Festival Predictions

2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale

Published on November 16, 2017

A filmmaker who needs no introduction, the award-winning The Babadook (among our top 20 for 2014) is among the upper echelon titles that premiered at Sundance in the past decade. If she arrives at the fest with her sophomore film, it’ll be the first item to sell out and will have buyers salivating prior to. Great news dropped this last March that Jennifer Kent would go into production with this distinct revenge thriller period piece. Shot in Tasmania, Kent enlisted the services of Aisling Franciosi, Sam Claflin, Damon Herriman, Ewen Leslie, Harry Greenwood, Djuki Mala, Baykali Ganambarr and Magnolia Maymuru. Kent reteams with Jed Kurzel who since writing the score for The Babadook, has been working on larger studio projects. If selected, The Nightingale might just be the most anticipated foreign film at the fest.

Gist: Set in Tasmania in 1825, this follows a beautiful 21-year-old Irish female convict who witnesses the brutal murder of her husband and baby by her soldier master and his cronies. Unable to find justice, she takes an Aboriginal male tracker with her through the hellish wilderness to seek revenge on the men, and gets much more than she bargained for.

Production Co./Producers: Causeway Films‘ Kristina Ceyton (The Babadook), Made Up Stories’ Bruna Papandrea (Warm Bodies).

Prediction: Several fests will attempt to woe the filmmaker, but this premium item feels like a must have for Sundance and should be programmed in the Premieres category.

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).