2022 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Anthony Mandler’s Surrounded

With an already amazing track record as a music video helmer / television commercial director Anthony Mandler saw his debut feature film Monster break into the Sundance Film Festival in 2018 and it finally got released this year via the Sundance folks. We doubt it’ll be that long of a wait for his sophomore feature which went into production in November of 2019. We a shoot in New Mexico, Mandler’s Surrounded was surrounded by the likes of Letitia Wright, Jamie Bell, and Michael K. Williams – this counts as the actor’s final work before his premature death. A Civil War era project penned by Andrew Pagana and Justin Thomas, supporting players include Jeffrey Donovan and Brett Gelman. The project belongs to Lionsgate – so the chances for a festival premiere are slim.

Gist: The film is set five years after the Civil War, where former Buffalo Soldier Moses “Mo” Washington travels west to lay claim on a gold mine bequeathed by her late slaveowner father. It is a mean, dangerous world for an unaccompanied Black woman and so Mo travels into the deep frontier disguised as a man. After her stagecoach is ambushed, she is tasked with holding a dangerous outlaw captive and must survive the day when the bandit’s gang tries to free him.

Production Co./Producers: Bron Studios’ Aaron L. Gilbert, Anthony Mandler, Blackhand’s Derek Iger, Mandalay’s Jason Michael Berman, 3.16.’s Ade O’Adesina, Jeffrey Wright.

Prediction: PREMIERES.

U.S. Distributor: Lionsgate.