It looks like SXSW is going to be a bit of Sundance South in 2013. With Park City premieres like "Don Jon's Addiction," "Computer Chess," "Prince Avalanche," "Before Midnight" and "Upstream Color" all headed to Austin, one more movie that unspooled at the festival is making its way to the city of BBQ.
Zal Batmanglij's "The East" will be the Closing Night film of the 2013 SXSW Film Festival. It's familiar territory for the director, who followed a similar trajectory in 2011 with "Sound Of My Voice," with that film too taking a bow at Sundance and playing SXSW a couple months later. But capping off an exciting week or so of moviegoing is a nice way to return. The film stars Ellen Page, Alexander Skarsgard, Brit Marling and Patricia Clarkson, and tells the story of a young woman who infiltrates a radical environmentalist activist group but finds her moral boundaries becoming blurred.
As we noted in our review, the film is one that should get many people talking, and it seems like a good note to end SXSW on. Meanwhile, even more Sundance titles have also been added to the lineup including James Ponsoldt's "The Spectacular Now," docs "Muscle Shoals," "Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer" and "Linsanity" as well as Ramin Bahrani's "At Any Price" and many more. Check out the official website for more details. The festival runs from March 8-16.
Why The East didn't go to Berlin? Since the current Berlinale goes to exact kinda sense of Sundance, the titles are like Before Midnight, Nessesary Death of Charlie Countryman, Prince Avalanche and Don Jon's Addiction, etc. are looking for European Markets.