Festival Predictions

2019 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: #23. Wash Westmoreland – The Earthquake Bird

Published on November 20, 2018

Working once again with what might be a strong female protagonist and adapted source material, Wash Westmoreland boarded The Earthquake Bird in August of 2016 and production took place in Tokyo in May of 2018 with an international cast. Quickly snapped up by the Netflix folks, Westmoreland who teams up with Oldboy cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon for a first time, has been to Sundance before with last year’s Colette (review) and 2006’s Quinceañera – which was a major career boost when it took home both the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize prizes.

Gist: Based on Susanna Jones’ novel, set in Tokyo, this revolves around a young female expat (Riley Keough) who is suspected of murder when her friend (Alicia Vikander) goes missing in the wake of a tumultuous love triangle with Teiji (Kobayashi), a handsome and mysterious local photographer.

Production Co./Producers: Twenty First City’s Georgina Pope, Scott Free’s Ridley Scott, Michael Pruss and Kevin Walsh, with Ann Ruark.

Prediction: Netflix could repeat how Colette was showcased at the fest — in the Premieres section or they could wait until TIFF for a fall season showing and where Still Alice premiered.

U.S. Distributor: Netflix

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).