Festival Predictions

2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Benh Zeitlin’s Wendy

Published on November 17, 2017

We’ve kept our ears peeled to the ground and eyes glued since non-trade related film news began to trickle in 2013, but for the most part, we’ve been left with tiny fragments of what amounts to sasquatch sitings. This should all change in 2018. Many have been jonesing for whatever world Benh Zeitlin decides to present next: will it be a Lord of the Flies meets fantastical Benjamin Button elements or should we expect Gondry-esque gold dust? Zeitlin hasn’t been inactive since 2012, he composed the music for Jonas Carpignano’s Mediterranea and Viktor Jakovleski’s Brimstone & Glory. In 2018, we’ll be accessing Wendy, a sophomore project filmed in exoticism bliss of Antigua and its surroundings. We do know that unknowns Devin France, Yashua Mack, Gage Naquin, Gavin Naquin and Romyri Ross are the diminutive larger than life figures to populate this film which we expect to be an amusement park ride la Beasts of the Southern Wild. After seeing how we can access smaller worlds a la Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, with trepidation, we await to see where this film will premiere.

Gist: A young girl is kidnapped and taken to a hidden ecosystem where a tribal war is raging over a form of pollen that breaks the relationship between aging and time.

Production Co./Producers: Court13.

Prediction: Perhaps the most anticipated sales title for the Premieres section, or if Thierry Fremaux fancies the title, it’ll be locked for the Main Comp at the Cannes Film Festival.

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

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).