Annual Top Films Lists

Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #104. Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry

Published on January 12, 2023

BlackBerry

The Dirties (2013) and Operation Avalanche (2016) filmmaker Matt Johnson makes his long awaited return to features with this blast to the past. Featuring Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, Cary Elwes and Martin Donovan, BlackBerry (which IFC Films picked up during filming) moved into production last summer. This revolves around the players around the world’s first smartphone, which enjoyed a meteoric rise in the early 2000s only to meet a catastrophic demise. Niv Fichman, Matthew Miller, Fraser Ash and Kevin Krikst produced the project.

Gist: This describes the rise and fall of the once-ubiquitous device as its Canadian parent company Research in Motion floundered in legal disputes and eventually lost its market advantage to competitors such as Apple and Samsung. At the heart of the story is the business relationship between co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie.

Release Date/Prediction: We thought this would be a sure bet for Sundance, but perhaps SXSW lassoed the film. A domestic distribution date is pending.

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).