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

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)