Today the Sundance Institute announced the 13 projects selected for this year’s Director and Screenwriting Labs. Talking place in Park City, Utah June 1-25, the Labs will be filled with many familiar names to Filmmaker readers. 2008 25 New Faces alum Myna Joseph will be attending; as will Ondi Timoner, whose doc We Live In Public won the doc Grand Prize at Sundance in 2009; Ry Russo-Young, who was awarded our Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You award for You Wont Miss Me at last year’s Gothams, will be attending with her latest screenplay; and ’09 25 […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Apr 26, 2010Ry Russo-Young’s You Won’t Miss Me was one of our favorite films at Sundance this year. It is a free-wheeling, lyrical but sometimes jarring depiction of a few months in the life of young and struggling New York actress navigating both harsh auditions and her own chaotic emotional relationships. The film has a deceptively casual feel as it avoids obvious plot points and melodramatic narrative contrivances. By its conclusion, however, it feels full — an honest portrait of character we haven’t quite seen on screen before at a very specific moment in her life. Following its Sundance premiere, the film […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Mar 12, 2009You Wont Miss Me is Ry Russo-Young’s second feature, and her first in Sundance. Orphans, which premiered at SXSW last year, was a Bergman-esque tale of two sisters, now separated, who come together in their parents’ sprawling, snow-bound house to hack emotional pieces out of one another. You Wont Miss Me is very different in style and tone. It uses experimental film techniques – disjointed narrative, a salad of film and video formats – to paint a portrait of one desperate, uncensored, sexy wreck of a young woman named Shelly Brown. Russo-Young invented the character with the film’s star, Stella […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2009[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 11:30 pm — Holiday Village Cinema III, Park City] I think everything affected the film from Obama to YouTube to my hopes of making a movie without thinking too much. I tried to just run with ideas, people, locations and not be so self-conscious this time around. I was very proud of Orphans (my first film) but in a way You Wont Miss Me was a reaction to making such a restrained movie. This time I wanted to make a movie that could only be made RIGHT NOW. That would scream of the times that […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 16, 2009