Festival Predictions

2019 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: #79. David Wnendt – The Sunlit Night

Published on November 23, 2018

David Wnendt broke out big (so did his star Carla Juri) with his four feature film 2013’s Wetlands (read review). With a US and Norwegian backdrop and players Jenny Slate, Alex Sharp, Zach Galifianakis, Gillian Anderson and Jessica Hecht, The Sunlit Night sounds like on paper like a solid Park City offering. Filming began way back in April in NYC, with the production moving to Norway for a summer into early fall shoot.

Gist: An adaptation of Rebecca Dinerstein’s novel, this follows an American painter Frances and émigré Yasha — an unlikely pair who find each other in the Arctic circle. Frances has arrived to jumpstart her career while Yasha has come to bury his father in the land of the Vikings. Together under a sun that never quite sets, they let go of the past and discover the future, and family, they didn’t know they had.

Production Co./Producers: Jenny Slate, Fabian Gasmia (Personal Shopper), Ruben Thorkildsen (Rafiki), Big Beach’s Michael B. Clark, Alex Turtletaub (Maine).

Prediction: Premieres section with a showing at Berlin.

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).