Festival Predictions

2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life

Published on November 16, 2017

We voiced our hope that we’d see her sometime soon when we launched our inaugural Top 10 American Indie Filmmakers Missing in Action back in 2015, and much to our delight, this past March, the trades confirmed that Tamara Jenkins would direct a Netflix drama with Molly Shannon (winner of the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female and Best Supporting Performance for the American Independent Film Awards). Filming took place in March with Shannon being joined by Paul Giamatti, Kathryn Hahn, John Carroll Lynch, Emily Robinson, Kayli Carter and Francesca Root-Dodson. We almost forget this, but in a one film each decade pace, Private Life is only Jenkins’ third feature film after Slums of Beverly Hills (1998) and The Savages (2007). Expect a solid human condition portrait.

Gist: An author (Hahn) is undergoing multiple fertility therapies to get pregnant, putting her relationship with her husband (Giamatti) on edge. They try to maintain their marriage as they descend deeper and deeper into the weird world of assisted reproduction and domestic adoption. When their doctor suggests third party reproduction, they bristle. But when Sadie, a recent college drop out, re-enters their life, they reconsider.

Production Co./Producers: Likely Story‘s Anthony Bregman (Foxcatcher) and Stefanie Azpiazu.

Prediction: Premieres section.

U.S. Distributor: Netflix.

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).