Festival Predictions

2021 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Amy Poehler’s Moxie

Published on November 20, 2020

Moving into the direction of filmmaking with a trio of directed episodes for Parks and Recreation, 2016’s TV Movie Dumb Prince, and her first Netflix project in Wine Country (2019), production on Amy Poehler‘s Netflix backed project began in October of 2019. Moxie, the book to film project sees an ensemble comprised of Hadley Robinson, Lauren Tsai, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Ike Barinholtz, Josephine Langford, Marcia Gay Harden and Clark Gregg. Pehler has been to Sundance on several occasions, and though we think the chances are slim for this to land, but perhaps this feminist revolution in high school music-fused item is a nice continuation of last year’s inclusion of The Glorias.

Gist: Based on Jennifer Mathieu’s same-titled book and adapted by Tamara Chestna, Moxie tells the story of a girl (Hadley Robinson) from a small town who is inspired by her mother’s Riot Girl past and starts a feminist revolution at her high school. Langford will play Emma, host of the school’s TV announcement program.

Production Co./Producers: Amy Poehler, Morgan Sackett, Kim Lessing.

Prediction: PREMIERES.

U.S. Distributor: Netflix.

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).