Festival Predictions

2019 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: #54. Alejandro Landes – Monos

Published on November 22, 2018

Alejandro Landes flagged the Sundance folks early in his career, premiering his directorial debut in the docu Cocalero way back in 2007 prior to being a Sundance Directors Lab 2009 participant (same year as Beasts of the Southern Wild) for what would be the Cannes preemed Porfirio in 2011. When not side hustling on designing homes a la Luca Guadagnino (check out his work in Wallpaper), for what sounds like a horrible day in the park in Monos, Landes went on to employ the services of Moisés Arias – who we fondly recall from Sundance entry The Kings of Summer (aka Toy’s House) and Julianne Nicholson — who is turning out to be a recent world cinema contributor). A multi-country co-production, this was co-written with Alexis Dos Santos who brought Unmade Beds to the Park City in 2009 and the score is provided by Mica Levi (Under the Skin, Jackie).

Gist: Written by Alejandro Landes and Alexis Dos Santos, on a faraway mountaintop, eight kids with guns watch over a hostage and a conscripted milk cow.

Production Co./Producers: Fernando Epstein (The Heiresses), Santiago A. Zapata (The Boy), Alejandro and Cristina Landes.

Prediction: World Dramatic Comp or Midnight and/or Rotterdam or Berlin.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. Le Pacte (world).

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).