Festival Predictions

2019 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: #52. Matt Aselton – Lying and Stealing

Published on November 22, 2018

You’d been forgiven if you’ve forgotten the name of Matt Aselton who, a decade earlier, made his directorial debut with Gigantic – a film with Paul Dano, Zooey Deschanel, John Goodman inside a quirky mattress store and ideas of adoption that I caught at the 2008 Toronto Intl. Film Festival. Lying and Stealing is his sophomore feature, and while on paper this sounds like a longshot, perhaps there is a unique brand of weirdness carried over into a grifter tale that includes the likes of Theo James, Emily Ratajkowski, Fred Melamed, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Evan Handler and John Gatins. Filming took place in Los Angeles in November of 2017 and earlier this summer they were putting the final touches on the score.

Gist: Co-written by Aselton and Adam Nagata, Ivan (Theo James) is a suave, young thief whose specialty is stealing high end art from the L.A. elite. Business is good, but Ivan wants out. Elyse (Ratajkowski) is an aspiring actress with a closet full of skeletons and a mountain of debt. Soon these two clever grifters decide to team up for one last, big daring heist.

Production Co./Producers: Michael Costigan (Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile), Naomi Despres (Lizzie), Mohamed AlRafi (Above Suspicion) and Asleton.

Prediction: Premieres section or Tribeca in April.

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