Festival Predictions

2021 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Charlie Stratton’s Seacole

Published on November 23, 2020

With some television work and one feature under his belt In Secret (TIFF ’13), Charlie Stratton began lensing Seacole back in March of 2019 with players Sam Worthington, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Numan Acar, Sylvia Hoeks and Sean Delaney. This sophomore project was shot in Serbia and Los Angeles.

Gist: Co-written by Dianne Houston, Marnie Dickens and Stratton, this follows Mary Seacole (Mbatha-Raw), a pioneering Jamaican nurse who became known during the Crimean War for her care of wounded British soldiers. Seacole’s self-sacrifice on the front lines and fierce, adversarial relationship with Florence Nightingale during the war made her famous in her time.

Production Co./Producers: Billy Peterson.

Prediction: PREMIERES.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available.

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).