Festival Predictions

2022 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Beth de Araújo’s Soft & Quiet

Published on November 24, 2021

Only a couple of months shy from going into production with Josephine, a project that is financed, backed by a notable producer (RT Features), and was workshopped at the Sundance Labs, Beth de Araújo didn’t let the pandemic get in her way and she quickly shifted to another project for her directorial debut. Soft & Quiet is micro-budgeted drama that was informed by the very real racism that is embedded in the Red, white and blue. Olivia Luccardi plays the film’s lead in what could be a radical inventive take on this social woe – we won’t spoil the chosen visual template here.

Gist: This follows a female white supremacist indoctrinating a group of women and together they set out to harass two mixed-raced sisters.

Production Co./Producers: Saba Zerehi

Prediction: NEXT

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. TBD (domestic, 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).