Festival Predictions

2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Hannah Fidell’s The Long Dumb Road

Published on November 17, 2017

Having debuted A Teacher (review) at Sundance back in 2013, she saw her next feature 6 Years (review) premiere at SXSW in 2015. Teaming with the idiosyncratic Carson D. Mell for scribe duties, with The Long Dumb Road (based on a short film version of the script The Road which came out in 2016), Hannah Fidell might be giving Sundance auds the next Land Ho! variant. We’re betting that we’ll be far off from say, a simplistic roadtrip a la Alexandre Payne, as her of Tony Revolori and Jason Mantzoukas means this comedy could tangibly have a lot more to say about the racist zeitgeist of America. Filming took place in January, and then in April with a supporting cast comprised of former muses Taissa Farmiga and Lindsay Burdge, as well as Grace Gummer, Ron Livingston, Casey Wilson, Pamela Reed and Ciara Bravo. Sundance regular Keegan DeWitt wrote the score, Zach Clark is the editor and Fidell reteams with director/cinemtographer Andrew Droz Palermo. This might be… truck stop food for thought.

Gist: This tells the story of two very different men (Revolori and Mantzoukas), at personal crossroads who meet serendipitously and take an unpredictable journey through the American Southwest. At once comedic and honest, the film explores how differences in class, race, age, and life experience divide us, and how they can ultimately bring us together.

Production Co./Producers: Ten Acre Films’ Kelly Williams and Jonathan Duffy (Hellion), Hannah Fidell, Jacqueline E. Ingram.

Prediction: A NEXT section hopeful, but betcha bottom dollar SXSW want this one.

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).