Top 100 Most Anticipated American Indie Films of 2018: #94. Elizabeth Chomko’s What They Had

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What They Had

A seasoned actress who wound up striking gold in more ways than one during the development of the project (Elizabeth Chomko had a sojourn with her project at the 2015 Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab, and she also nabbed the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting and later on, 2017 Sundance Institute Music and Sound Design Lab), What They Had is on paper an adult lit type.

Spotful & IONCINEMA.com

Described by Sundance as a film that “avoids the easy sentimentality of the disease-drama genre to offer a full family portrait—in all its messy complexity“, a cast comprised of Hilary Swank, Michael Shannon, Blythe Danner, Robert Forster, Taissa Farmiga and Josh Lucas are part of this tapestry that sees Bridget (Swank) returns home to Chicago to help her brother (Shannon) deal with their mother’s memory loss (Danner) and their father’s reluctance to let go of their life together. The trip home and family crisis forces Bridget to face her past and, ultimately, her future. The acting calibre is definitely present, so here’s hoping that this is just as powerful as Sarah Polley’s Away From Her.

Release Date/Prediction: Selected for the Premieres category, Chomko’s What They Had will be released by Bleecker Street.

Eric Lavallée
Eric Lavalléehttps://www.ericlavallee.com
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist, and critic at IONCINEMA.com, established in 2000. A regular at Sundance, Cannes, and Venice, Eric holds a BFA in film studies from the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013, he served on the narrative competition jury 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 was a New Flesh Juror for Best First Feature at the Fantasia International Film Festival. His top films for 2023 include The Zone of Interest (Glazer), Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Pham Thien An), Totem (Lila Avilés), La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher), All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson). He is a Golden Globes Voter.

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