Film Festivals

Video: Aneesh Chaganty’s Searching | 2018 Sundance Film Festival

Published on August 2, 2018

A desktop dramatic thriller that works as a relatable and palpable cautionary tale, on paper and conceptually speaking, Aneesh Chaganty‘s debut film should be weighted down by gimmick-like constraints, but as future auds will instantly grasp from the get-go, Search is rather genius in design, and while “stationary” in design and surprisingly warm in tone. Minus the major players involved, we were on hand for the film’s second screening in Park City, with the production team on hand for a rather pumped up post screening Q&A with an animated Chaganty being joined by co-scribe and producer Sev Ohanian, producer Natalie Qasabian and the rest of the crew including the film’s editors who know a thing or two about hard drives crashing and rendering hell.

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).