Festival Predictions

2019 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: #56. Sia – Music

Published on November 22, 2018

After blasting a whole bunch of originality in the texts found Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux, I’m ready for a second helping of film-based creativity by Sia. In what would be the most anticipated directorial debut to take place at the festival if it lands there, Music is what happens when the Australian singer-songwriter saddled up her mini muse Maddie Ziegler, Kate Hudson and Leslie Odom Jr. for what at first was a non-musical film but then turned into a full blown musical with songs by Sia and choreography by Sia’s frequent collaborator Ryan Heffington. The courage to make a move into filmmaking came about via the music video directing experience Chandelier.

Gist: Co-written by Sia and Dallas Clayton, this is the story of about an autistic child (Ziegler) who is cared for by her sober, drug-dealing sister (Hudson).

Production Co./Producers: TBD

Prediction: U.S. Dramatic Comp followed by SXSW.

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).