Festival Predictions

2014 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Robinson Devor’s You Can’t Win

Published on November 22, 2013

A return visitor at the festival for all three of his feature films The Woman Chaser (2000), Police Beat (2005) and Zoo (2007), I’m feeling good about the chances of seeing Robinson Devor make it a four-peat. A period film that was shot over a pair of seasons, we’ve been anticipating this passion project for a while now. You Can’t Win stars Michael Pitt, Jeremy Allen White, Will Patton, Hannah Marks, Louisa Krause and Julia Garner.

Gist: Scripted by Devor, Pitt, Barry Gifford and Charles Mudede, this is an adaptation of adventurer Jack Black’s 1926 autobiographical novel of the same name which tells of his experiences in the hobo underworld, freight-hopping around the still Wild West of the United States and Canada while he explores the topics of crime, addiction, criminal justice and human folly from various viewpoints. The drama is centered on the unusual friendship between Black (Pitt) and a young prostitute (Marks).

Production Co./Producers: Robert Scarff, Zach Sebastian, Michael Pitt

Prediction: U.S. Dramatic Competition or Premieres category.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available

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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).