Duck Season (2004), Lake Tahoe (2008) and Club Sandwich (2013) Mexican filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke is set to move further up the border with his return to feature fiction filmmaking. Eimbcke has mounted a coming-of-age film that is set in 80’s New Jersey and goes by the titular Olmo. Vanesa Garnica is a co-writer.
Plan B Entertainment’s Academy Award winning producers Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner teamed up with Eréndira Núñez Larios (who we just mentioned might be working on a new Michel Franco project) to produce the mount the project which was originally being eyed for a July shoot but instead will focus on September (possibly further delayed by the strike). Regardless of what the start date is, this should fall onto the 2024 fall film festival circuit.
The story is set in 1980’s New Jersey and follows Olmo, a fourteen-year old first generation Mexican American teenage boy, as he grapples with his father’s declining health. Despite being a caregiver to his father, Olmo is also a typical mischief-maker, dealing with the challenges of puberty such as unstable temperament, acne-prone brown skin, and a preoccupation with sex.
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).
