We can confirm that it’ll have been a noteworthy 2024 for Hanna Gray Organschi. With a recent visit to Sundance Screenwriters Lab and the eventual premiere of her next short in “F*ck That Guy,” we’re set for what might be a new acerbic and clever voice – with a possible thorny, circa 1990s dramedy-like exploration of entrepreneurship and reproductive rights sub-genre sphere circa 1990s. With one of her first creds being an Director’s Assistant for Antonio Campos on The Devil All the Time, there’ll be some connective tissue between the pending short project and her eventual feature in Rubber Hut. I had the pleasure to speak to New Haven raised filmmaker about the time, space and place of her project, learned about the support of Recipients of Reproductive Rights Accelerator Award and learned about what it is like to find early support from key people in the business.
Sundance project synopsis: Rhode Island, 1992. An entrepreneurial ex–Pan Am stewardess opens a drive-thru condom shop in her Italian Catholic town. Overnight, Emanuella DelVecchio becomes the local lightning rod, a radical hero to the neighborhood teens and an unlikely threat to her tight-knit community.
Throughout this week, we’ll be featuring profiles of several fellows from the recent 2024 Sundance Screenwriters Labs, all of whom we had the pleasure of speaking with during the Sundance Film Festival. Some of these projects are slated to become future films and may even debut in Park City, while a smaller fraction might not find their way to the big screen. However, being part of this select group serves as a significant source of encouragement and progression within the film industry. What’s particularly inspiring is witnessing how each of these distinctive voices is crafting original works spanning various genres, often exploring themes of politics and social engagement through cinema.
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).
