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SUNDANCE ANNOUNCES DIRECTORS/SCREENWRITERS LABS
The Sundance Institute has announced the 13 projects for its annual June Directors and Screenwriters Labs, held May 28-June 28. The Labs have evolved to include filmmakers from around the world, with fellows this year from Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Haiti.
The participants and projects selected for the Labs are:
DIRECTORS LAB
THE CAVANAUGHS / John Morgan (co-writer/director) and Meg LeFauve (co-writer), U.S.A.
When the mother of a deeply evangelical family suddenly rejects motherhood, falls in love with a woman, and disavows her faith, the remaining members of the family are thrown into chaos, forcing each of them to construct new meaning for the ideas of family, love, and identity.
CIRCUMSTANCE / Maryam Keshavarz (writer/director), U.S.A./Iran
In the charged climate of today’s Iran, two girls grapple with their intense, complex relationship during a volatile adolescence.
COLD SOULS / Sophie Barthes (writer/director), U.S.A.
In the midst of an existential crisis, a famous American actor stumbles upon “Soul Storage”, a private lab offering New Yorkers a relief from the burden of their souls.
FARMING / Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (writer/director), United Kingdom/Nigeria
Abandoned by his parents, a young African boy desperately searches for love and belonging within a brutal skinhead subculture where violence becomes his only companion.
HAITI CHERIE / Patricia Benoit (writer/director), U.S.A./Haiti
Three refugees from Haiti wrestle with the effects of exile when they start a new life in the United States, only to find they can’t leave the ghosts of the past behind.
HERE / Braden King (co-writer/director) and Dani Valent (co-writer), U.S.A./Australia
Measurement and orientation break down for a solitary American mapmaker charting the Armenian countryside when he travels with an adventurous landscape photographer visiting her homeland.
SPOONS / Eric Lahey (writer/director), U.S.A.
After years of struggling with addiction, a father reunites with his son, and the two men realize that no matter how far you move from the present, you never live that far away from the past.
WATER & POWER / Richard Montoya (writer/director), U.S.A.
Twin brothers nicknamed “Water” and “Power” from the Eastside streets of Los Angeles rise through the city’s political and police ranks to become players in a complex and dangerous web of the powerful and corrupt of Los Angeles.
SCREENWRITERS LAB
DREAMING IN COLOUR / Tala Hadid (writer/director), Morocco/U.S.A.
From North Africa to the bleak winter landscapes of Northern France, three refugees struggle to find their place in a world without borders.
PARIAH / Dee Rees (writer/director), U.S.A.
A Bronx lesbian teenager juggles multiple identities to avoid rejection from friends and family, but pressure from home, school, and within corrodes the line between her dual personas with explosive consequences.
REFRESH, REFRESH / James Ponsoldt (writer/director), U.S.A.
Three teenage boys in the high desert of central Oregon battle heartbreak and explore the redemptive power of violence when their Marine reservist fathers are called to duty in Iraq. REFRESH, REFRESH is based on the short story by Benjamin Percy.
THIS IS NOT A PIPE: AN IMAGE OF TREASON / JJ Lask (writer/director), U.S.A.
Like the trees that grow in the worst dirt on the streets of New York City, a father and daughter struggle to blossom over the half century from prohibition to Woodstock.
UM HUSSEIN / Mohamed Al-Daradji (co-writer/director) and Jennifer Norridge (co-writer), Iraq/United Kingdom
Twelve years after a soldier is captured by Saddam’s Republican Guards, his mother and son retrace his journey across Iraq in their quest to bring him home.
