Festival Predictions

2017 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Yance Ford’s Strong Island

Published on November 28, 2016

You can’t rush a good thing, and you certainly can’t rush a project that is not that far removed from one’ self. We’ve been in accurately predicting that this Cinereach, IDFA Forum and the Sundance Institute project would break into the line-up for several years now. We have a feeling that Yance Ford’s Strong Island will have been worth the wait.

Gist: This examines the violent death of filmmaker Ford’s brother over 20 years ago, and the collision of silence, race, fear and the judicial system that allowed his killer to go free. Artfully made, with extraordinary insight, this film calls us to bear witness to the reality rather than the abstraction of injustice. It goes beyond interviews into the homes of those left behind, into profound crises of civic faith. It interrogates murderous fear, and re-imagines the wreckage in catastrophe’s wake, challenging us to change.

Production Co./Producers: Yanceville Films & Louverture Films and Producers Joslyn Barnes and Yance Ford.

Prediction: U.S. Documentary Competition.

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

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Related Topics:2017 Sundance Film Festival Predictions, Esther B. Robinson, Strong Island, top-stories, Yance Ford

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).