Festival Predictions

2021 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Lila Neugebauer’s Red, White, And Water

Published on November 23, 2020

The levee might break in 2021 with A24’s glut of film product waiting for a world premiere release and this directorial debut might lead the charge. The formerly known Red, White, And Water, this untitled drama comes from someone who worked in American theatre before moving to cinema. Lila Neugebauer directed off and on Broadway items and got her start on Duplass brothers’ HBO series Room 104 (worth mentioning – Duplass made it a point to give opportunities to up-and-coming female filmmakers to direct episodes). Neugebauer began principal photography in mid June 2019 in New Orleans with Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree. Diego García is the cinematographer.

Gist: Written by Elizabeth Sanders, Luke Goebel and Ottessa Moshfegh, Lawrence plays a U.S. solider who suffers a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan and struggles to recover back home.

Production Co./Producers: Eli Bush, Jennifer Lawrence, Justine Polsky, Scott Rudin.

Prediction: U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION.

U.S. Distributor: A24.

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).