Annual Top Films Lists

Top 50 Most Anticipated American Indie Films of 2019: #50. Martha Stephens’ To the Stars

Published on January 22, 2019

To the Stars

Moving from the lopapeysa fitted, John Cassavetes Award winning Land Ho! to an Oklahoma Land Rush, Martha Stephens (profiled in our Sundance Trading Card) confidently steps into her fourth feature film, To the Stars. In what could be black & white splendor, after Passenger Pigeons, Pilgrim Song and her bonafide hit (a tandem with Aaron Katz) from Sundance 2014, Stephens shot in Oklahoma last May on a coming-of-ager project. The first project that she has not penned (cred goes to Shannon Bradley-Colleary), this sees Moonrise Kingdom actress Kara Hayward in perhaps her loftiest role to date. On this project, Stephens reteams with Land Ho! cinematographer Andrew Reed and works with a strong supporting cast including actress/Night Comes On helmer Jordana Spiro.

Gist: A 1960s coming-of-age tale, this centers on the powerful friendship forged between a shy farmer’s daughter (Kara Hayward) and a reckless new girl in town (Liana Liberato).

Release Date/Prediction: Selected for the Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Dramatic Comp – January 25th world premiere date.

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).