The Rider director Chloé Zhao on Joshua James Richards: "It's done so well by the cinematographer that it feels like we just happened to be there. That's where the authenticity of the film comes from. It's actually that you have to do so much more work to make it look natural." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
In the final instalment of my conversation with Chloé Zhao, the director of the 2018 Gotham Independent Film Award and National Board of Review winner, The Rider, and the star of her real-life fiction film, Brady Jandreau, we discuss the injuries Brady and his best friend Lane Scott have dealt with on their long road to recovery and acting with his father Tim Jandreau and little sister Lilly Jandreau as the Blackburn family.
Brady Jandreau as Brady Blackburn with Lane Scott in The Rider: "Well, me and Lane have been like brothers since I was two and he was three.
In the final instalment of my conversation with Chloé Zhao, the director of the 2018 Gotham Independent Film Award and National Board of Review winner, The Rider, and the star of her real-life fiction film, Brady Jandreau, we discuss the injuries Brady and his best friend Lane Scott have dealt with on their long road to recovery and acting with his father Tim Jandreau and little sister Lilly Jandreau as the Blackburn family.
Brady Jandreau as Brady Blackburn with Lane Scott in The Rider: "Well, me and Lane have been like brothers since I was two and he was three.
- 1/2/2019
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
When we think back on a movie that transported us, we often focus on a great scene — or maybe the greatest scene — in it. It’s natural. Those scenes are more than just defining. They can be the moment that lifts a movie into the stratosphere, that takes it to the higher reaches of our imagination — and, just as important, keeps it there. Here are 12 scenes from the movies of 2018 that did that without peer.
1. Jackson and Ally’s performance of “Shallow” in “A Star Is Born”
When Jackson invites Ally on-stage to perform a song she’s written, the two don’t just sing together. They merge, in a scene so romantically transporting it creates a tingle of ecstasy that ripples right through your heart.
2. The family-on-the-beach embrace in “Roma”
Alfonso Cuarón’s celebrated drama is not a movie of hugs, yet it has a single sublime one, rooted...
1. Jackson and Ally’s performance of “Shallow” in “A Star Is Born”
When Jackson invites Ally on-stage to perform a song she’s written, the two don’t just sing together. They merge, in a scene so romantically transporting it creates a tingle of ecstasy that ripples right through your heart.
2. The family-on-the-beach embrace in “Roma”
Alfonso Cuarón’s celebrated drama is not a movie of hugs, yet it has a single sublime one, rooted...
- 12/15/2018
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Brady Jandreau on The Rider director Chloé Zhao: "When Chloé found out, a month and a half after my head injury I was training horses again, putting my life at risk, she wanted to capture that." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Gotham Independent Film Award and National Board of Review winner The Rider stars Brady Jandreau as Brady Blackburn with his sister Lilly Jandreau and father Tim Jandreau, and friends Lane Scott, Cat Clifford, and Tanner Langdeau playing variations of themselves. Chloé Zhao's follow-up to Songs My Brothers Taught Me was also a highlight of the 55th New York Film Festival, winner of the Grand Prix Award at the Deauville Festival of American Cinema and the Art Cinema Award in the Directors’ Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival.
Joshua James Richards films Brady Jandreau as Brady Blackburn with Chloé Zhao directing
Shot by Joshua James Richards (Francis Lee's God's Own Country...
Gotham Independent Film Award and National Board of Review winner The Rider stars Brady Jandreau as Brady Blackburn with his sister Lilly Jandreau and father Tim Jandreau, and friends Lane Scott, Cat Clifford, and Tanner Langdeau playing variations of themselves. Chloé Zhao's follow-up to Songs My Brothers Taught Me was also a highlight of the 55th New York Film Festival, winner of the Grand Prix Award at the Deauville Festival of American Cinema and the Art Cinema Award in the Directors’ Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival.
Joshua James Richards films Brady Jandreau as Brady Blackburn with Chloé Zhao directing
Shot by Joshua James Richards (Francis Lee's God's Own Country...
- 12/13/2018
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Chloe Zhao’s impressive second film The Rider comes hot on the heels of her critically acclaimed first feature Songs My Brothers Taught Me, a film festival circuit favourite which went on to gain the young director a best picture nod at the 2016 Independent Spirit Awards. Staring real life Cowboy Brady Jandreau as a rodeo rider struggling to come to terms with a recent career ending injury, the film is a beautifully sparse, mournful and subtly acted modern Western which tells an honest story with a huge amount of tenderness and poetic realism.
Former rodeo star Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) lives in the South Dakota desert with his gambling addict father Wayne (Tim Jandreau) and sister Lilly (Lilly Jandreau), a vivacious teenager with learning difficulties. When a life-threatening head injury puts an abrupt end to his burgeoning career, Brady finds himself aimless and depressed about his future prospects. No longer...
Former rodeo star Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) lives in the South Dakota desert with his gambling addict father Wayne (Tim Jandreau) and sister Lilly (Lilly Jandreau), a vivacious teenager with learning difficulties. When a life-threatening head injury puts an abrupt end to his burgeoning career, Brady finds himself aimless and depressed about his future prospects. No longer...
- 9/14/2018
- by Linda Marric
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Where cinema once focused on underdogs winning against the odds, now films that focus on athletes in personal and physical crisis are showing the dark side of sports
Sports movies, like history, tend to be written by the victors. The Hollywood canon is packed with stories about winning – against all odds, at all costs, when it’s all on the line, in as noble and ruggedly masculine a fashion as possible. It’s the domain of guys like Burt Reynolds, Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone and Dwayne Johnson. But films such as Chloé Zhao’s The Rider are showing us the flipside of this mentality, which is not only that somebody has to lose, but that this stuff can really mess you up. You could call that more of an anti-sports movie, but given the cliches of the genreand a certain instability in ideas of American masculinity, there’s often a more interesting story.
Sports movies, like history, tend to be written by the victors. The Hollywood canon is packed with stories about winning – against all odds, at all costs, when it’s all on the line, in as noble and ruggedly masculine a fashion as possible. It’s the domain of guys like Burt Reynolds, Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone and Dwayne Johnson. But films such as Chloé Zhao’s The Rider are showing us the flipside of this mentality, which is not only that somebody has to lose, but that this stuff can really mess you up. You could call that more of an anti-sports movie, but given the cliches of the genreand a certain instability in ideas of American masculinity, there’s often a more interesting story.
- 9/10/2018
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
The best Westerns often come from outsiders. Fred Zinnemann’s Oscar-winner “High Noon,” Fritz Lang’s “Rancho Notorious,” William Wyler’s “The Big Country,” Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” — all from Germans and Austrians. And of course, Sergio Leone’s classics starring Clint Eastwood were filmed by an Italian in Spain.
Now we can add U.K. filmmaker Andrew Haigh and China-born Chloé Zhao to their number. Neither set out to comment on classic western genre tropes with “Lean on Pete” (A24) and “The Rider” (Sony Pictures Classics), both of which earned raves on the festival circuit before hitting theaters this month. They shot in the badlands of Colorado and South Dakota, respectively. And both filmmakers explore the relationship between young men, their horses, and the nature that surrounds them. (Their distributors are slowly rolling them out across the heartland.)
“The Rider”
New Yorker Zhao shot her 2013 documentary “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” in South Dakota.
Now we can add U.K. filmmaker Andrew Haigh and China-born Chloé Zhao to their number. Neither set out to comment on classic western genre tropes with “Lean on Pete” (A24) and “The Rider” (Sony Pictures Classics), both of which earned raves on the festival circuit before hitting theaters this month. They shot in the badlands of Colorado and South Dakota, respectively. And both filmmakers explore the relationship between young men, their horses, and the nature that surrounds them. (Their distributors are slowly rolling them out across the heartland.)
“The Rider”
New Yorker Zhao shot her 2013 documentary “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” in South Dakota.
- 4/17/2018
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
The best Westerns often come from outsiders. Fred Zinnemann’s Oscar-winner “High Noon,” Fritz Lang’s “Rancho Notorious,” William Wyler’s “The Big Country,” Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” — all from Germans and Austrians. And of course, Sergio Leone’s classics starring Clint Eastwood were filmed by an Italian in Spain.
Now we can add U.K. filmmaker Andrew Haigh and China-born Chloé Zhao to their number. Neither set out to comment on classic western genre tropes with “Lean on Pete” (A24) and “The Rider” (Sony Pictures Classics), both of which earned raves on the festival circuit before hitting theaters this month. They shot in the badlands of Colorado and South Dakota, respectively. And both filmmakers explore the relationship between young men, their horses, and the nature that surrounds them. (Their distributors are slowly rolling them out across the heartland.)
“The Rider”
New Yorker Zhao shot her 2013 documentary “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” in South Dakota.
Now we can add U.K. filmmaker Andrew Haigh and China-born Chloé Zhao to their number. Neither set out to comment on classic western genre tropes with “Lean on Pete” (A24) and “The Rider” (Sony Pictures Classics), both of which earned raves on the festival circuit before hitting theaters this month. They shot in the badlands of Colorado and South Dakota, respectively. And both filmmakers explore the relationship between young men, their horses, and the nature that surrounds them. (Their distributors are slowly rolling them out across the heartland.)
“The Rider”
New Yorker Zhao shot her 2013 documentary “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” in South Dakota.
- 4/17/2018
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
This article was originally produced as part of the Nyff Critics Academy. “The Rider” is now playing in limited release.
“You can overcome anything if you work hard enough” is an infectious idea, a brick in the foundation of the American Dream. But that depends on how accessible that dream is in the first place. The titular hero Brady Blackburn of “The Rider” confronts such boundaries as he pines to return to the rodeo pedestal.
Rarely do Native Americans faces command an onscreen presence. While the recent historical romance “A Woman Walks Ahead” empowers Native American voices, it still fits a pattern of regulating Native Americas as supporting players to white-centric narratives. On the other hand, Chloe Zhao’s gentle drama “The Rider” gives the spotlight to the Lakota face of Brady Jandreau, whose real-life head injury inspired the film.
Zhao shot “The Rider” and her first Lakota-centric feature “Songs My Brothers Taught Me...
“You can overcome anything if you work hard enough” is an infectious idea, a brick in the foundation of the American Dream. But that depends on how accessible that dream is in the first place. The titular hero Brady Blackburn of “The Rider” confronts such boundaries as he pines to return to the rodeo pedestal.
Rarely do Native Americans faces command an onscreen presence. While the recent historical romance “A Woman Walks Ahead” empowers Native American voices, it still fits a pattern of regulating Native Americas as supporting players to white-centric narratives. On the other hand, Chloe Zhao’s gentle drama “The Rider” gives the spotlight to the Lakota face of Brady Jandreau, whose real-life head injury inspired the film.
Zhao shot “The Rider” and her first Lakota-centric feature “Songs My Brothers Taught Me...
- 4/14/2018
- by Caroline Cao
- Indiewire
There's an epic magic-hour shot in Chloé Zhao's The Rider that's so gorgeous, every great Hollywood Western director might want to hang up their spurs. Real-life saddle bronc rider Brady Jandreau, a daredevil 20-year-old with a busted head, hand and hip, mounts a horse that could kill him. At his last rodeo, a stallion stomped on his skull. Jandreau barely survived, but his doctor's orders to never ride again are just a slower kind of death here on South Dakota's Lakota-Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation. But there he goes, galloping past the sunset.
- 4/13/2018
- Rollingstone.com
Filmmaker Chloe Zhao vaults into a rarefied atmosphere of filmmaking mastery with her stunning second feature, “The Rider,” a neo-Western about rodeo riding, hobbled masculinity and reflective grace that feels unlike anything else out there.
Its compelling singularity no doubt has something to do with its milieu –Native American bronc and bull specialists on the rodeo circuit who hail from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation — but it primarily derives from Zhao’s filmmaking choice to combine a deeply felt story and a risky-but-rewarding vérité approach. The result is at times heart-stoppingly effective, pulling us so close to some of the movie’s key characters that they begin to feel like family.
We meet Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) by way of the formidable stapling in his shaved head, a physical scar that forecasts the psychological journey ahead. A gifted young Lakota horse trainer, Brady had been an up-and-coming saddle bronc star until a horrible rodeo accident put him briefly in a coma, set him up with a metal plate, and incurred a doctor-ordered end to his riding days.
Watch Video: 'The Rider': How Brady Jandreau's Brush With Death Led Him to Hollywood (Exclusive)
At home he endures watching his dad (Tim Jandreau), with whom he often clashes, sell Brady’s beloved horse Gus to pay debts. Brady also gets loving support from his autistic sister Lilly (Lilly Jandreau) and his rodeo pals. But he’s consumed by uselessness. Brady wants nothing more than to get back to training and riding, because his sense of incompleteness outside his life with horses is starting to feel like the worse injury. It’s a stubbornness doomed to embolden him, but what is he otherwise?
If you noticed that the actors’ last names are the same, it’s because Zhao is essentially telling Brady Jandreau’s story, starring Brady himself. After making her debut feature (“Songs My Brothers Taught Me”) at Pine Ridge, where she had ingratiated herself with the various tribes, Zhao got to know the laconic, horse-whispering Lakota cowboy before his accident, and witnessed his struggles afterward.
When she started putting together a version of Jandreau’s story as a film, Zhao made the decision to have everyone in Brady’s world play themselves. That included fellow professional rider Lane Scott, a rising star confined to a wheelchair after his own terrible accident, and visited onscreen in rehab by Brady. Their touching scenes eschew schmaltz for the more heart-tugging sensation of a lived-in camaraderie readjusted by tragedy.
Also Read: Cannes: 'The Rider,' 'A Ciambra' Win Top Prizes in Directors' Fortnight
Directors have used non-professionals since movies began, but what Zhao gets out of her 21-year-old real-life cowboy star — by turns stoically lost, humbled, loving, and defiant — is nothing short of miraculous. Jandreau’s is a true, camera-ready performance, filled with nuance, and it speaks to Zhao’s actor-whispering skills that it burns so brightly at the center of her film. Other movies have utilized non-actors to portray versions of themselves – one immediately thinks of Oscar winners Harold Russell and Haing S. Ngor – but they were intended to be elements in a larger, homogenized creation.
“The Rider” is fully Jandreau’s; it’s impossible to imagine it having the same impact without his committed, enveloping presence. He’s as powerful as any macho western protagonist stripped to the core — the gunfighter disarmed or the pioneer made homeless. That he’s Native American, pale-skinned but proud, only deepens the reconfiguring of this country’s myths that’s another undercurrent in “The Rider.”
See Photos: 17 Highest-Grossing Movies Directed by Women, From 'Mamma Mia!' to 'Wonder Woman'
“The Rider” also may be one of the best movies ever made about people and horses as a transcendent relationship. The documentary-infused scenes of Jandreau training and connecting with horses — the wild and ornery, the broken and fearful — are mesmerizing in their fluidity and intimacy, dramatizing a kind of tough love born of tradition and respect. Jandreau’s adoration of these animals is not only pulsating: it allows the horses to be flesh-and-blood co-stars in Brady’s story, not just four-legged accessories.
It’s all gorgeously photographed, too, by Joshua James Richards (“God’s Own Country”), who understands fully the magnetic power of a silhouetted horizon shot, a haunting landscape, or a close-up in a truck. And more importantly, that they all need to be seamlessly strung-together verses in the same evocative frontier poem.
The densely authentic space between neo-realism and documentary where “The Rider” exists is one of the most beautiful and affecting realms I’ve had the pleasure of visiting recently as a moviegoer. Having seen it twice — the first time unaware of its hybrid approach, the second time fully cognizant that I was watching real people in a form of healing re-enactment — the spell, I realized, was the same: a lyrical sense that life is lived and re-lived, acted out but ever retraced, and that to reclaim ourselves after a fall is perhaps what being human is all about. We live in identity-convulsive times, and I can’t think of a movie more attuned to the question “Who am I?” than this one.
Spiritual and earthy, forged in curiosity yet fortified with empathy, “The Rider” is why we go to the cinema, and it affirms Chloe Zhao as one of the most gifted new movie artists of our time.
Read original story ‘The Rider’ Film Review: Lyrical Tale of Injured Rodeo Star Heralds a Major Talent At TheWrap...
Its compelling singularity no doubt has something to do with its milieu –Native American bronc and bull specialists on the rodeo circuit who hail from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation — but it primarily derives from Zhao’s filmmaking choice to combine a deeply felt story and a risky-but-rewarding vérité approach. The result is at times heart-stoppingly effective, pulling us so close to some of the movie’s key characters that they begin to feel like family.
We meet Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) by way of the formidable stapling in his shaved head, a physical scar that forecasts the psychological journey ahead. A gifted young Lakota horse trainer, Brady had been an up-and-coming saddle bronc star until a horrible rodeo accident put him briefly in a coma, set him up with a metal plate, and incurred a doctor-ordered end to his riding days.
Watch Video: 'The Rider': How Brady Jandreau's Brush With Death Led Him to Hollywood (Exclusive)
At home he endures watching his dad (Tim Jandreau), with whom he often clashes, sell Brady’s beloved horse Gus to pay debts. Brady also gets loving support from his autistic sister Lilly (Lilly Jandreau) and his rodeo pals. But he’s consumed by uselessness. Brady wants nothing more than to get back to training and riding, because his sense of incompleteness outside his life with horses is starting to feel like the worse injury. It’s a stubbornness doomed to embolden him, but what is he otherwise?
If you noticed that the actors’ last names are the same, it’s because Zhao is essentially telling Brady Jandreau’s story, starring Brady himself. After making her debut feature (“Songs My Brothers Taught Me”) at Pine Ridge, where she had ingratiated herself with the various tribes, Zhao got to know the laconic, horse-whispering Lakota cowboy before his accident, and witnessed his struggles afterward.
When she started putting together a version of Jandreau’s story as a film, Zhao made the decision to have everyone in Brady’s world play themselves. That included fellow professional rider Lane Scott, a rising star confined to a wheelchair after his own terrible accident, and visited onscreen in rehab by Brady. Their touching scenes eschew schmaltz for the more heart-tugging sensation of a lived-in camaraderie readjusted by tragedy.
Also Read: Cannes: 'The Rider,' 'A Ciambra' Win Top Prizes in Directors' Fortnight
Directors have used non-professionals since movies began, but what Zhao gets out of her 21-year-old real-life cowboy star — by turns stoically lost, humbled, loving, and defiant — is nothing short of miraculous. Jandreau’s is a true, camera-ready performance, filled with nuance, and it speaks to Zhao’s actor-whispering skills that it burns so brightly at the center of her film. Other movies have utilized non-actors to portray versions of themselves – one immediately thinks of Oscar winners Harold Russell and Haing S. Ngor – but they were intended to be elements in a larger, homogenized creation.
“The Rider” is fully Jandreau’s; it’s impossible to imagine it having the same impact without his committed, enveloping presence. He’s as powerful as any macho western protagonist stripped to the core — the gunfighter disarmed or the pioneer made homeless. That he’s Native American, pale-skinned but proud, only deepens the reconfiguring of this country’s myths that’s another undercurrent in “The Rider.”
See Photos: 17 Highest-Grossing Movies Directed by Women, From 'Mamma Mia!' to 'Wonder Woman'
“The Rider” also may be one of the best movies ever made about people and horses as a transcendent relationship. The documentary-infused scenes of Jandreau training and connecting with horses — the wild and ornery, the broken and fearful — are mesmerizing in their fluidity and intimacy, dramatizing a kind of tough love born of tradition and respect. Jandreau’s adoration of these animals is not only pulsating: it allows the horses to be flesh-and-blood co-stars in Brady’s story, not just four-legged accessories.
It’s all gorgeously photographed, too, by Joshua James Richards (“God’s Own Country”), who understands fully the magnetic power of a silhouetted horizon shot, a haunting landscape, or a close-up in a truck. And more importantly, that they all need to be seamlessly strung-together verses in the same evocative frontier poem.
The densely authentic space between neo-realism and documentary where “The Rider” exists is one of the most beautiful and affecting realms I’ve had the pleasure of visiting recently as a moviegoer. Having seen it twice — the first time unaware of its hybrid approach, the second time fully cognizant that I was watching real people in a form of healing re-enactment — the spell, I realized, was the same: a lyrical sense that life is lived and re-lived, acted out but ever retraced, and that to reclaim ourselves after a fall is perhaps what being human is all about. We live in identity-convulsive times, and I can’t think of a movie more attuned to the question “Who am I?” than this one.
Spiritual and earthy, forged in curiosity yet fortified with empathy, “The Rider” is why we go to the cinema, and it affirms Chloe Zhao as one of the most gifted new movie artists of our time.
Read original story ‘The Rider’ Film Review: Lyrical Tale of Injured Rodeo Star Heralds a Major Talent At TheWrap...
- 4/12/2018
- by Robert Abele
- The Wrap
Here's a movie that's in no rush to work a path into your head and heart. It's the intent of Chinese-American filmmaker Chloé Zhao to carve a story out of the real lives of the people she puts on screen; her docu-fiction technique was what distinguished her striking 2015 feature debut Songs My Brothers Taught Me, set among the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Zhao's follow-up is set in the same area, and again uses non-pro actors to achieve a realism Hollywood can only dream of achieving.
- 4/12/2018
- Rollingstone.com
The Rider Sony Pictures Classics Director: Chloé Zhao Screenwriter: Chloé Zhao Cast: Brady Jandreau, Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau, Lane Scott, Cat Clifford Screened at: Review, NYC, 1/11/18 Opens: April 13, 2018 The other day an article in Huffington Post quotes a rural politician from the Midwest, a Democrat who regularly gets elected in a Republican […]
The post The Rider Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post The Rider Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 4/9/2018
- by Harvey Karten
- ShockYa
After impressing audiences at Cannes, Telluride, and Sundance and earning four Independent Spirit Award nominations, “The Rider” is finally making its way to theaters. Chloé Zhao’s drama was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics, which has just released the film’s first trailer. Watch it (courtesy of Vulture) below.
Here’s the synopsis: “After a tragic riding accident, young cowboy Brady (Brady Jandreau), once a rising star of the rodeo circuit, is warned that his competition days are over. Back home, Brady finds himself wondering what he has to live for when he can no longer do what gives him a sense of purpose: to ride and compete. In an attempt to regain control of his fate, Brady undertakes a search for new identity and tries to redefine his idea of what it means to be a man in the heartland of America.”
Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau, Cat Clifford, and...
Here’s the synopsis: “After a tragic riding accident, young cowboy Brady (Brady Jandreau), once a rising star of the rodeo circuit, is warned that his competition days are over. Back home, Brady finds himself wondering what he has to live for when he can no longer do what gives him a sense of purpose: to ride and compete. In an attempt to regain control of his fate, Brady undertakes a search for new identity and tries to redefine his idea of what it means to be a man in the heartland of America.”
Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau, Cat Clifford, and...
- 2/15/2018
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
You can’t fake “The Rider.” Chloe Zhao’s lyrical docudrama blends fact and fiction into an intimate portrait of American masculinity at large and a solitary cowboy trying to find his way back to the only life he’s known. Utilizing a cast of non-actors — most of whom are tasked with playing versions of themselves, in a story pulled from their lives — Zhao’s film derives its power from the truth that both drives it and inspires it, and the final result is a wholly unique slice-of-life drama.
Zhao first made waves with her 2015 feature debut “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” a festival favorite set on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota that tracked the bond between a pair of Lakota siblings. It’s also where she discovered young rodeo cowboy Brady Jandreau, who makes his debut in “The Rider” as an on-screen version of himself in...
Zhao first made waves with her 2015 feature debut “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” a festival favorite set on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota that tracked the bond between a pair of Lakota siblings. It’s also where she discovered young rodeo cowboy Brady Jandreau, who makes his debut in “The Rider” as an on-screen version of himself in...
- 10/13/2017
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
The following essay was produced as part of the 2017 Nyff Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring film critics that took place during the 55th edition of the New York Film Festival.
The western is an iconic genre tied to the very genesis of cinema itself, but it doesn’t have the currency it held decades ago. That’s why it’s such a thrill to see Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider” and Valeski Grisebach’s “Western” — two highlights from this year’s New York Film Festival — reshape the genre from the ground up.
It’s only possible to appreciate that if you consider how far the genre has come. The western reigned Hollywood for decades—particularly from the ‘30s to the ‘60s. The genre’s appeal was that its unequivocal good vs. evil narrative could translate to any cultural zeitgeist. It wasn’t until Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns and...
The western is an iconic genre tied to the very genesis of cinema itself, but it doesn’t have the currency it held decades ago. That’s why it’s such a thrill to see Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider” and Valeski Grisebach’s “Western” — two highlights from this year’s New York Film Festival — reshape the genre from the ground up.
It’s only possible to appreciate that if you consider how far the genre has come. The western reigned Hollywood for decades—particularly from the ‘30s to the ‘60s. The genre’s appeal was that its unequivocal good vs. evil narrative could translate to any cultural zeitgeist. It wasn’t until Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns and...
- 10/12/2017
- by Caroline Madden
- Indiewire
Midway through The Rider, Lakota cowboy Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) takes a job at a local grocery store. Forbidden by his doctors from ever riding again and with few prospects near his home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, he’s humiliated to find himself wearing a name tag and waving a barcode scanner. Brady, the actor, later told Chloé Zhao that filming those scenes was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Like the character he plays, Jandreau had recently survived a near-fatal skull fracture during a rodeo, and the painful prospect of giving up his cowboy life was still fresh. The Rider is the second feature film Zhao has made at Pine Ridge, following Songs My Brothers Taught Me in 2015. “I wanted to make a movie about the cowboys I met there,” she told me, “but I didn’t have a story until Brady’s accident.
- 10/8/2017
- MUBI
After picking up the Art Cinema Award at this year’s Cannes Director’s Fortnight — the highest honor the lauded sidebar bestows on its always-compelling selection — Chloé Zhao’s “The Rider” is setting off on a high-powered fall festival tour, including stops at both Tiff and Nyff. Based on our newest look at the moving and elegiac story, which draws on the real experiences of leading man Brady Jandreau, Zhao has a major contender on her hands.
The film, Zhao’s follow-up to her “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” bowed at the festival back in May, but has continued to spin very positive buzz. Stops at Toronto and New York should only continue to bolster the gorgeous, personal film.
Read More:Sony Pictures Classics Picks Up Chloe Zhao’s ‘The Rider’ — Cannes
Per the film’s official synopsis, “Based on a true story, ‘The Rider’ stars breakout Brady Jandreau as...
The film, Zhao’s follow-up to her “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” bowed at the festival back in May, but has continued to spin very positive buzz. Stops at Toronto and New York should only continue to bolster the gorgeous, personal film.
Read More:Sony Pictures Classics Picks Up Chloe Zhao’s ‘The Rider’ — Cannes
Per the film’s official synopsis, “Based on a true story, ‘The Rider’ stars breakout Brady Jandreau as...
- 9/5/2017
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Exclusive: Protagonist inks sales on Chloé Zhao’s Directors’ Fortnight winner.
Altitude Film Distribution has taken UK and Ireland rights for Chloé Zhao’s The Rider, which won the top prize in this year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight sidebar.
The deal was struck between Altitude’s Will Clarke and Vanessa Saal from sales outfit Protagonist Pictures.
The Rider was previously picked up for by Sony Pictures Classics for North America, Latin America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Eastern Europe.
Protagonist has now also sold to film to: Les Films du Losange (France), Weltkino (Germany), Caramel Films (Spain), Cherry Pickers (Benelux), Cineworx (Switzerland), NonStop (Scandinavia and Iceland), Shani Films (Israel), Front Row Entertainment (Middle East), Fabula Films (Turkey) and Blue Lake (worldwide airlines).
Separately, Protagonist has also scored a series of further deals on fellow Directors’ Fortnight title The Florida Project, which Altitude took for the UK during Cannes.
Following its warmly-received Directors’ Fortnight berth, The Rider was presented...
Altitude Film Distribution has taken UK and Ireland rights for Chloé Zhao’s The Rider, which won the top prize in this year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight sidebar.
The deal was struck between Altitude’s Will Clarke and Vanessa Saal from sales outfit Protagonist Pictures.
The Rider was previously picked up for by Sony Pictures Classics for North America, Latin America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Eastern Europe.
Protagonist has now also sold to film to: Les Films du Losange (France), Weltkino (Germany), Caramel Films (Spain), Cherry Pickers (Benelux), Cineworx (Switzerland), NonStop (Scandinavia and Iceland), Shani Films (Israel), Front Row Entertainment (Middle East), Fabula Films (Turkey) and Blue Lake (worldwide airlines).
Separately, Protagonist has also scored a series of further deals on fellow Directors’ Fortnight title The Florida Project, which Altitude took for the UK during Cannes.
Following its warmly-received Directors’ Fortnight berth, The Rider was presented...
- 6/7/2017
- by tom.grater@screendaily.com (Tom Grater)
- ScreenDaily
Chloe´ Zhao’s film premiered in Directors’ Fortnight.
Sony Pictures Classics have acquired North America, Latin America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Eastern Europe rights to The Rider at Cannes.
Written and directed by Chloé Zhao, the film premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at this year’s festival and stars Brady Jandreau.
Jandreau plays as a once rising star of the rodeo circuit warned that his competition days are over after a tragic riding accident. Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau, Lane Scott and Cat Clifford also star.
Chloé Zhao said: “The films Sony Pictures Classics has distributed throughout the years have been of great inspiration to me. I’m very excited to find such a great home for The Rider.”
The Rider is produced by Zhao’s Highwayman Films, Bert Hamelinck and Sacha Ben Harroche of Caviar Films, and Mollye Asher. Caviar’s Michael Sagol and Jasper Thomlinson serve as executive producers.
The deal was...
Sony Pictures Classics have acquired North America, Latin America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Eastern Europe rights to The Rider at Cannes.
Written and directed by Chloé Zhao, the film premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at this year’s festival and stars Brady Jandreau.
Jandreau plays as a once rising star of the rodeo circuit warned that his competition days are over after a tragic riding accident. Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau, Lane Scott and Cat Clifford also star.
Chloé Zhao said: “The films Sony Pictures Classics has distributed throughout the years have been of great inspiration to me. I’m very excited to find such a great home for The Rider.”
The Rider is produced by Zhao’s Highwayman Films, Bert Hamelinck and Sacha Ben Harroche of Caviar Films, and Mollye Asher. Caviar’s Michael Sagol and Jasper Thomlinson serve as executive producers.
The deal was...
- 5/24/2017
- by orlando.parfitt@screendaily.com (Orlando Parfitt)
- ScreenDaily
Sony Pictures Classics has announced that they have acquired all rights in North America, Latin America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Eastern Europe to Chloé Zhao’s “The Rider” at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.
The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight section to stellar reviews on Saturday. It’s the second project from writer-director Chloe Zhao, who previously made the 2015 Sundance drama “Songs My Brother Taught Me.” That film also screened at Directors’ Fortnight.
“The Rider” is a drama about a young cowboy who suffers a near fatal head injury and embarks on a search for a new identity.
Read More: Cannes 2017: 9 Hot Acquisition Titles That Will Have Buyers Chasing Foreign Films
Per the film’s official synopsis, “Based on his a true story, ‘The Rider’ stars breakout Brady Jandreau as a once rising star of the rodeo circuit warned that his competition days are over after a tragic riding accident.
The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight section to stellar reviews on Saturday. It’s the second project from writer-director Chloe Zhao, who previously made the 2015 Sundance drama “Songs My Brother Taught Me.” That film also screened at Directors’ Fortnight.
“The Rider” is a drama about a young cowboy who suffers a near fatal head injury and embarks on a search for a new identity.
Read More: Cannes 2017: 9 Hot Acquisition Titles That Will Have Buyers Chasing Foreign Films
Per the film’s official synopsis, “Based on his a true story, ‘The Rider’ stars breakout Brady Jandreau as a once rising star of the rodeo circuit warned that his competition days are over after a tragic riding accident.
- 5/23/2017
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Author: Jo-Ann Titmarsh
Evocative of Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, Chloé Zhao’s magnificent The Rider is a paean to the contemporary American cowboy and to a way of life on the margins and in decline.
The Rider centres on South Dakota rodeo star and horse whisperer extraordinaire Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau). He’s just released himself from hospital after an accident that left him with a steel plate in his skull. There is an excruciating scene of Brady taking the staples out of his scalp, but we are to discover that cowboys have to ‘cowboy up’ and ‘ride through the pain’. Based on Jandreau’s own story, the protagonists play versions of themselves, with Jandreau’s father playing Brady’s ne’er do well dad and the actor’s sister playing Lily, his bra-loathing younger sister with learning difficulties and a protective streak. Mum is dead and dad is...
Evocative of Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, Chloé Zhao’s magnificent The Rider is a paean to the contemporary American cowboy and to a way of life on the margins and in decline.
The Rider centres on South Dakota rodeo star and horse whisperer extraordinaire Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau). He’s just released himself from hospital after an accident that left him with a steel plate in his skull. There is an excruciating scene of Brady taking the staples out of his scalp, but we are to discover that cowboys have to ‘cowboy up’ and ‘ride through the pain’. Based on Jandreau’s own story, the protagonists play versions of themselves, with Jandreau’s father playing Brady’s ne’er do well dad and the actor’s sister playing Lily, his bra-loathing younger sister with learning difficulties and a protective streak. Mum is dead and dad is...
- 5/23/2017
- by Jo-Ann Titmarsh
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
What does a cowboy do when he can’t ride? Chloe Zhao’s absorbing South Dakota-set sophomore feature has its titular rider come to terms with such a fate, in a film that’s a beguiling mix of docudrama and fiction whose story echoes much of history of its actors’ own lives. Zhao’s combination of the visual palette of Terrence Malick, the social backbone of Kelly Reichardt, and the spontaneity of John Cassavetes creates cinema verité in the American plains.
A Lakota Sioux on the prairies of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Brady (Brady Jandreau) is a hard-as-nails cowboy whose dreams of becoming a rodeo champ are dashed by a brutal head injury. The first scene has Brady in a down-and-dirty bathroom removing staples from his forehead, under which a metal plate keeps his fractured skull in place. Still recovering, he’s forbidden from getting back on horseback, but...
A Lakota Sioux on the prairies of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Brady (Brady Jandreau) is a hard-as-nails cowboy whose dreams of becoming a rodeo champ are dashed by a brutal head injury. The first scene has Brady in a down-and-dirty bathroom removing staples from his forehead, under which a metal plate keeps his fractured skull in place. Still recovering, he’s forbidden from getting back on horseback, but...
- 5/22/2017
- by Ed Frankl
- The Film Stage
IFC Films is near a deal to acquire Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title “The Rider,” written and directed by Chloé Zhao, TheWrap has exclusively learned. ‘The Rider” is Zhao’s second feature and second film selected for Directors’ Fortnight. Based on the true story of Brady Jandreau, the film stars Jandreau along with Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau, Lane Scott and Cat Clifford and tells the story of a young rodeo hotshot grappling with the aftermath of an accident that leaves him unable to ride. Read More See Chloe Zhao's latest Power Move. PowerRank: 16455 ...
- 5/22/2017
- by Umberto Gonzalez
- The Wrap
Us-set title gets sales deal before Directors’ Fortnight premiere.
London-based sales outfit Protagonist Pictures has boarded Chloé Zhao’s The Rider ahead of the film’s debut in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight next month.
Written and directed by Zhao, whose first feature Songs My Brothers Taught Me played in Directors’ Fortnight in 2015, the Us-set film follows a young cowboy who, once a rodeo star, suffers a tragic riding accident.
Non-professional actors Brady Jandreau, Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau and Lane Scott star alongside Cat Clifford, who appeared in Songs My Brothers Taught Me.
Director Zhao met Brady, who is a professional cowboy, while working on her first feature, eventually writing the new film’s script based on his story.
The Rider
The film was produced by Zhao’s company Highwayman Films, with Bert Hamelinck and Sacha Ben Harroche of Caviar Films, and Mollye Asher. Caviar’s Michael Sagol and Jasper Thomlinson serve as executive producers.
Protagonist will launch...
London-based sales outfit Protagonist Pictures has boarded Chloé Zhao’s The Rider ahead of the film’s debut in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight next month.
Written and directed by Zhao, whose first feature Songs My Brothers Taught Me played in Directors’ Fortnight in 2015, the Us-set film follows a young cowboy who, once a rodeo star, suffers a tragic riding accident.
Non-professional actors Brady Jandreau, Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau and Lane Scott star alongside Cat Clifford, who appeared in Songs My Brothers Taught Me.
Director Zhao met Brady, who is a professional cowboy, while working on her first feature, eventually writing the new film’s script based on his story.
The Rider
The film was produced by Zhao’s company Highwayman Films, with Bert Hamelinck and Sacha Ben Harroche of Caviar Films, and Mollye Asher. Caviar’s Michael Sagol and Jasper Thomlinson serve as executive producers.
Protagonist will launch...
- 4/26/2017
- by tom.grater@screendaily.com (Tom Grater)
- ScreenDaily
UK-based outfit Protagonist Pictures has boarded worldwide sales for upcoming Cannes Directors' Fortnight title The Rider, written and directed by Chloe Zhao. It's Zhao's second feature and second film selected for Directors' Fortnight. The film stars Brady Jandreau along with Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau, Lane Scott and Cat Clifford and story follows a young cowboy (Brady), once a rising star of the rodeo circuit, who is warned that his competition days are over after a…...
- 4/26/2017
- Deadline
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