Festival Predictions

2022 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Lena Dunham’s Sharp Stick

Published on November 24, 2021

Lena Dunham is sure making up for her lack of feature film output with not one, but two films in post production. She has the most recently shot Catherine, Called Birdy in the can, but we think it’s Sharp Stick that’ll launch first. Featuring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jon Bernthal, Kristine Froseth, Taylour Paige and Scott Speedman as a porn star, this is being coined as a personal story about the complexities of female sexuality. Shot during the pandemic in late 2020 in Los Angeles, Dunham teamed with cinematographer Ashley Connor and editor Catrin Hedström.

Gist: No plot details yet, but Dunham described this as a personal story about the complexities of female sexuality.

Production Co./Producers: Kevin Turen, Katia Washington, Michael Cohen, Good Thing Going’s Lena Dunham.

Prediction: PREMIERES.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. CAA/FilmNation (domestic). FilmNation (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).