Annual Top Films Lists

Top 50 Most Anticipated American Independent Films of 2019: #41. Wash Westmoreland’s The Earthquake Bird

Published on January 23, 2019

The Earthquake Bird

A book to film project that was assembled late in 2016 and that takes place in on the cusp of the 1990’s Tokyo, Wash Westmoreland once again works with a sizeable budget for a truly international project that began production last May with the likes of Riley Keough and Alicia Vikander adding to the intrigue. The Earthquake Bird was initially an Amazon Studios project until Netflix nabbed the film. Westmoreland lost creative and true life partner Richard Glatzer at the height of his success of Oscar winner Still Alice, but has been in a creative spark since with Colette, and now this project where he teams up with Oldboy cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon for a first time.

Gist: Based on Susanna Jones’ novel, set in Tokyo, this revolves around a young female expat (Riley Keough) who is suspected of murder when her friend (Alicia Vikander) goes missing in the wake of a tumultuous love triangle with Teiji (Kobayashi), a handsome and mysterious local photographer.

Release Date/Prediction: With Netflix on board, we imagine a fest premiere at a fest such as TIFF prior to wide release on the platform.

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).