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Annual Top Films Lists

Top 200 Most Anticipated Films for 2014: #54. Mark Jackson’s War Story

War Story

Director: Mark Jackson
Writers: Kristin Gore, Mark Jackson
Producers: Kristin Gore, Catherine Keener, Matt Ratner, Shona Tuckman
U.S. Distributor: Rights Available
Cast: Catherine Keener, Hafsia Herzi, Ben Kingsley

A simmering indie gem that the international film fest circuit and indie industry folk championed, Mark Jackson’s psychologically twisted, stylistically polished Without might just be the perfect bedfellow for the Sundance preemed sophomore film. Working from a stunning, murky photographed palette, War Story is lead by a Catherine Keener who exquisitely deciphers the knee-deep psychotropic post-war affects in isolating, alienating, trenches.

Gist: Lee (Keener) is a war photographer who has spent her adult life in the world’s most treacherous conflict zones, documenting the catastrophes of others. When we meet her, she has recently experienced her own horror after being taken hostage and brutalized in Libya. Instead of returning to New York where her concerned colleagues and loved ones anxiously await her, Lee detours to Sicily instead, where she holes up in a small hotel to weather her PTSD on her own terms, not far from the home of her former lover and mentor Albert (Ben Kingsley).

Release Date: This received its world premiere screening at the Sundance Film Festival and should be a popular item on the film fest circuit and we can expect a small theatrical release later this year.
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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).

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