Sundance
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“KINYARWANDA” | writer-director, Alrick Brown
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 24, 9:00 pm — Egyptian Theatre] One of the biggest surprises while shooting Kinyarwanda on location in Rwanda is something that we may have just taken for granted. Frankly, it could have been a surprise in the U.S., in a community not familiar with low-budget or independent filmmaking. The community, many of our crew, and local officials seemed to have a really strong grasp of the work of big budget films — situations where, as a solution, money is often thrown at a problem. Many were also very familiar with the other extreme: people picking up […]
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“TAKE SHELTER” | writer-director, Jeff Nichols
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 24, 3:00 pm — Eccles Theatre] The biggest surprise associated with the making of Take Shelter was, without question, Jessica Chastain. When traveling the festival circuit with my first film, Shotgun Stories, I was fairly outspoken about the fact that Michael Shannon is one of the greatest actors working today. When casting Take Shelter, a film that is anchored by the relationship of a married couple, the biggest question I had was: “What actress could go toe-to-toe with Michael Shannon?” Then the universe delivered me Jessica Chastain. When thinking about this role my executive producer, Sarah […]
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“HOT COFFEE” | director, Susan Saladoff
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 24, 12:00 pm — Temple Theatre] As a first-time filmmaker, being accepted into the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance was obviously the biggest surprise. But what was also a huge surprise was going back to read the outline that I wrote in the summer of 2008 when Hot Coffee was just a dream. After finishing the film in the summer of 2010, I reread my original outline and to my great surprise realized that the final version of the film was almost exactly what I had laid out in the outline, despite having not gone back […]
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Resurrect Dead : The Mystery Of The Toynbee Tiles Director Jon Foy
There are few professions in the world that demand more from their practitioners than documentary filmmaking — most filmmakers spend years (if not lives) toiling away in obscurity, with little keeping them going beside the faith that theirs is a story worth sacrificing everything for. Sundance newbie, Jon Foy, is certainly a man of faith — his feature debut, Resurrect Dead, was entirely self-funded by a series of odd jobs. When he got the call that the film he’d been working on for five years was going to be at Sundance, he was working as a house cleaner. The […]
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“ANOTHER EARTH” | co-writer-director, Mike Cahill
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 24, 12:15 pm — Eccles Theatre] The biggest surprise is how the movie began, and how it ended. We started with no money, a basic treatment and a Sony EX3. I didn’t really care about getting all my ducks in a row before starting. We just started. Brit Marling, Morgan Marling (her sister), Liang (my friend from China) and I went to Connecticut where I grew up and we set out to make this epic indie minimalist science fiction drama. On the first day, Brit came back from a run in the morning and told us […]
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“RESURRECT DEAD: THE MYSTERY OF THE TOYNBEE TILES” | director, Jon Foy
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 24, 3:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV] Admittedly the decision to make my movie was based on an absurd gamble. I dropped out of school and moved to another town in an attempt to solve a bizarre and obscure two-decade old mystery. Once relocated, this sober reality began to set in. What if we never find anything? What if we turn up an answer too quickly? Or if the story is lackluster? What on Earth was I even expecting to find? But, to my astonishment, the investigation began taking off. And suddenly the world felt […]
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“CEDAR RAPIDS” | director, Miguel Arteta
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 9:45 pm — Eccles Theatre] The biggest and most exciting surprise about making Cedar Rapids was how beautifully our well-known cast blended in with our lesser-known cast. The film is about the unlikely friendship between four insurance agents at an annual convention. Three of the actors are well-known to the public — Ed Helms, John C. Reilly and Anne Heche — and the fourth is an amazing character actor from New York, Isiah Whitlock Jr. Although Isiah is known for his great performance as Senator Clay Davis in the TV series The Wire and his […]
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“CRIME AFTER CRIME” | director, Yoav Potash
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 9:00 pm — Temple Theatre] Making Crime After Crime was full of surprises — which in a way is not so surprising because at least on the surface the film is a legal thriller, a genre that is built on suspense, intrigue and discovery. These aspects of the genre were made all the more unpredictable because the film is a vérité documentary: I was tracking the battle to free Deborah Peagler from prison as her case unfolded so no one knew exactly how it would turn out. Sure enough, clues, twists and turns emerged that […]
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“ELITE SQUAD 2: THE ENEMY WITHIN” | director, Jose Padilha
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 8:45 pm — Egyptian Theatre] Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within was a very challenging project as it was coming two years after a very successful predecessor. The first movie (The Elite Squad) I had made about the Rio de Janeiro Elite Squad became very popular and won the Golden Bear Prize at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival. So everyone was thinking that following up on this film was a mistake. How could we possibly make a film about the same subject matter and have the same impact? My attitude was to forget about […]
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“THE WOMAN” | co-writer-director, Lucy McKee
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 11:30 pm — Library Center Theatre] The biggest surprise surrounding and involving our film The Woman is how shocked people are by it. When you make a film, you live with it day in and day out for months and years. You get intimate with it. You get used to it. It becomes a dear and familiar friend. Once you’re comfortable enough with it, you share it and the audience response is never exactly how you pictured it. It’s always so much more. I’ve shown this film privately to very few people in preparation for […]
