After the success of last year’s titles such as “The Sweet East” (Sean Price Williams) in the official section or “Gasoline Rainbow” (Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross), best film at the Punto de Encuentro, the International Film Week in Valladolid, in its 69th edition, is redoubled its commitment to new American independent cinema, both in its competitive sections and through the celebration of a retrospective that will delve in depth into the work of Nathan Silver, one of the most authentic American creators on the current scene.
Considered a modernist master of melodrama, New York writer, producer and director Nathan Silver, A 2005 graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, his films are in-depth studies of protagonists, many of them on the margins of society, who are experiencing complex existential moments. Silver has written and produced five short films and nine feature films.
According to a statement by Seminci collected by Ical, this year you will be able to see his feature films “Soft in the Head” (2013), a variation of romantic films with characters involved in great uncertainties; “Uncertain Terms” (2014), set in a shelter for pregnant teenagers in the middle of the forest; “Stinking Heaven” (2015), set in a community of former drug addicts in which its members face their traumas during filming; “The Great Pretender” (2018), where the line between fiction and reality is blurred when a director creates a play based on his love story, which overlaps the romance of the two protagonists of the show; and the premiere in Spain of “Between the Temples” (2023), his latest film, which represents an evolutionary leap in his career.
In the official section, Tracie Laymon (“Bob Trevino Likes It”) and Tyler Taormina (“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point”) will compete for the top prizes. Starring John Leguizamo and Barbie Ferreira, “Bob Trevino Likes It” is the story of a lonely young woman estranged from a narcissistic and manipulative father who finds peace in forming an emotional connection with a man with the same name as her father. he knows this through Facebook. Tracy Laymon won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas. Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, Ben Shenkman, Francesca Scorsese and Sawyer Spielberg star in “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” which premiered at the Cannes Filmmakers’ Fortnight and offers a reinterpretation of one of the classic genres of American music. cinema, Christmas films.
At the meeting point Carson Lund (“Eephus”), Constance Tsang (“Blue Sun Palace”) and Jesse Eisenberg (“A Real Pain”) will star. “Eephus,” also premiering at Cannes, is a twilight film that connects to one of North America’s great icons, baseball, presenting a beautiful treatise on time based on the celebration of a final game between two amateur teams in a dilapidated New York. England’s stadium on the verge of being demolished. “Blue Sun Palace,” winner of the Cannes Critics’ Prize, offers a meditation on absence, grief and the human need for connection. And “A Real Pain,” whose screenplay won an award at Sundance, is actor Jesse Eisenberg’s second film as a director. The film offers a meditation on the trivialization of the past and the memory of a place that has now become a museum filled with tourists.
In addition, in alchemy ‘Invention’, by Courtney Stephens, will participate, with Callie Hernández, winner of the award for best actress in the Filmmakers of the Present section of Locarno, as protagonist and co-writer.
