All About Eva: Mary Elizabeth Winstead & Common Stand Up for Vives’ “All About Nina”

The story writer from one of the seminal American indie films of the naughts (Raising Victor Vargas) has, as confirmed last week, completed photography on her directorial debut. Deadline reported that Eva Vives directed Elizabeth Winstead and Common in All About Nina, which is described as a semi-autobiographical dark comedy. Beau Bridges, Kate Del Castillo, Chace Crawford, Clea DuVall, Jay Mohr, Melonie Diaz, Camryn Manheim, Mindy Sterling, Angelique Cabral complete the cast. Diablo Entertainment’s Sean Tabibian (Sleight), Natalie Qasabian, Eric B. Fleischman and Vives are producing. Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Joshua Astrachan executived produced. The film will likely be ready for film fest submission early 2018.

Gist: Written Vives, this follows Nina Geld (Winstead), a bracingly funny and blisteringly provocative stand-up comedian whose career is taking off, but whose personal life is a near-complete disaster. To escape a difficult ex and to prepare for a prospectively life-changing audition, Nina flees to Los Angeles where she meets Rafe (Common), who challenges almost every preconception she has — including those around her own deeply troubled past.

Worth Noting: Vives won the Best Short Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival for Five Feet High and Rising – the template film for Raising Victor Vargas. Here’s a throwback article.

Do We Care?: Selected to participate in both the 2016 Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters and Directors Labs, this potentially places actress Winstead in her strong suit: dramatic and tonally shapeshifting terrain as witnessed in James Ponsoldt’s Smashed.