Festival Predictions

2019 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: #30. Nabil Elderkin – Gully

Published on November 21, 2018

An American photographer, turned music video director turned filmmaker who found fortune via a peculiar Kanye West encounter, American-Iranian Nabil Elderkin (who was among Filmmaker Magazine‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2017) was able to iron out some of the details in the original screenplay that fell on his lap at the 2016 Sundance Screenwriters Lab to receive a greenlight on Gully in March of 2018. Landing the likes of Charlie Plummer, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Jacob Latimore, Amber Heard and Terrence Howard, the title of the film is derived from the Indian word ‘Gully’ meaning narrow passage.

Gist: Written by Marcus J. Guillory, in a slightly dystopian vision of LA, we follow three disaffected teenagers, Jessie (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), Calvin (Jacob Latimore) and Nicky (Charlie Plummer), all victims of extreme childhoods, running supreme hedonistic riot as they try to work out a way in life.

Production Co./Producers: Tom Butterfield, Brad Feinstein, Alex Georgiou, Ben Pugh, Corey Smyth.

Prediction: U.S. Dramatic Comp.

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).