Festival Predictions

2024 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Susanna Fogel’s Winner

Published on November 17, 2023

Berlinale gave us Reality earlier this year and next January we think we might be seeing Winner – another project that looks at the complex turn of events for the whistleblower. Susanna Fogel hit Sundance last year with the thriller Cat Person — and now she moves into equally bizarre tonality with what is a dark-comedy biopic — her fourth feature. Emilia Jones will portray whistleblower Reality Winner – a former U.S. Air Force member and NSA contractor, served in prison after she leaked an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Her five and a half years behind bars is the longest sentence ever given to someone charged under the Espionage Act for leaking a government document. Other players on Winner include Connie Britton, Zach Galifianakis, Danny Ramirez and Kathryn Newton. Production took place in October of last year.

Gist: Based on Kerry Howley’s 2017 New York Magazine feature that portrays a brilliant and young misfit from Texas who finds her morals challenged while serving in the U.S. Air Force and working as a NSA contractor. Connie Britton as Reality’s mother, Zach Galifianakis as Reality’s father, Danny Ramirez as her boyfriend and Kathryn Newton as her sister.

Production Co./Producers: Amanda Phillips, Susanna Fogel / ShivHans Pictures’ Shivani Rawat and Julie Goldstein, 1Community’s Scott Budnick and Ameet Shukla.

Prediction: Premieres.

Sales: UTA Independent Film Group.

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).