Festival Predictions

2024 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Marco La Via & Hanna Ladoul’s Funny Birds

Published on November 11, 2023

While I don’t really see a Catherine Deneuve navigating the wintery sidewalks of Main Street, her co-star in Andrea Riseborough could easily be the mayor of Park City. French filmmaker tandem of Marco La Via and Hanna Ladoul broke out with micro indie film Anywhere with You (aka We the Coyotes) and quickly followed this up Funny Birds — a sophomore effort that pushes them into the heartwarming dramedy terrain. Production on the film took place in October of 2022. Morgan Saylor returns for a second time out with the filmmaker duo. SXSW could be trying to lasso the film as well.

Gist: This follows Charlie (Saylor) who returns from boarding school to the New Jersey countryside to take care of her estranged mother, Laura (Riseborough), who runs a small chicken farm. Their tense day-to-day life on the farm is turned upside down when Laura’s mother, Solange (Deneuve), an eccentric French feminist, shows up unannounced. When a bird flu epidemic starts threatening the farm, they are forced to rise above conflict and heal old wounds.

Production Co./Producers: Julien Madon, Aimée Buidine, Melita Toscan Du Plantier, Raphaël Gindre.

Prediction: Premieres.

Sales: Newen Connect.

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).