Festival Predictions

2017 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Jessica Manafort’s Rosy

Published on November 27, 2016

The daughter of former Trump campaign chairman proposes an anti-Stockholm Syndrome with her NYC set, kidnapping thriller Rosy. Lensing began in November of 2015 on her long awaited sophomore feature, before that Jessica Manafort directed a trio of shorts and the feature Remember the Daze (2007). This time out she employs a youthful cast of Nat Wolff, Stacy Martin, Sky Ferreira and helmer/actor Alex Karpovsky with a score signed Danny Bensi/Saunder Jurriaans (Amanda Knox) and cinematography by Zach Galler (Collective: Unconscious). Sundance once had Alpha Dog in their ranks, perhaps this is a fit as well.

Gist: Wolff plays Doug, a lonely guy who kidnaps a struggling actress named Rosy (Stacy Martin). Plans go awry as she proves more difficult for him to handle than ever expected.

Production Co./Producers: Super Crispy Entertainment’s Jonathan Schwartz (Imperial Dreams).

Prediction: U.S. Dramatic Comp.

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).