2016 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room

It might be a case of deja vu all over again for director Jeremy Saulnier. It’s hard enough breaking into Sundance, but the festival’s Spotlight section features about eight films that have landed a theatrical release deal and are being championed as favorites from the film festival circuit (some have pending releases just after January and some are up for major award consideration). Saulnier premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight with 2013’s Blue Ruin and that was followed by stops just about everywhere including TIFF and a couple of U.S. play dates and this didn’t prevent the festival from inviting the film all the same in 2014. With an almost identical route this time out and the same critical support, Green Room connected with the same auds this year and could make a quick detour before being released theatrically on April 1st by the A24 film folks.

Gist: A down-on-their-luck punk band (which includes the likes of Anton Yelchin and Alia Shawkat) accepts the wrong gig at the wrong club in the middle of nowhere and witnesses a murder committed by a gang of white supremacists. The group, which now includes a third-party bystander with a dark past (Imogen Poots), barricades itself in the club’s green room. And thus the film becomes a siege thriller, with our clueless, inept heroes defending themselves against a terrifying crew of killers. Yes, this is the Punk Rockers versus Neo-Nazis movie you never knew you wanted.

Production Co./Producers: Neil Kopp, Victor Moyers, Anish Savjani.

Prediction: Spotlight section. If not Sundance, then SXSW.

U.S. Distributor: A24

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