Festival Predictions

2022 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Eli Stern’s California King

Published on November 22, 2021

A comedy-caper flick that could easily end up at Sundance, SXSW or even Tribeca, California King comes from prod company Vanishing Angle folks and was shot in Utah this past summer. Eli Stern padded a trio of shorts before this directorial debut that sees Travis Bennett and Jimmy Tatro co-star (supporting cast includes Victoria Justice and Joel McHale) in a tale about mattresses, friendship, and a kidnapping that goes terribly wrong.

Gist: Perry, a mattress store manager, hatches a wild plan to impress the girl of his dreams, but his efforts go off the rails when his fake kidnapping of her brother gets more complicated than he expected.

Production Co./Producers: Glickmania’s Jonathan Glickman and Dan Kagan, Vanishing Angle’s Matt Miller.

Prediction: NEXT.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. UTA Independent Film Group (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).