Festival Predictions

2016 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Elizabeth Wood’s White Girl

Published on November 26, 2015

While the issue of gender disparity in the film industry remains a hot topic issue, when it comes to the approach of Sundance Film Fest programmers, I’d argue that its equal opportunity friendly when servicing original newbie filmmaker voices. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the likes of Elizabeth Wood being harnessed into a Park City chairlift seat. With a docu feature and three short films under her belt, Wood managed to find executive producers in Killer Films and Catfish’s Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman service her biographical debut. The filmmaker named the Christine Vachon produced Kids as a life altering film and from the sounds of it — this might be a shit disturbing title as well. With Jamie Marks Is Dead‘s Morgan Saylor in the lead, White Girls went into production in late 2014 and is currently in the mixing stages. Michael Simmonds (The Lunchbox) was the dp on the NYC set drama and Variety just named Wood as a 10 Directors to Watch for in 2016.

Gist: Summer, New York City. A college girl goes to extremes to get her drug dealer boyfriend out of jail.

Production Co./Producers: Gabriel Nussbaum. Executive Prod: Killer Films’ Christine Vachon and David Hinojosa (Wiener-Dog), Supermarché’s Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (Catfish).

Prediction: U.S. Dramatic Comp.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. TBD (domestic). TBD (international)

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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).