Festival Predictions

2024 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun

Published on November 16, 2023

Park City has been a fruitful ground for the films on addiction and the next stint in rehab could be Nora Fingscheidt’s fifth feature film. After a popular last pair of films in 2019’s System Crasher and 2021’s The Unforgivable (watch review), with The Outrun she moves into direct drama territory. Production took place in August of 2022 with Saoirse Ronan toplining. This is based on the best-selling memoir by Amy Liptrot — which Fingscheidt adapted in collaboration with the author.

Gist: Rona (Saoirse Ronan), returns to the wild Orkney Islands after coming out of rehab and more than a decade away. As she reconnects with the dramatic landscape where she grew up, memories of her childhood merge with the more recent challenging events that have set her on the path to recovery.

Production Co./Producers: Jack Lowden, Dominic Norris, Saoirse Ronan, Brock Media’s Sarah Brocklehurst.

Prediction: Premieres.

Sales: Protagonist Pictures / CAA Media Finance.

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).