The Fits
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Catch the Paris Theater Screening Series “Venice Film Festival Presents: Next Generation” in NYC This Week
La Biennale di Venezia, Netflix and The Gotham (Filmmaker‘s publisher) have partnered on “Venice Film Festival Presents: Next Generation,” a screening series hosted at the Paris Theater in New York City. Comprised of six films from the past decade that are products of the Venice Biennale College Cinema program, which develops and produces bold features budgeted at €200,000 or less, the series will include moderated Q&As alongside one-time screenings of each title. “Next Generation” opens tonight with a 7pm screening of Ellie Foumbi’s Our Father, the Devil, featuring a Q&A moderated by Nanny writer-director Nikyatu Jusu. The series concludes on […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 20, 2023 -
Hits & Misses: The Theatrical Performance of the Sundance Class of ’16
How do you measure success these days? When more than two million people vote for you over the other guy and you still lose? When you receive no endorsements from a single major newspaper, your party’s leadership practically ignores you, and you still win? Or, perhaps, when your heralded Sundance acquisition earns a whopping $15.8 million at the box office, but you spend more than twice that in acquisition fees and prints and advertising costs to release it? (i.e., The Birth of a Nation). How about if your film isn’t released in theaters at all, but Netflix paid $5 million […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Jan 18, 2017 -
2016: The Year in 10 Double Features
The double feature has been a moviewatching mainstay since at least the 1930s. Their appeal is obvious: What better way to cap off a film than to delay real life for a few hours more with another one? Few of us catch double bills at a theater anymore, but their allure remains strong at home. As sites like Mashable and Uproxx reported this year, Netflix users can access double-feature-friendly micro-genres with ease. These days, the work of curating a dual bill of “critically-acclaimed gritty independent crime dramas” is practically done for you. You can even start the next film without […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Dec 22, 2016 -
DP Paul Yee on The Fits, Achieving Close Eyelines and Getting an Unexpected Steadicam Bump
In the opening shot of The Fits, the slender frame of 11-year-old tomboy Toni glides in and out of a static medium shot as she counts off sit-ups while peering down the center of the camera’s lens. The image embodies the distinctive dichotomy of the film’s style – a mixture of neorealism and abstract lyricism that taps into the simultaneous horror and yearning of adolescence. The influence of neorealism is found in the cast of non-actors (led by Royalty Hightower as Toni) and the setting, a community center in Cincinnati where a mysterious wave of seizure-like fits strikes the dance […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jun 28, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: The Fits, A Stunning Debut from Anna Rose Holmer
After 11-year-old Toni (newcomer Royalty Hightower) joins a dance group with older girls, the team begins to experience mysterious spasms. It’s a wholly original – if unlikely – premise for a film and, in the case of The Fits, it succeeds as a compelling meditation on coming-of-age. Written and directed by Anna Rose Holmer, one of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, The Fits premiered at the Venice Film Festival and also played Sundance earlier this year. It will hit theaters on June 3rd courtesy of Oscilloscope. Check out the intriguing trailer above.
by Paula Bernstein on Apr 28, 2016 -
Precision Moves: Anna Rose Holmer, Lisa Kjerulff and Saela Davis on The Fits
“Stop thinking as an individual and start thinking as a team,” says Legs (Makyla Burnam), one of the Lionesses — a dynamic Cincinnati high-school drill team — to a group of young recruits, who include the shy, diminutive, but quietly purposeful 11-year-old boxer Toni. Played in writer/director/producer Anna Rose Holmer’s terrific, formally assured dramatic feature debut, The Fits, by the self-possessed and emotionally transparent Royalty Hightower, Toni has been drawn away from the comforting routine of her boxing practice by the sounds, music and movement of the Lionesses and, by extension, the more adult world they represent. But soon after […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 21, 2016 -
“To Portray Life as Joyful and Dynamic Amid the Horror”: Director Anna Rose Holmer | The Fits
In every film, there is the story that you knew you were telling, the story the audience perceives. But there is always some other story, a secret story. It might be the result of your hidden motivations for making the film, or, instead, the result of themes that only became clear to you after you made the movie. It might be something very personal, or it might be a story you didn’t even know you were telling. What is your film’s secret story? One of the secrets I discovered while making The Fits was that it was a lot more […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Jan 24, 2016 -
Learning Not to Share: The Benefits and Pitfalls of Social Media for Independent Films
Mynette Louie, president of Gamechanger Films, recently had a problem. She caught a stand-in on set not only taking photos of her film’s star, whose contract had specific photo approvals in place, but posting the photos to Facebook. “I told him to delete them from his Facebook, then I went through his phone and deleted all the photos he took on set.” Traditionally, producers, marketing departments and publicists labor over key stills and publicity images, methodically crafting a film’s identity in careful, strategic installments. This practice continues today, but can quickly be subverted by a tweet, post or status update. […]
by John Van Wyck on Jan 20, 2016 -
“I Didn’t Really Like Directors”: The Fits Filmmakers Anna Rose Holmer and Lisa Kjerulff at the Venice International Film Festival
About 4,500 miles away from my home state, I find myself back in Ohio. What’s cool about a film festival is experiencing stories from different places all over the world on the same screens all day everyday. What’s not cool about a film festival is spending more time experiencing Ohio on a screen than discovering Italy outside on the street. But in the case of two Cincinnati-based stories programmed in the 72nd Venice International Film Festival, I was delighted to be transported home. I use “home” loosely. I’m actually from Cleveland, and it’s not as if the stop-motion iteration of […]
by Taylor Hess on Oct 1, 2015
