Festival Predictions

2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Jennifer Fox’s The Tale

Published on November 17, 2017

As they were still putting final touches on the project at the midway point of 2017, and didn’t drop in the fall fest season, the consensus logical next step is an early 2018 showing. A docu filmmaker who made the jump into narrative for her first time in May of 2016, in the distant past, Jennifer Fox gave us the 1988 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for best documentary and the Excellence in Cinematography Award winner Beirut: The Last Home Movie, An American Love Story and Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman. A potential audience favorite for 2018, The Tale stars Laura Dern, Ellen Burstyn, Jason Ritter and Isabelle Nélisse takes on the younger Jenny in a layered, investigative thriller.

Gist: Written by Fox, this is about a globetrotting journalist (Dern) living in New York City, Jennifer effortlessly balances work and life with her boyfriend Martin. Until the day her mother Nettie finds a ‘story’ Jennifer wrote at age 13 (Nelisse), describing a a young girl’s sexual relationship with an adult coach, named Bill. Realizing that “The Tale” must be true, Nettie confronts her daughter. But when Jennifer reads the pages from her past, the details are different than her recollection. Shaken to her core, Jennifer decides to track down the two coaches and everyone connected to “The Tale” now. But it’s not until the voice of 13-year-old Jenny surfaces that the shocking truth emerges.

Production Co./Producers: Sol Bondy (Youth), Jennifer Fox, Lawrence Inglee (Norman), Gamechanger Films’ Mynette Louie (Buster’s Mal Heart), Oren Moverman, Laura Rister (The Most Hated Woman in America), Regina Kulik Scully (Eating Animals).

Prediction: U.S Dramatic Comp or Premieres.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. CAA (domestic). Mongrel International (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).