Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated American Indie Films of 2018: #71. Ondi Timoner’s Mapplethorpe

Published on January 15, 2018

Mapplethorpe

Now in her second decade in filmmaking you’d think Ondi Timoner doesn’t have much more to prove, but Mapplethorpe is her debut in the fiction narrative form. Of course, Timoner is musically well versed as so this project might indeed be in thoughtful hands. She won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize for Dig! (2004) and followed that up with yet another win for We Live in Public (2009). Despite some casting announcements in early 2016, production began last July, and was taken to the Sundance labs under the title “The Perfect Moment”.

Based on a story by Bruce Goodrich, and written by Mikko Alanne and Ondi Timoner, Matt Smith and Marianne Rendón star in the pic which follows Mapplethorpe from his rise to fame in the 1970s to his untimely death in 1989 due to complications from AIDS. Newbie Marianne Rendón is set as Patti Smith.

Release Date/Prediction: Perhaps a fest close to NYC — could be Tribeca or NYFF.

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).