Father Figure: Anders Danielsen Lie & Woody Norman Find a Cabin in Vladimir de Fontenay’s “Sukkwan Island”

After focusing on the rift between single mother and young child in his Directors’ Fortnight selected sophomore feature Mobile Homes (2017), Vladimir de Fontenay might be returning to some of the same of the thematics ideas and relationship dynamics in his third fiction feature film offering in the book to film adaptation of Sukkwan Island. Anders Danielsen Lie and Woody Norman (C’mon C’mon) will topline the project – housed with the Mk2 folks.

In semi-autobiographical stories set largely in David Vann’s native Alaska, this is set on a wild island in southern Alaska, accessible only by boat or seaplane, all in wet forests and steep mountains. It is in this setting that Jim (Anders Danielsen Lie) decides to take his thirteen-year-old son (Woody Norman) to live there in an isolated cabin for a year. After a succession of personal failures, he sees the opportunity to make a new start and reconnect with this boy he knows so little. But the harshness of this life and the failures of the father soon turn this stay into a nightmare, and the situation quickly spirals out of control. Until the violent and unpredictable drama that will seal their fate.