Fresh off one of his finest performances to date in The Messenger (surprisingly his first lead role this late in his career despite showing off his skills in 3:10 To Yuma and his psycho bit in Alpha Dog) Ben Foster and Lubna Azabal (Exils and Paradise Now) are top-lining Braden King’s Here.
King mounted the project with the aid of several labs (Cannes, Tribeca) and the same 2007 Sundance lab as Sophie Barthes and her soon to be released Cold Souls.
Co-written by King and Dani Valent, this sees real and imaginary landscapes merge as a solitary satellite mapping engineer (Foster) charts the Armenian countryside with an expatriate art photographer revisiting her (Azabel) homeland. The project is being produced by Parts and Labor’s Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy and is currently being shot as of last week in Armenia. Expect the film to play at one of the frist three major film festivals of 2010.
It’s with Exiles where I first discovered Azabel (the sequence in question borders somewhere between acting and being in an actual trance) and also happens to be a road movie of sorts which I’m sure Braden has seen.