Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated American Independent Films of 2019: #21. Ira Sachs’ Frankie

Published on February 8, 2019

Frankie

Ira Sachs‘ first production outside North America managed to lasso the likes of Isabelle Huppert, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear, Jérémie Renier and Brendan Gleeson for an October shoot in Portugal. Frankie, his seventh feature film, replaces generic titles of Switzerland and A Family Vacation, and could tonally resemble some of his previous dramas starting way back in 1996’s The Delta, 2005’s Forty Shades of Blue, 2012’s Keep the Lights On or 2014’s Love Is Strange. Saïd Ben Saïd and Michel Merkt produce.

Gist: Written by Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias, this is about three generations grappling with a life-changing experience during one day of a vacation in Sintra, Portugal, a historic town known for its dense gardens and fairy-tale villas and palaces.

Release Date/Prediction: Always a safe bet for Sundance or TIFF, with French financing in place and a Euro cast, this should be a competition red carpet of Cannes or could even open the Directors’ Fortnight.

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).