Q&A’s for HIGH TIDE:10/25 – In-Person Q&A at the NoHo with Actor/Executive Producer Marco Pigossi and Actor James Bland of HIGH TIDE following the 7:10 pm performance.10/26- In-Person Q&A at the NoHo with Writer/Director/Producer Marco Calvani, and Actor/Executive Producer Marco Pigossi of HIGH TIDE following the 7:10 pm performance.
“It’s not exactly a feel-good movie. It’s a feel-the-reality movie, a drama willing to scald. That’s its quiet power.” EXHIBITING FORGIVENESS Opens October 18.
In Exhibiting Forgiveness, which we open on October 18 at the Laemmle Claremont, Monica Film Center, NoHo and Town Center, Tarrell (Andre Holland) plays an admired American painter who lives with his wife, singer Aisha (Andra Day), and their young son, Jermaine. Tarrell’s artwork excavates beauty from the anguish of his youth, keeping past wounds at bay. His path to success is derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, La’Ron (John Earl Jelks), a conscience-stricken man desperate to reconcile.
Tarrell’s mother, Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) a pious woman with a profound and joyful spirituality, hopes that Tarrell can open his heart to forgiveness, giving them all another chance at being a family. Tarrell and La’Ron learn that forgetting might be a greater challenge than forgiving in this raw and deeply moving film.
“This is a powerful film about the limits of forgiveness, and the ways religion is often misused as a tool for total redemption, no matter the sin.” ~ Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com
“An emotionally wrenching drama set to resonate with those who have also had to confront the complicated equation of radical forgiveness.” ~ Benjamin Lee, Guardian
“Exhibiting Forgiveness sends you out on a note of hope, but it’s not exactly a feel-good movie. It’s a feel-the-reality movie, a drama willing to scald. That’s its quiet power.” ~ Owen Gleiberman, Variety
“There are more strengths than weaknesses in Exhibiting Forgiveness, especially when it comes to the performances, which hook us to the emotional grooves of Tarrell’s family.” ~ Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter
“It’s painful and it doesn’t necessarily heal, but it’s a full experience, exceptional in its craft, with performances that cannot be dismissed or be forgotten.” ~ William Bibbiani, TheWrap
“Andre Holland brings immense feeling to his role as an artist haunted by childhood trauma, and writer-director Titus Kaphar’s semi-autobiographical feature debut is suffused with pain, anger and sorrow.” ~ Tim Grierson, Screen International
“Tarrell’s non-judgmental approach embraces shades of grey rather than seeing things in black and white. He doesn’t vilify anyone, nor does he try and mine heroism in suffering.” ~ Namrata Joshi, The New Indian Express
“As Tarrell, Holland gives a soulful performance, radiating pain and anguish.” ~ Jourdain Searles, indieWire
“Art comes to the rescue, as Exhibiting Forgiveness lends its healing hand on everyone, on and off the screen.” ~ Tomris Laffly, Harper’s Bazaar
“As an artist grappling with the psychological damage done by his estranged father, Holland is a wonder of tightly contained hurt and anger. He’s got great scene partners in John Earl Jelks, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and Andra Day.” ~ Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
“Exhibiting Forgiveness doesn’t flinch from showing how dysfunctional familial relationships wound and scar repeatedly. But the film itself isn’t cynical or bitter, illustrating how art holds the power to not only help us process and recover but transform.” ~ Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News
“True to its name, the film puts the concept of forgiveness on display and asks us to spend some time in front of it and consider it from all angles.” ~ Ross McIndoe, Slant Magazine
“Exhibiting Forgiveness proves you do not need other people’s acknowledgement or approval to find forgiveness within yourself.” ~ Valerie Complex, Deadline Hollywood Daily
“I went into solitude with the book by myself for a couple of months actually. I color-coded every page in different areas.” ~ THE OUTRUN filmmaker on bringing the memoir to the screen.
Adapted from the bestselling memoir by Amy Liptrot, The Outrun follows a young Scotswoman (the always-fantastic Saoirse Ronan) as she returns to the wild beauty of her native Orkney Islands hoping to come to terms with her past and heal after living life on the edge in London. The director/co-writer Nora Fingscheidt sat for an in-depth interview with Filmmaker Magazine in which she details her process — from writing the screenplay with Liptrot, to working with Ronan, as well as the director of photography, editor, and sound designers. An excerpt:
Filmmaker: Because addiction is a sensitive subject matter and in this case, it’s your co-writer Amy Liptrot’s real life, I am wondering what sort of responsibility you felt in telling this true story. How did you collaborate with her on the page and elsewhere? How did you approach her story?
Fingscheidt: It’s a very challenging book to translate into a film because it is so personal and internal; much of it is about memory. But what makes it so beautiful is Amy’s thought process about the world. And I thought the film needed to be really nerdy in a way [especially when it came to her environmental pursuits]. So I pitched this approach to both Amy and our producers. And then I went into solitude with the book by myself for a couple of months actually. I color-coded every page in different areas. There is childhood, music, London, Orkney, sound elements, facts about the world… And then I went through it again and put all the little moments that I thought have to be in the film on different cards and arranged them. Then I wrote a treatment.
And from that moment on, we started to collaborate really closely. Amy read every version, and we spent hours on Zoom. She isn’t a celebrity who’s used to having their life portrayed. And her parents are there in the story. So I felt that I had to include her and protect her at the same time. Every decision that we made for the adaptation in changing, fictionalizing or dramatizing things, we made together. One of the first things we did is change her name to have a healthy creative distance. Amy suggested Rona, which is the name of a Scottish island. Saoirse loved it—it’s almost like Ronan. And it also has Nora in it. And it is the island behind the horizon when Amy was sitting on the outrun. So the character name was a mixture of the three of us.
Filmmaker: Did Saoirse spend time with Amy in crafting her performance, or did she approach it more freely to not do an impersonation?
Fingscheidt: Very early on she asked me, “Do you want me to sound like Amy?” Because Saoirse is Irish, we knew she would have to take on another accent. And we said, please don’t try and sound like Amy. Find your own voice, your own interpretation of Rona. That gave her a lot of liberty. She is a very physical actor, so she took quite a while preparing with a London choreographer, Wayne McGregor, whom she has worked with before. They worked a lot on how Rona moves: when she’s with her parents, when she’s happy-drunk or messy-drunk or trying to hide it; when she’s in a good mood or when she loses control. She also worked with a dialogue coach to get into this talk process. That physicality, the voice, and then the experiences like helping deliver lambs on the farm that we did at the pre-shoot helped her get into the bones and guts of Rona’s character.
We’re excited to open The Outrun on October 4 at the Royal, NoHo, Town Center, and Newhall.
“It’s a story of how we survive our parents, and the beauty of that survival.” Filmmaker Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio on IN THE SUMMERS, opening September 20 at the Royal and September 27 at the Town Center and NoHo.
Winner of the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, In the Summers is a brilliant portrayal of resilience and survival that follows siblings Violeta and Eva. They live in California with their mother, but every summer travel to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to spend time with their loving but unpredictable father, Vicente. Over the course of four formative summers that span adolescence to early adulthood, Violeta and Eva learn to appreciate their father as a person.
Lovia Gyarkye of the Hollywood Reporter wrote that “the feature is a visual poem, an enveloping four-stanza ode to experiences shared by a man and his daughters.”
“These understated scenes of familial intimacy introduce Lacorazza Samudio as a director with a deft hand for crafting character development from lived-in behavior rather than dialogue…In the Summers is the type of personal, confidently executed first outing that should hopefully put the filmmaker on an auspicious track to produce other keenly humanist work.” ~ Carlos Aguilar, Variety
“The most impressive work belongs to that of Residente, a Puerto Rican rapper otherwise known as René Pérez Joglar. As [Vicente], Residente avoids the pitfalls of playing bad fathers… Residente finds the subtlety in his flaws…Because of this attention to the environment that shapes these hot days, In the Summers is brimming full of its characters’ internal aches rendered elegantly across time.” ~ Esther Zuckerman, IndieWire
In the Summers actor Sasha Calle will participate in a Q&As at the Royal on Friday, September 20.
Writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio’s statement:
“My father was a brilliant and beautiful man. Maybe the smartest person I’ve ever known. He had a love of science he wanted to share, even when his audience wasn’t eager. I knew he was prone to anger and drinking and probably drugs. But there was a lot I didn’t understand until he died.
“I was in a bad car accident with my father and sister when I was young, one where I was severely injured and suffered traumatic brain trauma. What I thought happened was there was a car accident, an ambulance came, and we were taken to the nearest hospital, and eventually we recovered. What I found out after his death, was that he had to drag our bodies from the wreckage and walk down a deserted road until someone stopped to help him. That realization took the car accident, which I have always thought of as my trauma, and made me realize it was also his trauma. Our shared trauma. It made me realize there was a deeper complexity to my father. A deeply wounded, chaotic, man raised me but he also had a deep love for his daughters.
“And so I started the long process of creating In the Summers. My aim was to explore this human who, for better or worse, was the root of so much of me. During this process I kept asking, can we make amends? For our missteps, our words, our actions? Or will they forever define us? The closer I get to finishing this film the more I realize that the issue is with the question. Life is far more complex.
“In the Summers explores Latine identity through its characters and how it intersects with fatherhood, addiction, trauma, sexuality and access to opportunity. It’s a story of how we survive our parents, and the beauty of that survival. This is a personal film for me not only because it is inspired by my life but because I want to see complex Latine and Queer characters shown in an honest way. Thank you for considering this project and having the opportunity to tell my story.”
The “spiky, hilarious, and thoroughly unorthodox screwball comedy” BETWEEN THE TEMPLES is charming critics and audiences.
The new comedy Between the Temples, starring Jason Schwartzman as a troubled cantor who finds his world turned upside down when his grade school music teacher (a never-better Carol Kane) re-enters his life as his adult Bat Mitzvah student, is living up to the hype and bringing audiences into theaters. Peruse this sampling of the catalyst for the film’s success, critics’ reviews:
“A spiky, hilarious, and thoroughly unorthodox screwball comedy about a grief-stricken cantor who loses his voice, only to find that he’s surrounded by a chorus of well-intentioned people who are happy to speak for him.” ~ David Ehrlich, indieWire
“We get the sense that Silver would be perfectly happy just sitting there and watching these people forever, story and conflict and resolution be damned. And it really is in these characters’ close exchanges that the movie comes to life.” ~ Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture
“Both stars — romantic leads with character actor cred — have the power to be funny and heartbreaking simultaneously, and their unique chemistry drives the film’s craziness and humanity.” ~ Thelma Adams, AARP Movies for Grownups
“Between the Temples emerges as a quirky and effective showcase for two actors known for playing oddball characters. Kane and Schwartzman bounce off each other so well that their work alone makes the film worth seeing.” ~ Odie Henderson, Boston Globe
“The relationship that unfolds, with shades of Harold and Maude, is honest and unsparing, as well as being blatantly Freudian.” ~ Kevin Maher, Times
“The movie is consistently funny, but its humor tends to be fairly gentle because it’s rooted in human behavior rather than in condescending, judgmental ideas about such behavior.” ~ Manohla Dargis, New York Times
“Schwartzman is very affecting as a perplexed, tragicomic galoot and Kane is a marvel.” ~ Jonathan Romney, Financial Times
“Shot wanly on film in wintertime, Between the Temples takes a while to reveal its depths – its linguistic wit, its cockeyed humor and compassion, how it can modulate from deadpan-slapstick to achingly poignant and still feel authentic in both keys.” ~ Kimberley Jones, Austin Chronicle
“With both misery and comedy, director Nathan Silver satisfyingly captures the Jewish experience.” ~ Joey Shapiro, Chicago Reader
“The real attraction here is the interplay between the two leads, which makes Between the Temples sing.” ~ Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News
Dropping Today: The First Episode of INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE.
Introducing the new video podcast Inside the Arthouse. Hosted by Greg Laemmle, President of Laemmle Theatres, and actor and Emmy award-winning director Raphael Sbarge, Inside the Arthouse is an insider’s perspective on filmmakers and the people responsible for the movies showing on arthouse screens across the U.S.
Episode 101: Merchant Ivory: A Conversation with Stephen Soucy is now live everywhere you get your podcasts.
Laemmle Theatres opens Merchant Ivory this Friday at the Royal/West L.A. and Town Center/Encino. In his Hollywood Reporter review, David Rooney wrote of the film, “anyone with a fondness for…what might be described as a gentlemen guerrilla filmmaking operation will find immense pleasure here.” Merchant Ivory director Stephen Soucy will do in-person Q&As following the 7 PM screenings at the Royal on August 30 and 31. Film critic David Ansen will moderate the Q&A on the 30th.
Learn more about Inside the Arthouse at Insidethearthouse.com.
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Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge Launch New Video Podcast INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE.
Greg Laemmle, President of Laemmle Theaters, along with actor and Emmy Award-winning director Raphael Sbarge, are launching a new Video Podcast called INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE. The show is dedicated to highlighting new releases, repertory classics, filmmakers, distributors, and the key personalities who bring movies to the big screen. INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE will be filmed and recorded at the Laemmle Royal Theatre, the 100-year-old theater that has been operated by three generations of Laemmles for the past half century.
Laemmle says, “My family has been dedicated to providing a home for independent, foreign and documentary film for almost a century, and we have decided to launch INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE in order to promote the release of new films that will ultimately play in arthouses all across the country.”
“Our interviews will be recorded in person or via Zoom, with filmmakers appearing large on the screen,” says Sbarge, an independent filmmaker himself. “Opening a movie in theaters requires all the support they can get, and INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE, is dedicated to the celebration of seeing films in theaters.”
Their first guests include Stephen Soucy, the director of MERCHANT IVORY, a documentary about art house mainstays Ismail Merchant and James Ivory; the Golden Lion-winning director of the Swedish film PARADISE IS BURNING, Mika Gustafson; the writer and director of PREY FOR ROCK AND ROLL, Cheri Lovedog and Alex Steyermark, re-released in theaters via Kino Lorber, for their 20th anniversary; and the co-directors of the new documentary UNION, out of the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals, Brett Story and Steven Main.
In subsequent episodes – initially to be released every two weeks – INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE will focus on new releases and repertory classics, filmmakers, distributors, and personalities who are responsible for bringing movies to the big screen. The first episode of INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE will premiere on August 28, 2024. The show can be found on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. For more information, visit www.insidethearthouse.com!
“I just wanted to look at that moment of girlhood where you are shifting away from being ostensibly under the protection of your parents, but also realizing like, ‘Oh, I’m actually not protected by the world. I have to figure out my own, my own way forward.’” India Donaldson on her new film GOOD ONE.
In India Donaldson’s fantastic debut film Good One, 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias) embarks on a three-day backpacking trip in the Catskills with her dad, Chris (James Le Gros) and his oldest friend, Matt (Danny McCarthy). As the two men quickly settle into a gently quarrelsome, brotherly dynamic, airing long-held grievances, Sam, wise beyond her years, tries to mediate. But when lines are crossed and Sam’s trust is betrayed, tensions reach a fever pitch, as Sam struggles with her dad’s emotional limitations and experiences the universal moment when the parental bond is tested. Selected for both Sundance and Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, Good One is an emotionally expansive work that probes the limits of familial trust, understanding, and ultimately, forgiveness.
We open Good One this Friday in Santa Monica and a week from Friday in North Hollywood.
The nation’s film critics are not holding back. A small sample:
“Collias captures something gossamer here, a quiet shift into adult womanhood that happens, literally, overnight. She’s the new moon, ready to emerge. But unlike the moon, she makes her own light.” ~ Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine
“In its lived-in quality and gathering churn, Good One is a dream of an indie, from the craft in every frame to the humor, epiphanies and mysteries that gird its portraiture.” ~ Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times
“Its most distinctive quality is how much Donaldson and her trio of actors … trust the subterranean, and allow it to do its work far beneath the surface, between the words.” ~ Sheila O’Malley, RogerEbert.com
“So much of the grace and, ultimately, the emotional resonance of Good One lies in Collias’ performance, and how she turns a symphony of reaction shots into a portrait of a woman caught in a crossfire of middle-aged male malaise.” ~ David Fear, Rolling Stone
“Subtly dark, humorous, and wise, Good One leans into its wilderness backdrop in all of its liberating (and, sometimes, paradoxically claustrophobic) properties.” ~ Tomris Laffly, Harper’s Bazaar
Donaldson has sat for several recent interviews to talk about her film. Here’s an excerpt from one with Jordan Raup of The Film Stage:
The best directorial debut of the year, India Donaldson’s Good One, is a carefully-observed portrait of both womanhood and fatherhood, capturing the 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias, in a revelatory breakthrough performance) who embarks on a camping trip in the Catskills with her father (James Le Gros) and his best friend (Danny McCarthy). As the men are in the middle of a midlife crisis of sorts, Sam is witness to their mindless banter and subtle indecencies, culminating in a piercing point of no return.
Ahead of the film’s limited release beginning this Friday, I spoke with Donaldson about the character dynamics, the film’s subtle accumulation of details, the Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Kelly Reichardt films she watched as inspiration, and the journey from Sundance to New Directors/New Films to the Cannes Film Festival.
The Film Stage: Can you talk about how you initially formed the dynamic between these three characters? In some ways, it feels like an update on Old Joy but with an entirely new perspective.
India Donaldson: When I wrote the script, it was like deep COVID, and I was living back at home for the first time since high school, basically. And I have two half-siblings who at the time were in high school and I was kind of reflecting. I never thought about, before this moment, exploring that moment in film or writing. But through them this triangulation happened where I was reflecting on my own teen years and memories, of the ways that I dealt with conflict, the ways that I was avoidant of conflict, just my qualities of being in the world as a teenager. And how I felt like I had spent my 20s kind of trying to beat back certain instincts I had––to please or this kind of thing that had worked for me as a teenage girl, I feel like it wasn’t working for me in my professional life. I felt like I didn’t have the confidence to really pursue what I wanted to pursue, all these things. I just wanted to look at that moment of girlhood where you are shifting away from being ostensibly under the protection of your parents, but also realizing like, “Oh, I’m actually not protected by the world. I have to figure out my own, my own way forward.”
If you just look at the logline you could think it’s like a coming-of-age movie, but I feel like throughout the movie you learn she’s actually more mature in some ways, and level of maturity is not defined by age. She’s picking up on different social cues. What was it like writing her character and after you met Lily, did her character expand?
The character was on the page for sure, but the moment I met Lily and saw her audition, she just had added this edge to the character. I was always kind of nervous about the character that she would come across as too much of a doormat. That it would be sort of unsatisfying to watch somebody repeatedly act kind of in service of these men and their needs and struggle with that. Lily just had this quality where even when the character’s at her most obedient, I could always feel her pushing against it. Because I think Lily herself has a natural kind of rebellious [spirit]. She’s a real freethinker and has this incredible confidence that the character doesn’t have. But I think it bleeds into the performance and so it evolved in that sense. As soon as it was sort of in her hands, the character became more powerful to me. Which was a cool thing to discover.
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