Festival Predictions

2019 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: #20. Daniel Isn’t Real – Adam Egypt Mortimer

Published on November 20, 2018

While it could be a long shot for a festival submission seeing that the production took place in July, Adam Egypt Mortimer could sneak in with Daniel Isn’t Real if that early cut is up to snuff. A supernatural thriller starring Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sasha Lane, Miles Robbins, and actress-filmmaker Hannah Marks, Mortimer previously directed Some Kind of Hate, and alongside Kevin Smith, Gary Shore, and Sarah Adina Smith, the horror fiend directed one part in Tribeca Film Festival’s midnight section selection anthology horror film Holiday.

Gist: Based on the novel “This Way I Was Saved” by Brian DeLeeuw, who co-wrote the script with Mortimer, Miles Robbins portrays a troubled college freshman who suffers a violent family trauma and resurrects his childhood imaginary friend Daniel (played by Schwarzenegger) to help him cope. Charismatic and full of manic energy, Daniel helps him achieve his dreams, before pushing him to the very edge of sanity and into a desperate struggle for control of his mind and soul.

Production Co./Producers: Producers are SpectreVision’s Daniel Noah, Josh C. Waller, Lisa Whalen, and Elijah Wood.

Prediction: Midnight section.

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