Festival Predictions

2019 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: #43. Maya Newell – Kids (Docu)

Published on November 21, 2018

Not a remake of the seminal Larry Clark film but rather a project about First Nations and the generations of children stuck on the margins of society,Australian docu helmer Maya Newell has work almost a decade alongside those featured in Kids. Receiving some Documentary Fund post-production coin followed by some help via the Sundance Institute and Skywalker Sound Composers and Directors for 2018 Film Music and Sound Design Lab this past summer, a 2019 festival premiere appears to be in the works. Her previous feature Gayby Baby was selected for Hot Docs 2016.

Gist: Like many Indigenous kids before him, 10-yr-old Dujuan is fighting an enemy he cannot see, which makes him strike out at everything. When he cannot run, nor fight alone, he realizes that not only has he inherited the trauma and dispossession of his land, but also the resilience and resistance of many generations of his people which holds the key to his future.

Production Co./Producers: Larissa Behrendt, Rachel Naninaaq Edwardson, Sophie Hyde, Maya Newell

Prediction: World Documentary Competition.

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).