Festival Predictions

2024 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Ruben Amar & Lola Bessis’ Silver Star

Published on November 16, 2023

Next up in our predictions list is a filmmaker tandem that gave us micro indie Swim Little Fish Swim – which was selected as a competition entry at SXSW in 2013. I remember getting Miranda July vibes from this sweet-natured film with heart. A full decade later, Ruben Amar and Lola Bessis re-teamed on Silver Star – which works within a completely different genre vibes. Production on the sophomore project would have taken place in New Jersey and Kentucky in October of 2022 in Grace Van Dien and Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson topline the crime road-trip type film.

Gist: Billie (Johnson) is a 20-year-old Civil War re-enactor who is fresh out of jail and struggling to root herself in today’s world. Billie is determined to reconnect with her estranged parents by saving their home from foreclosure, whatever it takes. During a botched bank robbery, Billie takes Franny (Van Dien), an impulsive, pregnant 19-year-old with nothing to lose, as her hostage and together they embark on an unexpected road trip across America.

Production Co./Producers: Les Films de la Fusée’s Ruben Amar and Lola Bessis, Middlemen Films’ Philippe Imhaus and Simon Lefort, in association with Valerie Steinberg Productions and Carte Blanche.

Prediction: U.S. Dramatic Competition.

Sales: TBD.

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).