Festival Predictions

2019 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: #96. Benh Zeitlin – Wendy

Published on November 23, 2018

With the amount of time being put into the post production portion of the process, I doubt that sophomore jinx will be applicable here. Wendy is Benh Zeitlin‘s long waited follow up to Beasts of the Southern Wild which the Fox Searchlight will be plotting carefully in terms of its release — as we get this is Wes Anderson care package in scope. In the seven years between projects, Zeitlin has worked on projects for other peeps — composed the music for Jonas Carpignano’s Mediterranea and Viktor Jakovleski’s Brimstone & Glory. Writing credits now include his sister — Eliza Zeitlin. Sundance programmers want this one badly.

Gist: Written by Benh and Eliza Zeitlin, this is set on a mysterious island where aging and time have come unglued, this tells the tale of two children from different worlds fighting to maintain their grip on freedom and joy.

Production Co./Producers: Becky Glupczynski, Michael Gottwald, Nathan Harrison, Dan Janvey, Paul Mezey, Josh Penn.

Prediction: Premieres.

U.S. Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures.

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).