Festival Predictions

2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Christina Choe’s Nancy

Published on November 16, 2017

After building a half dozen short film resume, her feature film debut appears to be the result of a lot of indie blood, sweat and workshop talks. Christina Choe goes into depth in this Filmmaker Magazine piece as to the provenance and curiosity for the subject matter which surely had a lot of normal folks (excellent Kickstarter campaign) and industry folks alike excited to help flesh this out as she landed support in Film Independent Directing Lab, Hamptons Screenwriters’ Lab, Venice Biennale and this past July, Sundance Institute and Skywalker Sound Announce Composers, Directors for 2017 Music and Sound Design Labs. Production on Nancy took place this past February in upstate New York with Andrea Riseborough playing the titular character (as well as receiving her producing credit) and supported by a very fine indie cast comprised of J. Smith-Cameron, Ann Dowd, John Leguizamo, and Steve Buscemi. With the current politico air of untruths, the blurred notion of the truth and fiction makes this especially timely subject du jour for this pro estrogen team project. While we await this feature, the tenacious filmmaker put some Pyongyang fun into her life, by documenting a trip to North Korea in this more personable travelogue docu diary series.

Gist: When the elaborate lies told by a serial imposter (Riseborough) inevitably unravel, she becomes perilously close to losing her entire identity—and the only person who ever truly loved her.

Production Co./Producers: Michelle Cameron, Amy Lo (War Story), Andrea Riseborough.

Prediction: Could be a Park City at Midnight selection or the NEXT section add-on, these possibilities include the Venice Film Festival as well.

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

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).