chin, E. Chai Vasarhelyi) — Three elite mountain climbers sacrifice everything but their friendship as they struggle through heartbreaking loss and nature’s harshest elements to attempt the never-before-completed Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru, the most coveted first ascent in the dangerous game of Himalayan big wall climbing.
Racing Extinction / U.S.A. (Director: Louie Psihoyos) — Academy Award-winner Louie Psihoyos (The Cove) assembles a unique team to show the world never-before-seen images that expose issues surrounding endangered species and mass extinction. Whether infiltrating notorious black markets or exploring humans' effect on the environment, Racing Extinction will change the way you see the world.
(T)Error / U.S.A. (Directors: Lyric R. Cabral, David Felix Sutcliffe) — (T)Error is the first film to document on camera a covert counterterrorism sting as it unfolds. Through the perspective of *******, a 63-year-old Black revolutionary turned FBI informant, viewers are given an unprecedented glimpse of the government’s counterterrorism tactics, and the murky justifications behind them.
Welcome to Leith / U.S.A. (Directors: Michael Beach Nichols, Christopher K. Walker) — A white supremacist attempts to take over a small town in North Dakota.
Western / U.S.A., Mexico (Directors: Bill Ross, Turner Ross) — For generations, all that distinguished Eagle Pass, Texas, from Piedras Negras, Mexico, was the Rio Grande. But when darkness descends upon these harmonious border towns, a cowboy and lawman face a new reality that threatens their way of life. Western portrays timeless American figures in the grip of unforgiving change.
The Wolfpack / U.S.A. (Director: Crystal Moselle) — Six bright teenage brothers have spent their entire lives locked away from society in a Manhattan housing project. All they know of the outside is gleaned from the movies they watch obsessively (and recreate meticulously). Yet as adolescence looms, they dream of escape, ever more urgently, into the beckoning world.
World Cinema Dramatic Competition
Twelve films from emerging filmmaking talents around the world offer fresh perspectives and inventive styles.
Chlorine / Italy (Director: Lamberto Sanfelice, Screenwriters: Lamberto Sanfelice, Elisa Amoruso) — Jenny, 17, dreams of becoming a synchronized swimmer. Family events turn her life upside down and she is forced move to a remote area to look after her ill father and younger brother. It won't be long before Jenny starts pursuing her dreams again. Cast: Sara Serraiocco, Ivan Franek, Giorgio Colangeli, Anatol Sassi, Piera Degli Esposti, Andrea Vergoni. World Premiere
Chorus / Canada (Director and screenwriter: François Delisle) — A separated couple meet again after 10 years when the body of their missing son is found. Amid the guilt of losing a loved one, they hesitantly move toward affirmation of life, acceptance of death, and even the possibility of reconciliation. Cast: Sébastien Ricard, Fanny Mallette, Pierre Curzi, Genevieve Bujold. World Premiere
Glassland / Ireland (Director and screenwriter: Gerard Barrett) — In a desperate attempt to reunite his broken family, a young taxi driver becomes entangled in the criminal underworld. Cast: Jack Reynor, Toni Collette, Will Poulter, Michael Smiley. International Premiere
Homesick / Norway (Director: Anne Sewitsky, Screenwriters: Ragnhild Tronvoll, Anne Sewitsky) — When Charlotte, 27, meets her brother Henrik, 35, for the first time, two people who don't know what a normal family is begin an encounter without boundaries. How does sibling love manifest itself if you have never experienced it before?Cast: Ine Marie Wilmann, Simon J. Berger, Anneke von der Lippe, Silje Storstein, Oddgeir Thune, Kari Onstad. World Premiere. Isa: TrustNordisk
Ivy / Turkey (Director and screenwriter: Tolga Karaçelik) — Sarmasik is sailing to Egypt when the ship's owner goes bankrupt. The crew learns there is a lien on the ship, and key crew members must stay on board. Ivy is the story of these six men trapped on the ship for days. Cast: Nadir Sarıbacak, Özgür Emre Yıldırım, Hakan Karsak, Kadir Çermik, Osman Alkaş, Seyithan Özdemiroğlu. World Premiere
Partisan / Australia (Director: Ariel Kleiman, Screenwriters: Ariel Kleiman, Sarah Cyngler) — Alexander is like any other kid: playful, curious and naive. He is also a trained assassin. Raised in a hidden paradise, Alexander has grown up seeing the world filtered through his father, Gregori. As Alexander begins to think for himself, creeping fears take shape, and Gregori's idyllic world unravels. Cast: Vincent Cassel, Jeremy Chabriel, Florence Mezzara. World Premiere
Princess / Israel (Director and screenwriter: Tali Shalom Ezer) — While her mother is away from home, 12-year-old Adar’s role-playing games with her stepfather move into dangerous territory. Seeking an escape, Adar finds Alan, an ethereal boy that accompanies her on a dark journey between reality and fantasy. Cast: Keren Mor, Shira Haas, Ori Pfeffer, Adar Zohar Hanetz. International Premiere
The Second Mother / Brazil (Director and screenwriter: Anna Muylaert) — Having left her daughter, Jessica, to be raised by relatives in the north of Brazil, Val works as a loving nanny in São Paulo. When Jessica arrives for a visit 13 years later, she confronts her mother's slave-like attitude and everyone in the house is affected by her unexpected behavior. Cast: Regina Casé, Michel Joelsas, Camila Márdila, Karine Teles, Lourenço Mutarelli. World Premiere
Slow West / New Zealand (Director: John Maclean, Screenwriters: John Maclean, Michael Lesslie) — Set at the end of the nineteenth century, 16-year-old Jay Cavendish journeys across the American frontier in search of the woman he loves. He is joined by Silas, a mysterious traveler, and hotly pursued by an outlaw along the way. Cast: Michael Fassbender, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Rory McCann, Ben Mendelsohn, Brooke Williams, Caren Pistorius. World Premiere
Strangerland / Australia, Ireland (Director: Kim Farrant, Screenwriters: Fiona Seres, Michael Kinirons) — When Catherine and Matthew Parker's two teenage kids disappear into the remote Australian desert, the couple's relationship is pushed to the brink as they confront the mystery of their children's fate. Cast: Nicole Kidman, Joseph Fiennes, Hugo Weaving, Lisa Flanagan, Meyne Wyatt, Maddison Brown. World Premiere
The Summer of Sangaile / Lithuania, France, Holland (Director and screenwriter: Alanté Kavaïté) — Seventeen-year-old Sangaile is fascinated by stunt planes. She meets a girl her age at the summer aeronautical show, nearby her parents’ lakeside villa. Sangaile allows Auste to discover her most intimate secret and in the process finds in her teenage love, the only person that truly encourages her to fly. Cast: Julija Steponaitytė, Aistė Diržiūtė. World Premiere. Isa: Films Distribution.
Umrika / India (Director and screenwriter: Prashant Nair) — When a young village boy discovers that his brother, long believed to be in America, has actually gone missing, he begins to invent letters on his behalf to save their mother from heartbreak, all the while searching for him. Cast: Suraj Sharma, Tony Revolori, Smita Tambe, Adil Hussain, Rajesh Tailang, Prateik Babbar. World Premiere
World Cinema Documentary Competition
Twelve documentaries by some of the most courageous and extraordinary international filmmakers working today.
The Amina Profile / Canada (Director: Sophie Deraspe) — During the Arab revolution, a love story between two women — a Canadian and a Syrian American — turns into an international sociopolitical thriller spotlighting media excesses and the thin line between truth and falsehood on the Internet. World Premiere
Censored Voices / Israel, Germany (Director: Mor Loushy) — One week after the 1967 Six-Day War, renowned author Amos Oz and editor Avraham Shapira recorded intimate conversations with soldiers returning from the battlefield. The Israeli army censored the recordings, allowing only a fragment of the conversations to be published. Censored Voices reveals these recordings for the first time. World Premiere
The Chinese Mayor / China (Director: Hao Zhou) — Mayor Geng Yanbo is determined to transform the coal-mining center of Datong, in China’s Shanxi province, into a tourism haven showcasing clean energy. In order to achieve that, however, he has to relocate 500,000 residences to make way for the restoration of the ancient city. World Premiere
Chuck Norris vs Communism / United Kingdom, Romania, Germany (Director: Ilinca Calugareanu) — In 1980s Romania, thousands of Western films smashed through the Iron Curtain, opening a window to the free world for those who dared to look. A black market VHS racketeer and courageous female translator brought the magic of film to the masses and sowed the seeds of a revolution. World Premiere. Producers Rep: UTA
Dark Horse / United Kingdom (Director: Louise Osmond) — Dark Horse is the inspirational true story of a group of friends from a workingman's club who decide to take on the elite "sport of kings" and breed themselves a racehorse. World Premiere
Dreamcatcher / United Kingdom (Director: Kim Longinotto) — Dreamcatcher takes us into a hidden world seen through the eyes of one of its survivors, Brenda Myers-Powell. A former teenage prostitute, Brenda defied the odds to become a powerful advocate for change in her community. With warmth and humor, Brenda gives hope to those who have none. World Premiere
How to Change the World / United Kingdom, Canada (Director: Jerry Rothwell) — In 1971, a group of friends sails into a nuclear test zone, and their protest captures the world’s imagination. Using rare, archival footage that brings their extraordinary world to life, How to Change the World is the story of the pioneers who founded Greenpeace and defined the modern green movement. World Premiere. Day One Film
Listen to Me Marlon / United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Stevan Riley, Co-writer: Peter Ettedgui) — With exclusive access to previously unheard audio archives, this is the definitive Marlon Brando cinema documentary. Charting his exceptional career and extraordinary life away from the stage and screen, the film fully explores the complexities of the man by telling the story uniquely in Marlon’s own voice. World Premiere
Pervert Park / Sweden, Denmark (Directors: Frida Barkfors, Lasse Barkfors) — Pervert Park follows the everyday lives of sex offenders in a Florida trailer park as they struggle to reintegrate into society, and try to understand who they are and how to break the cycle of sex crimes being committed. International Premiere
The Russian Woodpecker / United Kingdom (Director: Chad Gracia) — A Ukrainian victim of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster discovers a dark secret and must decide whether to risk his life by revealing it, amid growing clouds of revolution and war. World Premiere
Sembene! / U.S.A., Senegal (Directors: Samba Gadjigo, Jason Silverman) — In 1952, Ousmane Sembene, a Senegalese dockworker and fifth-grade dropout, began dreaming an impossible dream: to become the storyteller for a new Africa. This true story celebrates how the “father of African cinema,” against enormous odds, fought a monumental, 50-year-long battle to give Africans a voice. World Premiere
The Visit / Denmark, Austria, Ireland, Finland, Norway (Director: Michael Madsen) — “This film documents an event that has never taken place…” With unprecedented access to the United Nations' Office for Outer Space Affairs, leading space scientists and space agencies, The Visit explores humans' first encounter with alien intelligent life and thereby humanity itself. "Our scenario begins with the arrival. Your arrival." World Premiere
Next <=>
Pure, bold works distinguished by an innovative, forward-thinking approach to storytelling populate this program. Digital technology paired with unfettered creativity promises that the films in this section will shape a “greater” next wave in American cinema. Presented by Adobe.
Bob and the Trees / U.S.A., France (Director: Diego Ongaro, Screenwriters: Diego Ongaro, Courtney Maum, Sasha Statman-Weil) — Bob, a 50-year-old logger in rural Massachusetts with a soft spot for golf and gangsta rap, is struggling to make ends meet in a changed economy. When his beloved cow is wounded and a job goes awry, Bob begins to heed the instincts of his ever-darkening self. Cast: Bob Tarasuk, Matt Gallagher, Polly MacIntyre, Winthrop Barrett, Nathaniel Gregory. World Premiere
Christmas, Again / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Charles Poekel) — A heartbroken Christmas tree salesman returns to New York, hoping to put the past year behind him. He spends the season living in a trailer and working the night shift, until a mysterious woman and some colorful customers rescue him from self-destruction. Cast: Kentucker Audley, Hannah Gross, Jason Shelton, Oona Roche. North American Premiere
Cronies / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Michael Larnell) — Twenty-two-year-old Louis doesn’t know whether his childhood friendship with Jack will last beyond today. Cast: George Sample III, Zurich Buckner, Brian Kowalski. World Premiere
Entertainment / U.S.A. (Director: Rick Alverson, Screenwriters: Rick Alverson, Gregg Turkington, Tim Heidecker) — En route to meeting with his estranged daughter, in an attempt to revive his dwindling career, a broken, aging comedian plays a string of dead-end shows in the Mojave Desert. Cast: Gregg Turkington, John C. Reilly, Tye Sheridan, Michael Cera, Amy Seimetz, Lotte Verbeek. World Premiere
H. / U.S.A., Argentina (Directors and screenwriters: Rania Attieh, Daniel Garcia) — Two women, each named Helen, find their lives spinning out of control after a meteor allegedly explodes over their city of Troy, New York. Cast: Robin Bartlett, Rebecca Dayan, Will Janowitz, Julian Gamble, Roger Robinson. World Premiere
James White / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Josh Mond) — A young New Yorker struggles to take control of his reckless, self-destructive behavior in the face of momentous family challenges. Cast: Chris Abbott, Cynthia Nixon, Scott Mescudi, Makenzie Leigh, David Call. World Premiere
Nasty Baby / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Sebastian Silva) — A gay couple try to have a baby with the help of their best friend, Polly. The trio navigates the idea of creating life while confronted by unexpected harassment from a neighborhood man called The Bishop. As their clashes grow increasingly aggressive, odds are someone is getting hurt. Cast: Sebastian Silva, Tunde Adebimpe, Kristin Wiig, Reg E. Cathey, Mark Margolis, Denis O'Hare. World Premiere
The Strongest Man / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kenny Riches) — An anxiety-ridden Cuban man who fancies himself the strongest man in the world attempts to recover his most prized possession, a stolen bicycle. On his quest, he finds and loses much more. Cast: Robert Lorie, Paul Chamberlain, Ashly Burch, Patrick Fugit, Lisa Banes. World Premiere
" Take Me To The River " / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Matt Sobel) — A naive California teen plans to remain above the fray at his Nebraskan family reunion, but a strange encounter places him at the center of a long-buried family secret.Cast: Logan Miller, Robin Weigert, Josh Hamilton, Richard Schiff, Ursula Parker, Azura Skye. World Premiere. Producer rep: Cinetic Media
Tangerine / U.S.A. (Director: Sean Baker, Screenwriters: Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch) — A working girl tears through Tinseltown on Christmas Eve searching for the pimp who broke her heart. Cast: Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Karren Karagulian, Mickey O'Hagan, Alla Tumanyan, James Ransone. World Premiere
Spotlight
Regardless of where these films have played throughout the world, the Spotlight program is a tribute to the cinema we love.
6 Desires: Dh Lawrence and Sardinia / United Kingdom, Italy (Director: Mark Cousins) — In winter 1921, Dh Lawrence and his wife journeyed to Sardinia, and he chronicled their experiences in Sea and Sardinia. Now, Mark Cousins retraces Lawrence’s footsteps. The film is conceived partly as a letter to Lawrence — or “Bert” — a detail that’s typical of the film’s inviting sense of conversational intimacy.International Premiere
'71 / United Kingdom (Director: Yann Demange, Screenwriter: Gregory Burke) — ‘71 takes place over a single night in the life of a young British soldier accidentally abandoned by his unit following a riot on the streets of Belfast in 1971. Unable to tell friend from foe, he must survive the night alone and find his way to safety. Cast: Jack O'Connell, Paul Anderson, Richard Dormer, Sean Harris, Barry Keoghan, Martin McCann.
99 Homes / U.S.A. (Director: Ramin Bahrani, Screenwriters: Ramin Bahrani, Amir Naderi, Bahareh Azimi) — A father struggles to get back the home that his family was evicted from by working for the greedy real-estate broker who's the source of his frustration. Cast: Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern, Tim Guinee, Cullen Moss, J.D. Evermore.
Aloft / Spain, France, Canada (Director and screenwriter: Claudia Llosa) — Aloft tells the story of a struggling mother, Nana, and her evolution to becoming a renowned healer. When a young artist tracks down Nana's son 20 years after she abandoned him, she sets in motion an encounter between the two that will bring the meaning of their lives into question. Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Cillian Murphy, Mélanie Laurent, William Shimell. North American Premiere
Eden / France (Director: Mia Hansen-løve, Screenwriters: Mia Hansen-løve, Sven Hansen-løve) — Mia Hansen-løve's electronic-dance-music epic follows the rise and fall of a DJ (based on her brother, Sven, a contemporary of Daft Punk) who gets into the rave scene in 1994 and spends the next 20 years navigating the French club scene. Cast: Félix de Givry, Pauline Etienne, Greta Gerwig, Brady Corbet, Arsinee Khanjian, Vincent Macaigne.
Girlhood / France (Director and screenwriter: Céline Sciamma) — Oppressed by her family, dead-end school prospects, and the boys law in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of free-spirited girls. She changes her name and dress, and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping to find a way to freedom. Cast: Karidja Touré, Assa Sylla, Lindsay Karamoh, Mariétou Touré, Idrissa Diabaté, Simina Soumaré.
The Tribe / Ukraine (Director and screenwriter: Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy) — Set at a Ukrainian boarding school for the deaf, the film’s narrative unfolds purely through sign language without the need for employing subtitles or voiceover, resulting in a unique, never-before-seen cinematic experience that engages the audience on a new level. Cast: Grigoriy Fesenko, Yana Novikova, Rosa Babiy, Alexander Dsiadevich.
White God / Hungary (Director: Kornél Mundruczó, Screenwriters: Kata Wéber, Kornél Mundruczó, Viktória Petrányi) — When young Lili is forced to give up her beloved dog, Hagen, because its mixed-breed heritage is deemed “unfit” by The State, she and the dog begin a dangerous journey back toward each other. Cast: Zsófia Psotta, Sandor Zsótér, Szabolcs Thuróczy, Lili Monori, László Gálffi, Lili Horváth. U.S. Premiere
Wild Tales / Argentina, Spain (Director and screenwriter: Damián Szifrón) — Inequality, injustice, and the demands of the world cause stress and depression for many people. Some of them, however, explode. This is a movie about those people. Vulnerable in the face of an unpredictable reality, the characters of Wild Tales cross the thin line dividing civilization and barbarism. Cast: Ricardo Darín, Julieta Zyberberg, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Darío Grandinetti, Erica Rivas, Oscar Martínez.
Park City At Midnight
From horror flicks to comedies to works that defy any genre, these unruly films will keep you edge-seated and wide awake.
Cop Car / U.S.A. (Director: Jon Watts, Screenwriters: Christopher D. Ford, Jon Watts) — Two 10-year-old boys steal an abandoned cop car. Cast: Kevin Bacon, James Freedson-Jackson, Hays Wellford, Shea Whigham, Camryn Manheim. World Premiere
The Hallow / Ireland, United Kingdom (Director: Corin Hardy, Screenwriters: Corin Hardy, Felipe Marino) — When a London-based conservationist is sent to Ireland to survey an area of ancient forest believed by the superstitious locals to be hallowed ground, he unwittingly disturbs a horde of terrifying beings and must fight to protect his family. Cast: Joseph Mawle, Bojana Novakovic, Michael McElhatton, Michael Smiley. World Premiere
Hellions / Canada (Director: Bruce McDonald, Screenwriter: Pascal Trottier) — Teenage Dora Vogel must survive a Halloween night from hell when malevolent trick-or-treaters come knocking at her door. Cast: Chloe Rose, Robert Patrick, Rossif Sutherland, Rachel Wilson, Peter DaCunha, Luke Bilyk. World Premiere
It Follows / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: David Robert Mitchell) — After a strange sexual encounter, a teenager finds herself haunted by nightmarish visions and the inescapable sense that something is after her. Cast: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto, Jake Weary, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe.
Knock Knock / U.S.A. (Director: Eli Roth, Screenwriters: Eli Roth, Nicolas Lopez, Guillermo Amoedo) — Two beautiful young girls walk into a married man's life and turn a wild fantasy into his worst nightmare. Cast: Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo, Ana De Armas, Aaron Burns, Ignacia Allamand, Colleen Camp. World Premiere
The Nightmare / U.S.A. (Director: Rodney Ascher) — A documentary-horror film exploring the phenomenon of sleep paralysis through the eyes of eight people. They (and a surprisingly large number of others) often find themselves trapped between the sleeping and awake realms, unable to move but aware of their surroundings while subject to disturbing sights and sounds. World Premiere
Reversal / U.S.A. (Director: J.M Cravioto, Screenwriters: Rock Shaink, Keith Kjornes) — A gritty psychological thriller about a young woman chained in a basement of a sexual predator and manages to escape. However, right when she has a chance for freedom, she unravels a hard truth and decides to turn the tables on her captor. Cast: Tina Ivlev, Richard Tyson, Bianca Malinowski. World Premiere
Turbo Kid / Canada, New Zealand (Directors: Anouk Whissell, Francois Simard, Yoann-Karl Whissell, Screenwriters: Anouk Whissell, Francois Simard, Yoann-Karl Whissell) — In a post-apocalyptic future, The Kid, an orphaned outcast, meets a mysterious girl. They become friends until Zeus, the sadistic leader of the Wasteland, kidnaps her. The Kid must face his fears, and journey to rid the Wasteland of evil and save the girl. Cast: Munro Chambers, Laurence Leboeuf, Michael Ironside, Aaron Jeffery, Edwin Wright. World Premiere
New Frontier Films
The Forbidden Room / Canada (Directors: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Screenwriters: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Robert Kotyk) — A submarine crew, a feared pack of forest bandits, a famous surgeon, and a battalion of child soldiers all get more than they bargained for as they wend their way toward progressive ideas on life and love. Cast: Geraldine Chaplin, Caroline Dhavernas, Roy Dupuis, Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Karine Vanasse. World Premiere
Liveforever / Colombia, Mexico (Director: Carlos Moreno, Screenwriters: Alberto Ferreras, Alonso Torres, Carlos Moreno) — Driven by the music and dancing she finds along the way, a teenager leaves home willing to try anything her provocative and tolerant city has to offer, even if she burns out in the process. Inspired by the best-selling novel "Que viva la música" by Andres Caicedo. Cast: Paulina Davila, Alejandra Avila, Luis Arrieta, Juan Pablo Barragan, Nelson Camayo, Christian Tappan. World Premiere
The Royal Road / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Jenni Olson) — This cinematic essay, a defense of remembering, offers up a primer on the Spanish colonization of California and the Mexican American War alongside intimate reflections on nostalgia, butch identity and Alfred Hitchcock'sVertigo — all against a contemplative backdrop of 16mm urban California landscapes. Cast: Jenni Olson, Tony Kushner. World Premiere
Sam Klemke's Time Machine / Australia (Director: Matthew Bate) — Sam Klemke has filmed and narrated 50 years of his life, creating a strange and intimate portrait of what it means to be human. World Premiere
Station to Station / U.S.A. (Director: Doug Aitken) — Station to Station is composed of 60 individual one-minute films featuring different artists, musicians, places, and perspectives. This revolutionary feature-length film reveals a larger narrative about modern creativity. World Premiere
Things of the Aimless Wanderer / Rwanda, United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Kivu Ruhorahoza) — A white man meets a black girl, then she disappears. The white man tries to understand what happened to her while also trying to finish a travelogue. Things of the Aimless Wanderer is a film about the sensitive topic of relations between “locals” and Westerners, about paranoia, mistrust, and misunderstandings. Cast: Justin Mullikin, Grace Nikuze, Ramadhan Bizimana, Eliane Umuhire, Wesley Ruzibiza, Matt Ray Brown. World Premiere
New Frontier Installations
1979 Revolution Game
Artists: Navid Khonsari, Vassiliki Khonsari
1979 Revolution Game presents an innovative approach to non-fiction storytelling. Designed to engage players with an immersive "on the ground" experience of the Iranian Revolution, the game integrates an emotionally impactful narrative with interactive moral choices and intuitive touchscreen gameplay while remaining true to history.
Assent
Artist: Oscar Raby
This immersive documentary uses virtual reality technology to put the user in the footsteps of Director Oscar Raby's father, who in 1973 was a 22-year-old army officer stationed in the north of Chile, on the day when the Caravan of Death came to his regiment.
Birdly
Artist: Max Rheiner
Flying is one of the oldest dreams of humankind. Birdly is an experiment to capture this dream, to simulate the experience of being a bird from a first-person perspective. This embodiment is conducted through a full-body virtual reality setup.
Dérive
Artist: François Quévillon
This interactive installation uses the audience’s body motions and positions to explore 3-D reconstructions of urban and natural spaces that are transformed according to live environmental data, including meteorological and astronomical phenomena.
Evolution of Verse
Artist: Chris Milk
Chris Milk, working with visual effects powerhouse Digital Domain and virtual reality production company Vrse.works, has created this photo-realistic CGI-rendered 3-D virtual reality film that takes the viewer on a journey from beginning to new beginning.
Kaiju Fury!
Artist: Ian Hunter
A dark energy experiment leads to a devastating attack by monstrous Kaiju, and you are standing at ground zero — all in 360-degree, stereoscopic 3-D cinematic virtual reality. You will "be there" as the beasts lay waste to a crumbling city and humanity makes its last stand. Cast: Susie Abromeit, Bill Lippincott, Daniel Martin, Brian Dodge, Vincient Chiantelli.
Paradise
Artist: Pleix
Paradise is certainly not paradisiacal if you look at it through our eyes. But neither is it totally devoid of humor, melancholy and absurdity. Perhaps it is first and foremost life as it is, and then a touch exaggerated in the digital overdrive.
Perspective; Chapter I: The Party
Artists: Rose Troche, Morris May
A young college woman attends a party with the intention of shedding her "shy girl" persona. At the same party, a young man is after a similar reinvention. They meet, drink, and misinterpreted signals turn into things that cannot be undone. Virtual reality simulators let viewers experience both characters. Cast: Tabitha Morella, Caleb Thomas, Zachary Zagoria, Anna Grace Barlow.
Possibilia
Artists: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
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The programmers at Sundance do not have a strict formal assignment of areas they program; they see all the films of all the sections, but like his father, international was always of great interest. The same is true for myself, although out of the 118 feature films selected out of 4,105 feature length submissions, many of the U.S. films look great to me as well. For instance, I am so happy that Matt Sobel’s “ Take Me To The River ” which won the prize at Us in Progress this past November in Wroclaw, Poland at The American Film Festival is in the Next section.
John: This year on Day One, January 22, 2015, the Festival will feature one of each type of film shown at the Festival: one shorts program, a U.S. documentary, a U.S. dramatic, an international documentary and an international dramatic which will be the first ever Lithuanian film in Competition, a lesbian love story that is stylish and smartly directed by Alanté Kavaïté with two fantastic actors, Julija Steponaitytė and Aistė Diržiūtė. Actually " The Summer of Sangaile” is a coproduction of Lithuania, France, and Holland . I think Alanté lives in France.
There ares 29 countries represented and 45 first-time filmmakers.
Sydney: I know the Chileans love Sundance. Last year Alejandro Fernández Almendras said in our interview about “To Kill a Man” that Sundance is very important for Chile. I am also a longtime fan of Sebastian Silva since “The Maid”. Two years ago he had two films, “Crystal Fairy” and “Magic, Magic” in Sundance, so why is this Chilean film not in World Competition but in Next?
John: I’m glad Alejandro said that. Yes we like Chile too. They make many good films. But “Nasty Baby” by Sebastian Silva is a U.S. film, about people living in Brooklyn.
He lives in U.S. and has spent a lot of time here. He knows Brooklyn and yet his curiosity and his view of it is that of an outsider. He knows these people because he watches and listens so well. “
Sydney: “Bridesmaids” star and co-writer Kristen Wiig stars. A short promo of “Nasty Baby” was shown to buyers while it was in post-production in Cannes and Toronto. The Chilean production company of Juan de Dios Larrain and Pablo Larrain, Fabula, produced “No” as well as Sebastian’s later films. Papi Boye and Violaine Pichon’s production and international sales agent Versatile out of France along with the film’s international sales agent Funny Balloons — also based in France – helped finance this U.S. Production.
John: World Cinema is now 10 years old. Overall, the Competition sections have evolved over the years. We have a sense of emerging directors here. We have come of age.
All our films are of emerging filmmakers. Either first time directors or highly anticipated second or third features. Of all the festivals worldwide, Sundance has the strongest program of emerging talent. Watch these filmmakers over the next years. Like “Homesick” by Anna Sewitsky. Her previous film “Happy, Happy” showed at Sundance in 2011 and took the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema. “Happy, Happy” also became the Norwegian Official entry for the Academy Awards® .
Sydney: TrustNordisk sold “Happy, Happy” to more than 50 countries, so they must be poised to sell this one as well.
John: But not all the second and third films are from filmmakers whose first films were at Sundance, although Canada’s “ Chorus” director Francois Delisle showed “The Meteor” at Sundance two years ago.
And “Glassland”, was a very anticipated second film. The first film by director and screenwriter, Gerard Barrett, "Pilgrim Hill” won the Galway Film Festival and was very sought after and was signed with a U.S. agent then. “Sangaile" is also a second feature.
Look at the international films in the Premieres section and you will see some international filmmakers there, like “ Brooklyn” which is an immigrant story directed by John Crowley and written by Nick Hornby whose film “Wild” is now playing .
Sydney: I see from IMDbPro that Hanway has already sold Middle Eastern rights to Front Row Entertainment who must have pre-bought “Brooklyn” in Cannes or Toronto.
John: Of the 12 films in World Cinema the less expected films come from Turkey, “Ivy” by the talented director Tolga Karacelik. This is his second film. His first was “Toll Booth” which Global Initiative distributed in the U.S. The Dp on this was Nuri Bilge Ceylan (“Winter’s Sleep”)’s Dp on “Winter’s Sleep”, Gökhan Tiryaki. It is about guys stuck on a freighter whose company goes bankrupt. Power dynamics play out.
Sydney: Have there been Oscar nominated films in Sundance (Aside from “Whiplash” and “Boyhood”)?
John: Yes, “Man on Wire” was not last year but it was foreign. “Ida” was in Spotlight last year and maybe Sundance increased its visibility. Three others were in Sundance last year:
“To Kill a Man” is Chile’s submission, “Difret” which won the Audience Award is Ethiopia’s submission this year and “Liar’s Dice” from India was in World Competition last year. It is a very artful film. We knew it would do well with the critics, but it did extremely well with the audience too. A couple of films in Spotlight will probably be nominated next year. Watch for them.
Sydney : We haven’t even discussed the World documentaries.
John : Are there any that stand out for you?
Sydney: Yes, “Chuck Norris vs. Communism”, from U.K., Romania and Germany. Chuck Norris?
John: How interesting it is that something like Chuck Norris means something very different to others. It is a sign of cultural differences between us. Chuck Norris shows how independent films built a community of counter culture against an authoritarian government.
Sydney: I also notice that there are six docs from the U.K. Out of 12 films.
John: Yes we noticed and discussed that. U.K. really supports documentary filmmaking. Great work is coming out of the U.K. And many of the films are about different countries, so it doesn’t fit so simply into a U.K. pigeon hole.
Sydney : Yes I see “Chuck Norris” is about Romania, “Dreamcatcher” is about teenage prostitution, “How to Change the World” is about Greenpeace, “Listen to Me Marlon” is about a famous U.S. actor, “The Russian Woodpecker” is about a Ukrainian survivor of Chernobyl.
Thank you John for your insights. I think we have a lot to look at here. Thank you for taking this time to talk with me. See you at Sundance!
For a full list thus far of Sundance films, see below.
U.S. Dramatic Competition
Advantageous / U.S.A. (Director: Jennifer Phang, Screenwriters: Jacqueline Kim, Jennifer Phang) — In a near-future city where soaring opulence overshadows economic hardship, Gwen and her daughter, Jules, do all they can to hold on to their joy, despite the instability surfacing in their world. Cast: Jacqueline Kim, James Urbaniak, Freya Adams, Ken Jeong, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Kim.
The Bronze / U.S.A. (Director: Bryan Buckley, Screenwriters: Melissa Rauch, Winston Rauch) — In 2004, Hope Ann Greggory became an American hero after winning the bronze medal for the women's gymnastics team. Today, she's still living in her small hometown, washed-up and embittered. Stuck in the past, Hope must reassess her life when a promising young gymnast threatens her local celebrity status.Cast: Melissa Rauch, Gary Cole, Thomas Middleditch, Sebastian Stan, Haley Lu Richardson, Cecily Strong. Day One Film
The D Train / U.S.A. (Directors and screenwriters: Jarrad Paul, Andrew Mogel) — With his 20th reunion looming, Dan can’t shake his high school insecurities. In a misguided mission to prove he's changed, Dan rekindles a friendship with the popular guy from his class and is left scrambling to protect more than just his reputation when a wild night takes an unexpected turn. Cast: Jack Black, James Marsden, Kathryn Hahn, Jeffrey Tambor, Mike White, Kyle Bornheimer.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Marielle Heller) — Minnie Goetze is a 15-year-old aspiring comic-book artist, coming of age in the haze of the 1970s in San Francisco. Insatiably curious about the world around her, Minnie is a pretty typical teenage girl. Oh, except that she's sleeping with her mother's boyfriend. Cast: Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgård, Christopher Meloni, Kristen Wiig.
Dope / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Rick Famuyiwa) — Malcolm is carefully surviving life in a tough neighborhood in Los Angeles while juggling college applications, academic interviews, and the Sat. A chance invitation to an underground party leads him into an adventure that could allow him to go from being a geek, to being dope, to ultimately being himself. Cast: Shameik Moore, Tony Revolori, Kiersey Clemons, Blake Anderson, Zoë Kravitz, A$AP Rocky.
I Smile Back / U.S.A. (Director: Adam Salky, Screenwriters: Amy Koppelman, Paige Dylan) — All is not right in suburbia. Laney Brooks, a wife and mother on the edge, has stopped taking her meds, substituting recreational drugs and the wrong men. With the destruction of her family looming, Laney makes a last, desperate attempt at redemption. Cast: Sarah Silverman, Josh Charles, Thomas Sadoski, Mia Barron, Terry Kinney, Chris Sarandon.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl / U.S.A. (Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Screenwriter: Jesse Andrews) — Greg is coasting through senior year of high school as anonymously as possible, avoiding social interactions like the plague while secretly making spirited, bizarre films with Earl, his only friend. But both his anonymity and friendship threaten to unravel when his mother forces him to befriend a classmate with leukemia. Cast: Thomas Mann, Rj Cyler, Olivia Cooke, Nick Offerman, Connie Britton, Molly Shannon.
The Overnight / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Patrick Brice) — Alex, Emily, and their son, Rj, are new to Los Angeles. A chance meeting at the park introduces them to the mysterious Kurt, Charlotte, and Max. A family "playdate" becomes increasingly interesting as the night goes on. Cast: Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman, Judith Godrèche.
People, Places, Things / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: James C. Strouse) — Will Henry is a newly single graphic novelist balancing being a parent to his young twin daughters and teaching a classroom full of college students, all the while trying to navigate the rich complexities of new love and letting go of the woman who left him. Cast: Jemaine Clement, Regina Hall, Stephanie Allynne, Jessica Williams, Gia Gadsby, Aundrea Gadsby.
Results / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Andrew Bujalski) — Two mismatched personal trainers' lives are upended by the actions of a new, wealthy client. Cast: Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders, Kevin Corrigan, Giovanni Ribisi, Anthony Michael Hall, Brooklyn Decker.
Songs My Brothers Taught Me / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Chloé Zhao) — This complex portrait of modern-day life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation explores the bond between a brother and his younger sister, who find themselves on separate paths to rediscovering the meaning of home. Cast: John Reddy, Jashaun St. John, Irene Bedard, Taysha Fuller, Travis Lone Hill, Eléonore Hendricks.
The Stanford Prison Experiment / U.S.A. (Director: Kyle Patrick Alvarez, Screenwriter: Tim Talbott) — This film is based on the actual events that took place in 1971 when Stanford professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo created what became one of the most shocking and famous social experiments of all time. Cast: Billy Crudup, Ezra Miller, Michael Angarano, Tye Sheridan, Johnny Simmons, Olivia Thirlby.
Stockholm, Pennsylvania / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Nikole Beckwith) — A young woman is returned home to her biological parents after living with her abductor for 17 years. Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Cynthia Nixon, Jason Isaacs, David Warshofsky.
Unexpected / U.S.A. (Director: Kris Swanberg, Screenwriters: Kris Swanberg, Megan Mercier) — When Samantha Abbott begins her final semester teaching science at a Chicago high school, she faces some unexpected news: she's pregnant. Soon after, Samantha learns that one of her favorite students, Jasmine, has landed in a similar situation. Unexpected follows the two women as they embark on an unlikely friendship. Cast: Cobie Smulders, Anders Holm, Gail Bean, Elizabeth McGovern.
The Witch / U.S.A., Canada (Director and screenwriter: Robert Eggers) — New England in the 1630s: William and Katherine lead a devout Christian life with five children, homesteading on the edge of an impassable wilderness. When their newborn son vanishes and crops fail, the family turns on one another. Beyond their worst fears, a supernatural evil lurks in the nearby wood. Cast: Anya Taylor Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Lucas Dawson, Ellie Grainger.
Z for Zachariah / U.S.A. (Director: Craig Zobel, Screenwriter: Nissar Modi) — In a post-apocalyptic world, a young woman who believes she is the last human on Earth meets a dying scientist searching for survivors. Their relationship becomes tenuous when another survivor appears. As the two men compete for the woman's affection, their primal urges begin to reveal their true nature. Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie, Chris Pine.
U.S. Documentary Competition
Sixteen world-premiere American documentaries that illuminate the ideas, people, and events that shape the present day.
3½ Minutes / U.S.A. (Director: Marc Silver) — On November 23, 2012, unarmed 17-year-old Jordan Russell Davis was shot at a Jacksonville gas station by Michael David Dunn. 3½ Minutes explores the aftermath of Jordan's tragic death, the latent and often unseen effects of racism, and the contradictions of the American criminal justice system.
Being Evel / U.S.A. (Director: Daniel Junge) — An unprecedented, candid portrait of American icon Robert "Evel" Knievel and his legacy.
Best of Enemies / U.S.A. (Directors: Morgan Neville, Robert Gordon) — Best of Enemies is a behind-the-scenes account of the explosive 1968 televised debates between the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr., and their rancorous disagreements about politics, God, and sex.
Call Me Lucky / U.S.A. (Director: Bobcat Goldthwait) — Barry Crimmins was a volatile but brilliant bar comic who became an honored peace activist and influential political satirist. Famous comedians and others build a picture of a man who underwent an incredible transformation.
Cartel Land / U.S.A., Mexico (Director: Matthew Heineman) — In this classic Western set in the 21st century, vigilantes on both sides of the border fight the vicious Mexican drug cartels. With unprecedented access, this character-driven film provokes deep questions about lawlessness, the breakdown of order, and whether citizens should fight violence with violence.
City of Gold / U.S.A. (Director: Laura Gabbert) — Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jonathan Gold casts his light upon a vibrant and growing cultural movement in which he plays the dual roles of high-low priest and culinary geographer of his beloved Los Angeles.
Finders Keepers / U.S.A. (Directors: Bryan Carberry, Clay Tweel) — Recovering addict and amputee John Wood finds himself in a stranger-than-fiction battle to reclaim his mummified leg from Southern entrepreneur Shannon Whisnant, who found it in a grill he bought at an auction and believes it to therefore be his rightful property.
Hot Girls Wanted / U.S.A. (Directors: Jill Bauer, Ronna Gradus) — Hot Girls Wanted is a first-ever look at the realities inside the world of the amateur porn industry and the steady stream of 18- and 19-year-old girls entering into it.
How to Dance in Ohio / U.S.A. (Director: Alexandra Shiva) — In Columbus, Ohio, a group of teenagers and young adults on the autism spectrum prepare for an iconic American rite of passage — a spring formal. They spend 12 weeks practicing their social skills at a local nightclub in preparation for the dance.
Larry Kramer in Love and Anger / U.S.A. (Director: Jean Carlomusto) — Author, activist, and playwright Larry Kramer is one of the most important and controversial figures in contemporary gay America, a political firebrand who gave voice to the outrage and grief that inspired gay men and lesbians to fight for their lives. At 78, this complicated man still commands our attention.
Meru / U.S.A. (Directors: Jimmy Chin, E. Chai Vasarhelyi) — Three elite mountain climbers sacrifice everything but their friendship as they struggle through heartbreaking loss and nature’s harshest elements to attempt the never-before-completed Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru, the most coveted first ascent in the dangerous game of Himalayan big wall climbing.
Racing Extinction / U.S.A. (Director: Louie Psihoyos) — Academy Award-winner Louie Psihoyos (The Cove) assembles a unique team to show the world never-before-seen images that expose issues surrounding endangered species and mass extinction. Whether infiltrating notorious black markets or exploring humans' effect on the environment, Racing Extinction will change the way you see the world.
(T)Error / U.S.A. (Directors: Lyric R. Cabral, David Felix Sutcliffe) — (T)Error is the first film to document on camera a covert counterterrorism sting as it unfolds. Through the perspective of *******, a 63-year-old Black revolutionary turned FBI informant, viewers are given an unprecedented glimpse of the government’s counterterrorism tactics, and the murky justifications behind them.
Welcome to Leith / U.S.A. (Directors: Michael Beach Nichols, Christopher K. Walker) — A white supremacist attempts to take over a small town in North Dakota.
Western / U.S.A., Mexico (Directors: Bill Ross, Turner Ross) — For generations, all that distinguished Eagle Pass, Texas, from Piedras Negras, Mexico, was the Rio Grande. But when darkness descends upon these harmonious border towns, a cowboy and lawman face a new reality that threatens their way of life. Western portrays timeless American figures in the grip of unforgiving change.
The Wolfpack / U.S.A. (Director: Crystal Moselle) — Six bright teenage brothers have spent their entire lives locked away from society in a Manhattan housing project. All they know of the outside is gleaned from the movies they watch obsessively (and recreate meticulously). Yet as adolescence looms, they dream of escape, ever more urgently, into the beckoning world.
World Cinema Dramatic Competition
Twelve films from emerging filmmaking talents around the world offer fresh perspectives and inventive styles.
Chlorine / Italy (Director: Lamberto Sanfelice, Screenwriters: Lamberto Sanfelice, Elisa Amoruso) — Jenny, 17, dreams of becoming a synchronized swimmer. Family events turn her life upside down and she is forced move to a remote area to look after her ill father and younger brother. It won't be long before Jenny starts pursuing her dreams again. Cast: Sara Serraiocco, Ivan Franek, Giorgio Colangeli, Anatol Sassi, Piera Degli Esposti, Andrea Vergoni. World Premiere
Chorus / Canada (Director and screenwriter: François Delisle) — A separated couple meet again after 10 years when the body of their missing son is found. Amid the guilt of losing a loved one, they hesitantly move toward affirmation of life, acceptance of death, and even the possibility of reconciliation. Cast: Sébastien Ricard, Fanny Mallette, Pierre Curzi, Genevieve Bujold. World Premiere
Glassland / Ireland (Director and screenwriter: Gerard Barrett) — In a desperate attempt to reunite his broken family, a young taxi driver becomes entangled in the criminal underworld. Cast: Jack Reynor, Toni Collette, Will Poulter, Michael Smiley. International Premiere
Homesick / Norway (Director: Anne Sewitsky, Screenwriters: Ragnhild Tronvoll, Anne Sewitsky) — When Charlotte, 27, meets her brother Henrik, 35, for the first time, two people who don't know what a normal family is begin an encounter without boundaries. How does sibling love manifest itself if you have never experienced it before?Cast: Ine Marie Wilmann, Simon J. Berger, Anneke von der Lippe, Silje Storstein, Oddgeir Thune, Kari Onstad. World Premiere. Isa: TrustNordisk
Ivy / Turkey (Director and screenwriter: Tolga Karaçelik) — Sarmasik is sailing to Egypt when the ship's owner goes bankrupt. The crew learns there is a lien on the ship, and key crew members must stay on board. Ivy is the story of these six men trapped on the ship for days. Cast: Nadir Sarıbacak, Özgür Emre Yıldırım, Hakan Karsak, Kadir Çermik, Osman Alkaş, Seyithan Özdemiroğlu. World Premiere
Partisan / Australia (Director: Ariel Kleiman, Screenwriters: Ariel Kleiman, Sarah Cyngler) — Alexander is like any other kid: playful, curious and naive. He is also a trained assassin. Raised in a hidden paradise, Alexander has grown up seeing the world filtered through his father, Gregori. As Alexander begins to think for himself, creeping fears take shape, and Gregori's idyllic world unravels. Cast: Vincent Cassel, Jeremy Chabriel, Florence Mezzara. World Premiere
Princess / Israel (Director and screenwriter: Tali Shalom Ezer) — While her mother is away from home, 12-year-old Adar’s role-playing games with her stepfather move into dangerous territory. Seeking an escape, Adar finds Alan, an ethereal boy that accompanies her on a dark journey between reality and fantasy. Cast: Keren Mor, Shira Haas, Ori Pfeffer, Adar Zohar Hanetz. International Premiere
The Second Mother / Brazil (Director and screenwriter: Anna Muylaert) — Having left her daughter, Jessica, to be raised by relatives in the north of Brazil, Val works as a loving nanny in São Paulo. When Jessica arrives for a visit 13 years later, she confronts her mother's slave-like attitude and everyone in the house is affected by her unexpected behavior. Cast: Regina Casé, Michel Joelsas, Camila Márdila, Karine Teles, Lourenço Mutarelli. World Premiere
Slow West / New Zealand (Director: John Maclean, Screenwriters: John Maclean, Michael Lesslie) — Set at the end of the nineteenth century, 16-year-old Jay Cavendish journeys across the American frontier in search of the woman he loves. He is joined by Silas, a mysterious traveler, and hotly pursued by an outlaw along the way. Cast: Michael Fassbender, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Rory McCann, Ben Mendelsohn, Brooke Williams, Caren Pistorius. World Premiere
Strangerland / Australia, Ireland (Director: Kim Farrant, Screenwriters: Fiona Seres, Michael Kinirons) — When Catherine and Matthew Parker's two teenage kids disappear into the remote Australian desert, the couple's relationship is pushed to the brink as they confront the mystery of their children's fate. Cast: Nicole Kidman, Joseph Fiennes, Hugo Weaving, Lisa Flanagan, Meyne Wyatt, Maddison Brown. World Premiere
The Summer of Sangaile / Lithuania, France, Holland (Director and screenwriter: Alanté Kavaïté) — Seventeen-year-old Sangaile is fascinated by stunt planes. She meets a girl her age at the summer aeronautical show, nearby her parents’ lakeside villa. Sangaile allows Auste to discover her most intimate secret and in the process finds in her teenage love, the only person that truly encourages her to fly. Cast: Julija Steponaitytė, Aistė Diržiūtė. World Premiere. Isa: Films Distribution.
Umrika / India (Director and screenwriter: Prashant Nair) — When a young village boy discovers that his brother, long believed to be in America, has actually gone missing, he begins to invent letters on his behalf to save their mother from heartbreak, all the while searching for him. Cast: Suraj Sharma, Tony Revolori, Smita Tambe, Adil Hussain, Rajesh Tailang, Prateik Babbar. World Premiere
World Cinema Documentary Competition
Twelve documentaries by some of the most courageous and extraordinary international filmmakers working today.
The Amina Profile / Canada (Director: Sophie Deraspe) — During the Arab revolution, a love story between two women — a Canadian and a Syrian American — turns into an international sociopolitical thriller spotlighting media excesses and the thin line between truth and falsehood on the Internet. World Premiere
Censored Voices / Israel, Germany (Director: Mor Loushy) — One week after the 1967 Six-Day War, renowned author Amos Oz and editor Avraham Shapira recorded intimate conversations with soldiers returning from the battlefield. The Israeli army censored the recordings, allowing only a fragment of the conversations to be published. Censored Voices reveals these recordings for the first time. World Premiere
The Chinese Mayor / China (Director: Hao Zhou) — Mayor Geng Yanbo is determined to transform the coal-mining center of Datong, in China’s Shanxi province, into a tourism haven showcasing clean energy. In order to achieve that, however, he has to relocate 500,000 residences to make way for the restoration of the ancient city. World Premiere
Chuck Norris vs Communism / United Kingdom, Romania, Germany (Director: Ilinca Calugareanu) — In 1980s Romania, thousands of Western films smashed through the Iron Curtain, opening a window to the free world for those who dared to look. A black market VHS racketeer and courageous female translator brought the magic of film to the masses and sowed the seeds of a revolution. World Premiere. Producers Rep: UTA
Dark Horse / United Kingdom (Director: Louise Osmond) — Dark Horse is the inspirational true story of a group of friends from a workingman's club who decide to take on the elite "sport of kings" and breed themselves a racehorse. World Premiere
Dreamcatcher / United Kingdom (Director: Kim Longinotto) — Dreamcatcher takes us into a hidden world seen through the eyes of one of its survivors, Brenda Myers-Powell. A former teenage prostitute, Brenda defied the odds to become a powerful advocate for change in her community. With warmth and humor, Brenda gives hope to those who have none. World Premiere
How to Change the World / United Kingdom, Canada (Director: Jerry Rothwell) — In 1971, a group of friends sails into a nuclear test zone, and their protest captures the world’s imagination. Using rare, archival footage that brings their extraordinary world to life, How to Change the World is the story of the pioneers who founded Greenpeace and defined the modern green movement. World Premiere. Day One Film
Listen to Me Marlon / United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Stevan Riley, Co-writer: Peter Ettedgui) — With exclusive access to previously unheard audio archives, this is the definitive Marlon Brando cinema documentary. Charting his exceptional career and extraordinary life away from the stage and screen, the film fully explores the complexities of the man by telling the story uniquely in Marlon’s own voice. World Premiere
Pervert Park / Sweden, Denmark (Directors: Frida Barkfors, Lasse Barkfors) — Pervert Park follows the everyday lives of sex offenders in a Florida trailer park as they struggle to reintegrate into society, and try to understand who they are and how to break the cycle of sex crimes being committed. International Premiere
The Russian Woodpecker / United Kingdom (Director: Chad Gracia) — A Ukrainian victim of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster discovers a dark secret and must decide whether to risk his life by revealing it, amid growing clouds of revolution and war. World Premiere
Sembene! / U.S.A., Senegal (Directors: Samba Gadjigo, Jason Silverman) — In 1952, Ousmane Sembene, a Senegalese dockworker and fifth-grade dropout, began dreaming an impossible dream: to become the storyteller for a new Africa. This true story celebrates how the “father of African cinema,” against enormous odds, fought a monumental, 50-year-long battle to give Africans a voice. World Premiere
The Visit / Denmark, Austria, Ireland, Finland, Norway (Director: Michael Madsen) — “This film documents an event that has never taken place…” With unprecedented access to the United Nations' Office for Outer Space Affairs, leading space scientists and space agencies, The Visit explores humans' first encounter with alien intelligent life and thereby humanity itself. "Our scenario begins with the arrival. Your arrival." World Premiere
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Pure, bold works distinguished by an innovative, forward-thinking approach to storytelling populate this program. Digital technology paired with unfettered creativity promises that the films in this section will shape a “greater” next wave in American cinema. Presented by Adobe.
Bob and the Trees / U.S.A., France (Director: Diego Ongaro, Screenwriters: Diego Ongaro, Courtney Maum, Sasha Statman-Weil) — Bob, a 50-year-old logger in rural Massachusetts with a soft spot for golf and gangsta rap, is struggling to make ends meet in a changed economy. When his beloved cow is wounded and a job goes awry, Bob begins to heed the instincts of his ever-darkening self. Cast: Bob Tarasuk, Matt Gallagher, Polly MacIntyre, Winthrop Barrett, Nathaniel Gregory. World Premiere
Christmas, Again / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Charles Poekel) — A heartbroken Christmas tree salesman returns to New York, hoping to put the past year behind him. He spends the season living in a trailer and working the night shift, until a mysterious woman and some colorful customers rescue him from self-destruction. Cast: Kentucker Audley, Hannah Gross, Jason Shelton, Oona Roche. North American Premiere
Cronies / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Michael Larnell) — Twenty-two-year-old Louis doesn’t know whether his childhood friendship with Jack will last beyond today. Cast: George Sample III, Zurich Buckner, Brian Kowalski. World Premiere
Entertainment / U.S.A. (Director: Rick Alverson, Screenwriters: Rick Alverson, Gregg Turkington, Tim Heidecker) — En route to meeting with his estranged daughter, in an attempt to revive his dwindling career, a broken, aging comedian plays a string of dead-end shows in the Mojave Desert. Cast: Gregg Turkington, John C. Reilly, Tye Sheridan, Michael Cera, Amy Seimetz, Lotte Verbeek. World Premiere
H. / U.S.A., Argentina (Directors and screenwriters: Rania Attieh, Daniel Garcia) — Two women, each named Helen, find their lives spinning out of control after a meteor allegedly explodes over their city of Troy, New York. Cast: Robin Bartlett, Rebecca Dayan, Will Janowitz, Julian Gamble, Roger Robinson. World Premiere
James White / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Josh Mond) — A young New Yorker struggles to take control of his reckless, self-destructive behavior in the face of momentous family challenges. Cast: Chris Abbott, Cynthia Nixon, Scott Mescudi, Makenzie Leigh, David Call. World Premiere
Nasty Baby / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Sebastian Silva) — A gay couple try to have a baby with the help of their best friend, Polly. The trio navigates the idea of creating life while confronted by unexpected harassment from a neighborhood man called The Bishop. As their clashes grow increasingly aggressive, odds are someone is getting hurt. Cast: Sebastian Silva, Tunde Adebimpe, Kristin Wiig, Reg E. Cathey, Mark Margolis, Denis O'Hare. World Premiere
The Strongest Man / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kenny Riches) — An anxiety-ridden Cuban man who fancies himself the strongest man in the world attempts to recover his most prized possession, a stolen bicycle. On his quest, he finds and loses much more. Cast: Robert Lorie, Paul Chamberlain, Ashly Burch, Patrick Fugit, Lisa Banes. World Premiere
" Take Me To The River " / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Matt Sobel) — A naive California teen plans to remain above the fray at his Nebraskan family reunion, but a strange encounter places him at the center of a long-buried family secret.Cast: Logan Miller, Robin Weigert, Josh Hamilton, Richard Schiff, Ursula Parker, Azura Skye. World Premiere. Producer rep: Cinetic Media
Tangerine / U.S.A. (Director: Sean Baker, Screenwriters: Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch) — A working girl tears through Tinseltown on Christmas Eve searching for the pimp who broke her heart. Cast: Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Karren Karagulian, Mickey O'Hagan, Alla Tumanyan, James Ransone. World Premiere
Spotlight
Regardless of where these films have played throughout the world, the Spotlight program is a tribute to the cinema we love.
6 Desires: Dh Lawrence and Sardinia / United Kingdom, Italy (Director: Mark Cousins) — In winter 1921, Dh Lawrence and his wife journeyed to Sardinia, and he chronicled their experiences in Sea and Sardinia. Now, Mark Cousins retraces Lawrence’s footsteps. The film is conceived partly as a letter to Lawrence — or “Bert” — a detail that’s typical of the film’s inviting sense of conversational intimacy.International Premiere
'71 / United Kingdom (Director: Yann Demange, Screenwriter: Gregory Burke) — ‘71 takes place over a single night in the life of a young British soldier accidentally abandoned by his unit following a riot on the streets of Belfast in 1971. Unable to tell friend from foe, he must survive the night alone and find his way to safety. Cast: Jack O'Connell, Paul Anderson, Richard Dormer, Sean Harris, Barry Keoghan, Martin McCann.
99 Homes / U.S.A. (Director: Ramin Bahrani, Screenwriters: Ramin Bahrani, Amir Naderi, Bahareh Azimi) — A father struggles to get back the home that his family was evicted from by working for the greedy real-estate broker who's the source of his frustration. Cast: Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern, Tim Guinee, Cullen Moss, J.D. Evermore.
Aloft / Spain, France, Canada (Director and screenwriter: Claudia Llosa) — Aloft tells the story of a struggling mother, Nana, and her evolution to becoming a renowned healer. When a young artist tracks down Nana's son 20 years after she abandoned him, she sets in motion an encounter between the two that will bring the meaning of their lives into question. Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Cillian Murphy, Mélanie Laurent, William Shimell. North American Premiere
Eden / France (Director: Mia Hansen-løve, Screenwriters: Mia Hansen-løve, Sven Hansen-løve) — Mia Hansen-løve's electronic-dance-music epic follows the rise and fall of a DJ (based on her brother, Sven, a contemporary of Daft Punk) who gets into the rave scene in 1994 and spends the next 20 years navigating the French club scene. Cast: Félix de Givry, Pauline Etienne, Greta Gerwig, Brady Corbet, Arsinee Khanjian, Vincent Macaigne.
Girlhood / France (Director and screenwriter: Céline Sciamma) — Oppressed by her family, dead-end school prospects, and the boys law in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of free-spirited girls. She changes her name and dress, and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping to find a way to freedom. Cast: Karidja Touré, Assa Sylla, Lindsay Karamoh, Mariétou Touré, Idrissa Diabaté, Simina Soumaré.
The Tribe / Ukraine (Director and screenwriter: Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy) — Set at a Ukrainian boarding school for the deaf, the film’s narrative unfolds purely through sign language without the need for employing subtitles or voiceover, resulting in a unique, never-before-seen cinematic experience that engages the audience on a new level. Cast: Grigoriy Fesenko, Yana Novikova, Rosa Babiy, Alexander Dsiadevich.
White God / Hungary (Director: Kornél Mundruczó, Screenwriters: Kata Wéber, Kornél Mundruczó, Viktória Petrányi) — When young Lili is forced to give up her beloved dog, Hagen, because its mixed-breed heritage is deemed “unfit” by The State, she and the dog begin a dangerous journey back toward each other. Cast: Zsófia Psotta, Sandor Zsótér, Szabolcs Thuróczy, Lili Monori, László Gálffi, Lili Horváth. U.S. Premiere
Wild Tales / Argentina, Spain (Director and screenwriter: Damián Szifrón) — Inequality, injustice, and the demands of the world cause stress and depression for many people. Some of them, however, explode. This is a movie about those people. Vulnerable in the face of an unpredictable reality, the characters of Wild Tales cross the thin line dividing civilization and barbarism. Cast: Ricardo Darín, Julieta Zyberberg, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Darío Grandinetti, Erica Rivas, Oscar Martínez.
Park City At Midnight
From horror flicks to comedies to works that defy any genre, these unruly films will keep you edge-seated and wide awake.
Cop Car / U.S.A. (Director: Jon Watts, Screenwriters: Christopher D. Ford, Jon Watts) — Two 10-year-old boys steal an abandoned cop car. Cast: Kevin Bacon, James Freedson-Jackson, Hays Wellford, Shea Whigham, Camryn Manheim. World Premiere
The Hallow / Ireland, United Kingdom (Director: Corin Hardy, Screenwriters: Corin Hardy, Felipe Marino) — When a London-based conservationist is sent to Ireland to survey an area of ancient forest believed by the superstitious locals to be hallowed ground, he unwittingly disturbs a horde of terrifying beings and must fight to protect his family. Cast: Joseph Mawle, Bojana Novakovic, Michael McElhatton, Michael Smiley. World Premiere
Hellions / Canada (Director: Bruce McDonald, Screenwriter: Pascal Trottier) — Teenage Dora Vogel must survive a Halloween night from hell when malevolent trick-or-treaters come knocking at her door. Cast: Chloe Rose, Robert Patrick, Rossif Sutherland, Rachel Wilson, Peter DaCunha, Luke Bilyk. World Premiere
It Follows / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: David Robert Mitchell) — After a strange sexual encounter, a teenager finds herself haunted by nightmarish visions and the inescapable sense that something is after her. Cast: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto, Jake Weary, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe.
Knock Knock / U.S.A. (Director: Eli Roth, Screenwriters: Eli Roth, Nicolas Lopez, Guillermo Amoedo) — Two beautiful young girls walk into a married man's life and turn a wild fantasy into his worst nightmare. Cast: Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo, Ana De Armas, Aaron Burns, Ignacia Allamand, Colleen Camp. World Premiere
The Nightmare / U.S.A. (Director: Rodney Ascher) — A documentary-horror film exploring the phenomenon of sleep paralysis through the eyes of eight people. They (and a surprisingly large number of others) often find themselves trapped between the sleeping and awake realms, unable to move but aware of their surroundings while subject to disturbing sights and sounds. World Premiere
Reversal / U.S.A. (Director: J.M Cravioto, Screenwriters: Rock Shaink, Keith Kjornes) — A gritty psychological thriller about a young woman chained in a basement of a sexual predator and manages to escape. However, right when she has a chance for freedom, she unravels a hard truth and decides to turn the tables on her captor. Cast: Tina Ivlev, Richard Tyson, Bianca Malinowski. World Premiere
Turbo Kid / Canada, New Zealand (Directors: Anouk Whissell, Francois Simard, Yoann-Karl Whissell, Screenwriters: Anouk Whissell, Francois Simard, Yoann-Karl Whissell) — In a post-apocalyptic future, The Kid, an orphaned outcast, meets a mysterious girl. They become friends until Zeus, the sadistic leader of the Wasteland, kidnaps her. The Kid must face his fears, and journey to rid the Wasteland of evil and save the girl. Cast: Munro Chambers, Laurence Leboeuf, Michael Ironside, Aaron Jeffery, Edwin Wright. World Premiere
New Frontier Films
The Forbidden Room / Canada (Directors: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Screenwriters: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Robert Kotyk) — A submarine crew, a feared pack of forest bandits, a famous surgeon, and a battalion of child soldiers all get more than they bargained for as they wend their way toward progressive ideas on life and love. Cast: Geraldine Chaplin, Caroline Dhavernas, Roy Dupuis, Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Karine Vanasse. World Premiere
Liveforever / Colombia, Mexico (Director: Carlos Moreno, Screenwriters: Alberto Ferreras, Alonso Torres, Carlos Moreno) — Driven by the music and dancing she finds along the way, a teenager leaves home willing to try anything her provocative and tolerant city has to offer, even if she burns out in the process. Inspired by the best-selling novel "Que viva la música" by Andres Caicedo. Cast: Paulina Davila, Alejandra Avila, Luis Arrieta, Juan Pablo Barragan, Nelson Camayo, Christian Tappan. World Premiere
The Royal Road / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Jenni Olson) — This cinematic essay, a defense of remembering, offers up a primer on the Spanish colonization of California and the Mexican American War alongside intimate reflections on nostalgia, butch identity and Alfred Hitchcock'sVertigo — all against a contemplative backdrop of 16mm urban California landscapes. Cast: Jenni Olson, Tony Kushner. World Premiere
Sam Klemke's Time Machine / Australia (Director: Matthew Bate) — Sam Klemke has filmed and narrated 50 years of his life, creating a strange and intimate portrait of what it means to be human. World Premiere
Station to Station / U.S.A. (Director: Doug Aitken) — Station to Station is composed of 60 individual one-minute films featuring different artists, musicians, places, and perspectives. This revolutionary feature-length film reveals a larger narrative about modern creativity. World Premiere
Things of the Aimless Wanderer / Rwanda, United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Kivu Ruhorahoza) — A white man meets a black girl, then she disappears. The white man tries to understand what happened to her while also trying to finish a travelogue. Things of the Aimless Wanderer is a film about the sensitive topic of relations between “locals” and Westerners, about paranoia, mistrust, and misunderstandings. Cast: Justin Mullikin, Grace Nikuze, Ramadhan Bizimana, Eliane Umuhire, Wesley Ruzibiza, Matt Ray Brown. World Premiere
New Frontier Installations
1979 Revolution Game
Artists: Navid Khonsari, Vassiliki Khonsari
1979 Revolution Game presents an innovative approach to non-fiction storytelling. Designed to engage players with an immersive "on the ground" experience of the Iranian Revolution, the game integrates an emotionally impactful narrative with interactive moral choices and intuitive touchscreen gameplay while remaining true to history.
Assent
Artist: Oscar Raby
This immersive documentary uses virtual reality technology to put the user in the footsteps of Director Oscar Raby's father, who in 1973 was a 22-year-old army officer stationed in the north of Chile, on the day when the Caravan of Death came to his regiment.
Birdly
Artist: Max Rheiner
Flying is one of the oldest dreams of humankind. Birdly is an experiment to capture this dream, to simulate the experience of being a bird from a first-person perspective. This embodiment is conducted through a full-body virtual reality setup.
Dérive
Artist: François Quévillon
This interactive installation uses the audience’s body motions and positions to explore 3-D reconstructions of urban and natural spaces that are transformed according to live environmental data, including meteorological and astronomical phenomena.
Evolution of Verse
Artist: Chris Milk
Chris Milk, working with visual effects powerhouse Digital Domain and virtual reality production company Vrse.works, has created this photo-realistic CGI-rendered 3-D virtual reality film that takes the viewer on a journey from beginning to new beginning.
Kaiju Fury!
Artist: Ian Hunter
A dark energy experiment leads to a devastating attack by monstrous Kaiju, and you are standing at ground zero — all in 360-degree, stereoscopic 3-D cinematic virtual reality. You will "be there" as the beasts lay waste to a crumbling city and humanity makes its last stand. Cast: Susie Abromeit, Bill Lippincott, Daniel Martin, Brian Dodge, Vincient Chiantelli.
Paradise
Artist: Pleix
Paradise is certainly not paradisiacal if you look at it through our eyes. But neither is it totally devoid of humor, melancholy and absurdity. Perhaps it is first and foremost life as it is, and then a touch exaggerated in the digital overdrive.
Perspective; Chapter I: The Party
Artists: Rose Troche, Morris May
A young college woman attends a party with the intention of shedding her "shy girl" persona. At the same party, a young man is after a similar reinvention. They meet, drink, and misinterpreted signals turn into things that cannot be undone. Virtual reality simulators let viewers experience both characters. Cast: Tabitha Morella, Caleb Thomas, Zachary Zagoria, Anna Grace Barlow.
Possibilia
Artists: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
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- 12/6/2014
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
The competition movie line-up has been revealed for the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, which runs from January 22nd to February 1st 2015. Below the announcement video you'll find the U.S. and World Competition categories, as well as the Next section.
Out of the 12,166 submissions that the festival received this year only 185 were selected. It looks like there are going to be a lot of great films this year. I always enjoy going to Sundance because you never know what film gems are just waiting to be seen.
U.S. Dramatic Competition
Presenting the world premieres of 16 narrative feature films, the Dramatic Competition offers Festivalgoers a first look at groundbreaking new voices in American independent film.
Advantageous / U.S.A. (Director: Jennifer Phang, Screenwriters: Jacqueline Kim, Jennifer Phang) — In a near-future city where soaring opulence overshadows economic hardship, Gwen and her daughter, Jules, do all they can to hold on to their joy,...
Out of the 12,166 submissions that the festival received this year only 185 were selected. It looks like there are going to be a lot of great films this year. I always enjoy going to Sundance because you never know what film gems are just waiting to be seen.
U.S. Dramatic Competition
Presenting the world premieres of 16 narrative feature films, the Dramatic Competition offers Festivalgoers a first look at groundbreaking new voices in American independent film.
Advantageous / U.S.A. (Director: Jennifer Phang, Screenwriters: Jacqueline Kim, Jennifer Phang) — In a near-future city where soaring opulence overshadows economic hardship, Gwen and her daughter, Jules, do all they can to hold on to their joy,...
- 12/4/2014
- by Joey Paur
- GeekTyrant
Today the first wave of titles playing at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival were announced and while the majority of the titles are new to me the names in front of the camera most certainly are not as you'll see the likes of Michael Fassbender, Nicole Kidman, Saoirse Ronan, Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Jack Black, James Marsden, Billy Crudup, Ezra Miller, Jemaine Clement, Sarah Silverman, Toni Collette, Vincent Cassell and many, many more among the titles featured. I have collected several photos from many of the films playing the festival, which will take place from January 22 - February 1 in Utah next year. Today's selection includes the U.S. Dramatic Competition, U.S. Documentary Competition, World Cinema Dramatic Competition, World Cinema Documentary Competition and Next program. I'll be adding a few more pictures soon enough, but for now, have a look and see what stands out.
- 12/3/2014
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
America’s hottest and most eagerly anticipated film festival is nearly upon us! Running January 22 to February 1, 2015 in Park City, Utah, the annual Sundance Film Festival has launched its initial lineup of in-competition films in the Dramatic, World Cinema, Documentary and Next slates. In all, 66 films were announced in this initial lineup, with the Premieres and Documentary Premieres arriving December 8 and the Short Film slate arriving December 9.
Among the lineup, as always, are some intriguing prospects. The Us Dramatic Competition features films starring stars such as Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie, Chris Pine (Z for Zachariah), Jack Black, James Marsden, Kathryn Hahn, Jeffrey Tambor (The D Train), Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgård, Christopher Meloni, Kristen Wiig (The Diary of a Teenage Girl), Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman (The Overnight), and Sarah Silverman (I Smile Back), among many others, and new films from recently hot directors including Alfonso-Gomez Rejon, Andrew Bujalski, and Craig Zobel.
Among the lineup, as always, are some intriguing prospects. The Us Dramatic Competition features films starring stars such as Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie, Chris Pine (Z for Zachariah), Jack Black, James Marsden, Kathryn Hahn, Jeffrey Tambor (The D Train), Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgård, Christopher Meloni, Kristen Wiig (The Diary of a Teenage Girl), Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman (The Overnight), and Sarah Silverman (I Smile Back), among many others, and new films from recently hot directors including Alfonso-Gomez Rejon, Andrew Bujalski, and Craig Zobel.
- 12/3/2014
- by Brian Welk
- SoundOnSight
Last year, it was Damien Chazelle’s richly texturized, foot-tapping, finger-snapping sophomore pic Whiplash that instantly became the “it” film to beat in the sixteen competition offerings. In 2015, we have Sundance habituals in James C. Strouse, Craig Zobel and Andrew Bujalski measuring up against Park City feature film first-timers in Marielle Heller, Patrick Brice, Chloé Zhao, Nikole Beckwith and Kris Swanberg. Here are the sixteen offerings in the 2015 U.S. Dramatic Competition:
Advantageous / U.S.A. (Director: Jennifer Phang, Screenwriters: Jacqueline Kim, Jennifer Phang) — In a near-future city where soaring opulence overshadows economic hardship, Gwen and her daughter, Jules, do all they can to hold on to their joy, despite the instability surfacing in their world. Cast: Jacqueline Kim, James Urbaniak, Freya Adams, Ken Jeong, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Kim.
The Bronze / U.S.A. (Director: Bryan Buckley, Screenwriters: Melissa Rauch, Winston Rauch) — In 2004, Hope Ann Greggory became an American hero...
Advantageous / U.S.A. (Director: Jennifer Phang, Screenwriters: Jacqueline Kim, Jennifer Phang) — In a near-future city where soaring opulence overshadows economic hardship, Gwen and her daughter, Jules, do all they can to hold on to their joy, despite the instability surfacing in their world. Cast: Jacqueline Kim, James Urbaniak, Freya Adams, Ken Jeong, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Kim.
The Bronze / U.S.A. (Director: Bryan Buckley, Screenwriters: Melissa Rauch, Winston Rauch) — In 2004, Hope Ann Greggory became an American hero...
- 12/3/2014
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
New films from Nicole Kidman, Michael Fassbender, Louie Psihoyos and Sebastian Silva are featured in the festival’s line-up of Us and world competition strands and the Next programme.
Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper and head of programming Trevor Groth have unleashed their first volley of films in what will be a 118-strong line-up overall culled from 12,166 submissions. Of these, 103 features are world premieres. The festival will run January 22 to February 1.
Us Dramatic Competition includes Craig Zobel’s post-apocalytpic tale Z For Zachariah starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Chris Pine; Jack Black in comedy The D Train; and Kristen Wiig in the 1970s San Francisco-set coming-of-age story The Diary Of A Teenage Girl.
Other likely highlights are Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s The Stanford Prison Experiment starring Billy Crudup and Ezra Miller; and Saoirse Ronan in Stockholm, Pennsylvania, about a young woman who returns to live with her parents after she is freed from her abductor of 17 years...
Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper and head of programming Trevor Groth have unleashed their first volley of films in what will be a 118-strong line-up overall culled from 12,166 submissions. Of these, 103 features are world premieres. The festival will run January 22 to February 1.
Us Dramatic Competition includes Craig Zobel’s post-apocalytpic tale Z For Zachariah starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Chris Pine; Jack Black in comedy The D Train; and Kristen Wiig in the 1970s San Francisco-set coming-of-age story The Diary Of A Teenage Girl.
Other likely highlights are Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s The Stanford Prison Experiment starring Billy Crudup and Ezra Miller; and Saoirse Ronan in Stockholm, Pennsylvania, about a young woman who returns to live with her parents after she is freed from her abductor of 17 years...
- 12/3/2014
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
The Sundance Film Institute announced the U.S. dramatic, world dramatic, U.S. documentary, world documentary and Next selections for the 2015 Sundance Film Festival today. The premier film festival in the United States, Sundance is coming off a banner 2014 edition that brought films earning year-end kudos such as "Whiplash," "Boyhood," "Dear White People," "Obvious Child" and "The Skeleton Twins" into the world. The 2015 slate just looks just as intriguing and, according to the festival, perhaps more emotional and challenging. In a statement from the Institute, the festival's director, John Cooper, remarked, "The selections for our 2015 Festival will take audiences on a wild ride of emotional extremes. With approaches ranging from comedic to dramatic, genre to documentary, experimental to short, independent filmmakers are bravely illuminating new opportunities for understanding and empathy.” Festival founder and cinema icon Robert Redford added, "The work of independent artists inevitably reflects the state of our culture...
- 12/3/2014
- by Gregory Ellwood
- Hitfix
Despite the lottery-esque sounding odds, the U.S Dramatic Competition section which produces the finest American indie specimens such as Frozen River, Winter’s Bone, Blue Valentine, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station and Whiplash is fairly consistent in terms of quality. Last year’s crop of sixteen have almost all had their theatrical releases with Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter being the last one out of the gates (pegged with an early 2015 release). Last week we individually looked at our top 80 Sundance Film Fest Predictions (you’ll find 30 other titles worth considering in our intro) and below, we’ve split the list into narrative and non-fiction film items and have both identified and color-coded our picks in an AtoZ cheat sheet. You’ll find 2015′s answer to Whiplash located somewhere in the stack below. Click on the individual titles below, for the film’s profile.
- 11/19/2014
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
More time in post-production means more time for nips, tucks, another Sundance lab (2014′s Music and Sound Design Lab at Skywalker Sound) and even a title change. Formerly going by the title of “Lee”, Chloé Zhao’s more descriptive moniker in Songs My Brothers Taught Me was on our radar last year, but obviously was a little ways off from completion. Thesps Irene Bedard (from 1998′s Sundance selected Smoke Signals from helmer Chris Eyre) and Eleonore Hendricks (Heaven Knows What) support newbie John Reddy in a project that was supported by a laundry list of orgs: both Sundance Labs, the Ang Lee Scholarship for Filmmaking and the Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship and Christopher Columbus/Richard Vague Film Production Grant, a very successful 80+ grand Kickstarter campaign, was recently the Ifp Filmmaker lab and is in line for some possible funds from the Sffs / Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking Grant.
Gist: This is...
Gist: This is...
- 11/13/2014
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
After landing more audience “friendly” items in Ross Katz’ Adult Beginners and Richard Lagravenese’s The Last 5 Years, RADiUS’ Tom Quinn and Jason Janego have made their third pick-up of the Toronto Int. Film Festival (technically their first post-fest item) with a boundary-pushing/raw street film that blurs the lines between docu and fiction. After world preeming in Venice, and Tiff, the Safdie Bros.’ Heaven Knows What lands at Nyff tomorrow and will be pegged with a second quarter 2015 release.
Gist: Written by Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie, this is based on Arielle Holmes’ soon-to-be-published memoir Mad Love in New York City and tells the story of a vagabond couple in NYC battling addiction amidst a manic love affair.
Worth Noting: Creative members of the Safdies collaborative include Ronald Brownstein, mutli-tasking actress Eleonore Hendricks and for a second outing, Sean Price Williams (Dp on Alex Ross Perry’s films).
Do We Care?...
Gist: Written by Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie, this is based on Arielle Holmes’ soon-to-be-published memoir Mad Love in New York City and tells the story of a vagabond couple in NYC battling addiction amidst a manic love affair.
Worth Noting: Creative members of the Safdies collaborative include Ronald Brownstein, mutli-tasking actress Eleonore Hendricks and for a second outing, Sean Price Williams (Dp on Alex Ross Perry’s films).
Do We Care?...
- 10/1/2014
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Reviews of Lawrence Michael Levine's Wild Canaries may have been mixed so far, but it's come in for noteworthy praise from the New Yorker's Richard Brody, Calum Marsh in the Village Voice and, writing for Artforum, Nick Pinkerton, who calls it "a neo-screwball bauble concerning a couple who look into strange goings-on in their Brooklyn triple-decker and become embroiled in a convoluted murder mystery, their investigation further complicated by a four-way romantic tangle involving his ex- (Eleonore Hendricks) and their lesbian roommate (Alia Shawkat). Levine’s film owes an obvious debt to Woody Allen’s Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), but it boasts considerably better timing and more worked-out set-pieces than any Allen comedy in the past decade. » - David Hudson...
- 6/18/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Based on Jon Savage’s 2007 book Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture, Matt Wolf’s elliptical and handsome documentary Teenage delves into the history of teen-hood, revealing how those formative years between 12 and 20 produced generations that were cultural forces to be reckoned with in the West during the 20th century’s earliest decades. Using a collage style that includes archival footage, newsreels, dramatic reenactments (anchored by recognizable young actors such as Jenna Malone and total newcomers found by street-casting impresario Eleonore Hendricks), the movie takes us to pre-war Germany, through the pages of diaries of midwestern 15-year-olds, and to dance […]...
- 3/16/2014
- by Brandon Harris
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Based on Jon Savage’s 2007 book Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture, Matt Wolf’s elliptical and handsome documentary Teenage delves into the history of teen-hood, revealing how those formative years between 12 and 20 produced generations that were cultural forces to be reckoned with in the West during the 20th century’s earliest decades. Using a collage style that includes archival footage, newsreels, dramatic reenactments (anchored by recognizable young actors such as Jenna Malone and total newcomers found by street-casting impresario Eleonore Hendricks), the movie takes us to pre-war Germany, through the pages of diaries of midwestern 15-year-olds, and to dance […]...
- 3/16/2014
- by Brandon Harris
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
He managed to put together the Indie actress all-star team of Sophia Takal, Amy Seimetz, Kate Lyn Sheil and Lena Dunham (forgive the pun) all under one “roof” for Gabi on the Roof in July back in 2010, and in 2013, Lawrence Michael Levine packaged the himself, his wife (Takal), Alia Shawkat, Annie Parisse, Jason Ritter, Kevin Corrigan, Marylouise Burke, Lindsay Burdge and Eleonore Hendricks in a Bklyn whodunit, Wild Canaries. Production concluded in May of this year, and was presented among the half dozen titles at the U.S in Progress, leaving plenty of time for this cinematic hipster game of Clue to be ready in time for Park City.
Gist: A Brooklyn couple suspects foul play when their rent controlled neighbor suddenly drops dead.
Production Co./Producers: Takal, Kim Sherman (A Teacher), E. McCabe Walsh (Andrew Renzi’s Karaoke!)
Prediction: Next section appears to be just right – with plenty of...
Gist: A Brooklyn couple suspects foul play when their rent controlled neighbor suddenly drops dead.
Production Co./Producers: Takal, Kim Sherman (A Teacher), E. McCabe Walsh (Andrew Renzi’s Karaoke!)
Prediction: Next section appears to be just right – with plenty of...
- 11/22/2013
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Chances are slim that Chloe Zhao manages to break into the 2014 edition of the Sundance Film Festival and it isn’t because there is a lack of room for a pair of Native American portraits from female filmmakers (the other being Drunktown’s Finest). Supported by both Sundance Labs (read her experience here), and solid coin from Ang Lee Scholarship for Filmmaking and the Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship and Christopher Columbus/Richard Vague Film Production Grant and top that off with a successful 80+ grand Kickstarter campaign, lensing on Lee, was completed this past month (she got the chance to work with Andrea Arnold’s right-hand man Robbie Ryan), thus the 25 New Faces of Independent Film of 2013 personality would have to work at breakneck speed in post. Ingredient worth mentioning: the participation of Eléonore Hendricks.
Gist: Lee is a seventeen-year-old Lakota boy who idly spends his days in young love with...
Gist: Lee is a seventeen-year-old Lakota boy who idly spends his days in young love with...
- 11/20/2013
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Factory 25 just dropped us a line to let us know they've lined up Andrew Semans' Nancy, Please and Joe Swanberg's Silver Bullets for distribution; and we've got the skinny, artwork, and trailers for both. Dig it!
From the Press Release
Factory 25 has acquired the Tribeca Film Festival film Nancy, Please, a twisted story of obsession and rage directed by Andrew Semans starring Eléonore Hendricks (Bad Fever, Daddy Longlegs and The Dish & the Spoon) and Will Rogers. Nancy, Please tells the story of Paul, a young, gifted, and aimless Yale University student who has just moved in with his girlfriend and is struggling to complete his dissertation before embarking on a career in academia. There’s just one snag: As Paul is unpacking his belongings, he discovers that he has left something behind, and only his obstinate and casually sinister former roommate, Nancy, can give it back to him.
From the Press Release
Factory 25 has acquired the Tribeca Film Festival film Nancy, Please, a twisted story of obsession and rage directed by Andrew Semans starring Eléonore Hendricks (Bad Fever, Daddy Longlegs and The Dish & the Spoon) and Will Rogers. Nancy, Please tells the story of Paul, a young, gifted, and aimless Yale University student who has just moved in with his girlfriend and is struggling to complete his dissertation before embarking on a career in academia. There’s just one snag: As Paul is unpacking his belongings, he discovers that he has left something behind, and only his obstinate and casually sinister former roommate, Nancy, can give it back to him.
- 3/28/2013
- by Uncle Creepy
- DreadCentral.com
Part cringingly distressful comedy, part taut dramatic thriller, "Nancy, Please," the debut film of director Andrew Semans, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival last year (you can read our review here). Starring relative newcomer Will Rogers and Eleonore Hendricks ("The Dish and the Spoon") as his titular crazed ex, the film follows a Yale student struggling to finish his dissertation when he realizes that his unhelpful ex-girlfriend still has his copy of the book he needs in order to do this. Brooklyn art-house distributor Factory 25 ("The Color Wheel," "Sun Don't Shine") has picked up the dark, obsessive comedy and will release it theatrically in Chicago on April 5. The film also opens in New York at the reRun Theater on May 24.
- 3/28/2013
- by Mark Lukenbill
- Indiewire
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