Festival Predictions

2016 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Gabe Klinger’s Porto

Published on November 25, 2015

Currently titled after Portuguese’s second largest city and favorite gross domestic product, this fictional feature debut comes from a name who has appeared in such publications as Sight & Sound, Film Comment, and Cinema Scope. Gabe Klinger saw his non-fiction feature debut played out on the Lido (Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater) and earlier this year he packed Lucie Lucas and Anton Yelchin (the narrator is the dearly departed Chantal Akerman) for a Portugal/Paris shoot on the failed love theme. Porto is another Champs-Elysées Film Festival (2015) US in Progress selected project to be featured on our predictions list, this was filmed in multiple film formats and carries a distinct Euro feel and appeal.

Gist: Co-written by Klinger and Larry Gross, this is the story of the doomed romance between a man (Yelchin) and a woman (Lucas) set in Porto, Portugal.

Production Co./Producers: Rodrigo Areias (Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater), Todd Remis (Magic Magic), Julie Snyder and Gabe Klinger. Executive producers: Jim Jarmusch and Stephen T. Skoly (Fixing America).

Prediction: U.S. Dramatic Comp. However we think this might be more to the tune of a Cannes or Venice Film Fest showing.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. TBD (domestic). TBD (international)

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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).