Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2013: #54. Matthew Porterfield’s I Used to be Darker

I Used to be Darker

Director: Matthew Porterfield
Writer(s): Amy Belk, Matthew Porterfield
Producer(s): Eric Bannat, Steve Holmgren, Ryan Zacarias
U.S. Distributor: Rights Available
Cast: Deragh Campbell, Hannah Gross, Kim Taylor, Ned Oldham, Geoff Grace, Nick Petr

The reason why I accurately predicted that Matthew Porterfield would receive a Sundance Film Festival invite for I Used to be Darker, his third feature film, is primarily due to the genius behind his sophomore pic, Putty Hill. Featuring the photography by regular contributor Jeremy Saulnier, this offers fresh faces in front of the camera in a backdrop that Porterfield appears to know like the back of his hand.

Gist: Scripted by Amy Belk and Porterfield, this is about a young woman named Taryn, a Northern Irish runaway, who finds herself pregnant in Ocean City, MD, she seeks refuge with American relatives in Baltimore. But Aunt Kim and her husband, Bill, have problems of their own: they’re trying to handle the end of their marriage gracefully for the sake of their daughter Abby, just home from her first year of college. What follows is a story of family revelations, people finding each other and letting each other go, looking for love where they’ve found it before and, when that doesn’t work, figuring out where they might find it next.

Release Date: Sundance Film Festival – NEXT section selection. Will travel well on the fest circuit. Pick-up for distribution might come from The Cinema Guild folks who got behind Putty Hill.