Festival Predictions

2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Sebastián Silva’s Tyrel

Published on November 17, 2017

What does one do when a project falls apart days before shooting? If you’re Terry Gilliam you throw your hands up in the air, and if you’re Sebastián Silva you put Captain Dad on the backburner and quickly put together your Merry Men and head to the Catskills. For those still not in the know, in terms of original voices and uncompromising visionaries, what Lanthimos is to Cannes, Silva is to Sundance. Once again working with creative muse Michael Cera, Tyrel also sees Caleb Landry Jones (we mention him in four predicted films for the fest), Christopher Abbott, Jason Mitchell, Michael Zegen, Philip Ettinger and Roddy Bottum in an ensemble piece that shot last January. Silva premiered a pair in Magic Magic and Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus at the fest in 2013, and one of the most underrated and overlooked films of the 2015 edition and film season in Nasty Baby.

Gist: This is about a group of guys that go on a birthday weekend trip up to the Catskills in a cabin.

Production Co./Producers: Max Born and Jake Wasserman (The Eyes of My Mother), Gigi Graff (Catfight), Carlos Zozaya (Chained for Life)

Prediction: From Premieres to NEXT section, this could land anywhere including…Cannes.

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).