2015 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Jake Mahaffy’s Free in Deed

After Tim Sutton’s portrait in 2014, this could this be a back-to-back Sundance editions with the idea of Memphis in the forefront. Taking perhaps the tortoise route towards fruition, Free in Deed was part of the same 2005 Screenwriters Lab (same year as Cary Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre and So Yong Kim’s Treeless Mountain) with stops at the but the Cannes Atelier, 2006 Sundance Institute Director Lab and Annenberg Film Fellowship Grant. This project is definitely in the homestretch. Jake Mahaffy who first broke out with Frontier section WAR in 2004 and followed that up with the 2008 SXSW Dramatic Comp Grand Jury Prize winning Wellness (also an IFP Gotham Awards – Best Undistributed Film Nominee) has been keeping the coals fired up working in the short and installation forms. He had previously made appearances in Park City with his Motion Studies series in Gravity (2005), Mobile (2005), Heat (2005), Inertia (2008), and most recently broke onto the Lido with the Venice Film Fest preemed Miracle Boy (2012). After having filmed last February and after putting up this crowdsourcing campaign, we’re expecting this true story about faith, and as Mahaffy describes it, “the forces that lead the characters to define themselves through beliefs” to jolt future auds with an evanescent treatment and parade of sin, deep sorrow and misguided faith. The trailer is of pure beauty.

Gist: In order to tend for his own ill son, an intensely religious man (David Harewood) secretly returns to his hometown where, years ago, his attempted miracle became a criminal act. Edwina Findley plays the role of the mother.

Production Co./Producers: Greyshack Films’ Mike S. Ryan (Junebug, Meek’s Cutoff, The Comedy), Votiv’s Brent Stiefel (exec producer on Obvious Child) & Michael Bowes (producer on Alex Karpovsky’s Red Flag)

Prediction: NEXT Section probabilities slightly higher than a U.S. Dramatic Comp showing.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. TBD (domestic). TBD (international).

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