Saint Frances
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Are Virtual Theaters Here to Stay?
When Toby Leonard, programming director at Nashville’s Belcourt Theatre, returned to the space for the first time since the COVID-19 shutdown began, a six-foot cardboard display for Never Rarely Sometimes Always struck his eye. Eliza Hittman’s film was four days into the first week of a planned platform release before it was pulled from theatrical exhibition and hadn’t yet made it to the Belcourt, but its physical teaser remained. “How many of these things were there and how many did they send around the country?,” Leonard wondered. Then he took it down. As exhibitors and distributors initially adjusted to no theatrical releases for […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 18, 2020 -
Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan
With Saint Frances, the debut independent feature that has been winning prizes all across the festival circuit — including the 2019 SXSW Narrative Feature Audience Award — director Alex Thompson says he and partner Kelly O’Sullivan knew the film they didn’t want to make. Writer, executive producer and star O’Sullivan says that’s “the Hollywood, super-cutesy ’woman learns tons of lessons from a precocious kid’ movie — a movie that feels too neat and saccharine and not very real.” On paper, though, Saint Frances sounds like it could be just such a film. The film’s titular six-year-old (Ramona Edith-Williams) is indeed […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 27, 2019
