Festival Predictions

2019 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: #93. Untitled Penny Lane – Religious Activism Documentary

Published on November 23, 2018

Proselytism can sometimes send people to canoe to remote islands with inhospitable tribe habitants. Penny Lane has found some docu zealots among programmers (her three features were shown at Rotterdam) and cinephiles alike with her form bending Our Nixon (2013), Nuts! (2016 – Sundance winner), and The Pain of Others (2018). A Cinereach back project, her latest on faith was awarded some coin from the Sundance Institute.

Gist: A wildly entertaining and surprising look at the intersection of faith and activism, that follows one of the most controversial religious movements in modern American history.

Production Co./Producers: Gabriel Sedgwick (Captivated – The Trials of Pamela Smart).

Prediction: U.S Documentary Comp section.

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).