2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Daniel Patrick Carbone’s Phantom Cowboys

Beginning with Berlin and Tribeca Film Fest showings, Daniel Patrick Carbone made several stops on the 2013 film festival circuit with Hide Your Smiling Faces (winner of the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film Still Awaiting American Distribution). The Tisch grad followed this first foray into feature filmmaking with his directing, writing and producing participation on the experimental anthology collective:unconscious (2016 SXSW Narrative Competition title). Supported by the Cinereach folks, Carbone moves into the docu world with a project that could read like Andrew Droz Palermo & Tracy Droz Tragos’ Rich Hill, Tim Sutton’s Pavilion and/or Steve James’ Hoop Dreams archetypes. Moving from youthful portrait in his debut to that adjustment period when boy becomes man, on paper Phantom Cowboys appears to be a graphically and socio-economically class laced nouveau type of 7 Up Series.

Gist: From the deserts of California to the sugarcane fields of Florida, Phantom Cowboys follows boys in three industrial towns during two formative periods in their lives, juxtaposing the dreams of their youth with the reality of adulthood. Moving fluidly between different geographical and socioeconomic landscapes, this film offers an intimate portrait of the transition from adolescence to manhood for teenagers in vastly different parts of the country.

Production Co./Producers: Ryan Scafuro (Bending Steel), Annie P. Waldman.

Prediction: U.S. Documentary Competition.

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