“Dreamin’ Wild”
Mostly a film producer, though occasional filmmaker, Bill Pohlad roared back to full-time directing relevancy with the Brian Wilson/Beach Boys film, “Love & Mercy,” which really demonstrated his affinity for making films about musicians and the art of musical creation. He took that same energy into “Dreamin’ Wild,” a drama about Donnie and Joe Emerson, a forgotten teen duo whose self-made, self-recorded 1970s album was rediscovered and reappraised by critics decades later. The cast, Casey Affleck, Walton Goggins, Zooey Deschanel, Noah Jupe, Jack Dylan Grazer, Chris Messina, and Beau Bridges, is terrific. “Lightning strikes twice for filmmaker Bill Pohlad,” our review from Venice wrote. “[It’s] a harmonious composition that blends an impressionistic style with humanistic storytelling.” – Rodrigo Perez
Release Date: TBD, Still seeking a U.S. distributor.
“Sanctuary”
Filmmaker Zachary Wigon landed on our radar with the 2014 romantic social media thriller, “The Heart Machine.” He finally returned during TIFF 2022 with “Sanctuary,” a BDSM thriller. The film follows a dominatrix and Hal, her wealthy client, and the disaster that ensues when Hal tries to end their relationship. Christopher Abbott (“Girls“) is the client, and that none-too-please dominatrix is played by the fearless Margaret Qualley. “Wigon illustrates how frightening, overwhelming, and nourishing it can be to stop the withholding,” our TIFF review wrote. “To allow yourself the pleasure of giving and receiving, and to see the liberation in submission.” – RP
Release Date: Super/Neon will release the film TBD 2023.
“How To Blow Up A Pipeline”
Compared to a lot of these other films, Daniel Goldhaber’s “How To Blow Up A Pipeline” heist thriller seems much more abstract, perhaps because only one still was ever released, never featuring one member of the cast. Still, everyone who saw the film— about a group of environmental activists plot a daring plan to disrupt an oil pipeline—raved about it. Ariela Barer, Kristine Froseth, Lukas Gage, Sasha Lane star, and our review out of TIFF said, “Truly radical art interrogates the rigid parameters of government in search of more human truth, one that considers the possibility that people in power have very little understanding of what is good for the populace. Goldhaber approaches a statement like that here.” Sold. – RP
Release Date: Neon won the bidding war, so now it’s TBD 2023.
“Saint Omer”
Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Alice Diop’s debut narrative feature won the Grand Jury Prize last year at Venice for elegantly turning a courtroom drama into an affecting meditation on race, motherhood, and immigration. Kayije Kagame plays a young novelist who attends the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), an immigrant from Senegal who is accused of murdering her 15-month-old child by leaving her on a beach. The story has its roots in the 2016 French court case of Fabienne Kabou, who was convicted of the same crime. Our TIFF review called it a “captivating, soul-shattering work overflowing with gentle sympathy, [it] begins with a woman running through the dark. It ends with her hugged in the light.” – OW
Release Date: January 13, via Super.
“Brother and Sister”
Not your typical Arnaud Desplechin film of garrulous neurotics flitting into and out of each other’s lives or warring at family reunions: “Brother and Sister” are much more enigmatic, though no less subdued. Siblings Louis (Melvil Poupaud) and Alice (Marion Cotillard) despise each other. So much, in fact, that their first interaction for years—Alice visiting Louis, whose six-year-old son has died—ends with a particularly searing quarrel. Through conversations with friends and family, Desplechin slowly reveals to us the history of Alice and Louis’s turbulent bond. Our review from Cannes remarked that these often jealous and indignant but ultimately compassionate characters “do not appear to exist solely to serve a plot or relate some kind of meaning — rather, they seem to simply emerge independent of any planned story, unruly and unpredictable, themselves at the whims of their own emotions and desires, and with Desplechin lovingly following them in their struggles.” – OW
Release Date: TBD, and still seeking U.S. distribution.
