Festival Predictions

2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Olivia Newman’s First Match

Published on November 15, 2017

Every edition of the Sundance Film Festival we find at least one of them. One of the festival’s superpowers is short film programming, and there is always at least one feature film that was based on a short, and more often than not, it’s usually of the same name and at some point drops at the fest. The 2018 edition could once again honor this tradition with the inclusion of First Match. Olivia Newman‘s Sundance Labs (Directors and Screenwriters 2015 – read her take on the experience) workshopped feature film debut is based on the 2000 award-winning short (it played at the New York Film Fest), and while Anna Rose Holmer’s The Fits focused on drill teaming and boxing (adolescence and identity), this is is girl power portrait with a wrestling mat that in its on way, also focuses on identity. Supporting players Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (to be seen in The Greatest Showman) and Colman Domingo (from The Birth of a Nation fame) will back Elvire Emanuelle — she plays Monique in what could be a tale of redemption and repatriation.

Gist: Hardened by years in foster care, a teenage girl (Emanuelle) from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood decides that joining the all-boys high school wrestling team is the only way back to her estranged father.

Production Co./Producers: Chanelle Elaine, Veronica Nickel, Bryan Unkeless (I, Tonya)

Prediction: We would pin this down as a U.S. Dramatic Comp feels just about right.

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).