Festival Predictions

2024 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Isaiah Saxon’s The Legend of Ochi

Published on November 13, 2023

With professional baggage that includes music video work for the likes of Björk, Panda Bear, Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear, Isaiah Saxon has been painstakingly putting together The Legend of Ochi since October of 2021. Among the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Labs attendees back in 2018, due to the complex work involved in post, it’ll have been a long journey to completion for Saxon’s feature debut — animation takes time folks! Starring Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson, Finn Wolfhard and Helena Zengel, some scenes The Legend of Ochi were shot in Transylvania and other magical backdrops. Cinematographer Evan Prosofsky (who has worked on Sam Kuhn’s shorts films) was hired here. This is another A24 project on our list.

Gist: This follows a young girl (Zengel) who runs away from home and learns to communicate with an elusive animal species known as Ochi.

Production Co./Producers: Traci Carlson, Richard Peete, Jonathan Wang, Encyclopedia Pictura’s Isaiah Saxon.

Prediction: Kids.

U.S. Distributor: A24.

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).