Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2011: Juan Solanas’ Upside Down

#53. Upside Down

Director: Juan Diego Solanas
Writer(s): Santiago Amigorena and Solanas
Producers: Claude Léger, Dimitri Rassam, Aton Soumache, Jonathan Vanger and Alexis Vonarb
Distributor: Rights Available.

The Gist: Adam is a seemingly ordinary guy in a very extraordinary universe. He lives humbly trying to make ends meet, but his romantic spirit holds on to the memory of a girl he met once upon a time from another world, an inverted affluent world with its own gravity, directly above but beyond reach… a girl named Eve. Their childhood flirtation becomes an impossible love. But when he catches a glimpse of grown‐up Eve on television, nothing will get in the way of getting her back… Not even the law or science!….(more)

Cast: Kirsten Dunst and Jim Sturgess

List Worthy Reasons…: You can say that filmmaking is in his blood, and while I haven’t seen Juan Diego Solanas’ debut film, I had the chance to finally catch up with his short film The Man Without a Head. If the look of the film is full-proof eye-candy, which I have no doubt will be stirring and the chemistry between Kirsten Dunst and Jim Sturgess works, this might break out of the mold of underwhelming sci-fi romance films.

Release Date/Status?: A return to Cannes wouldn’t be out of the question as the filmmaker was awarded the Jury Prize there for his short film and his first feature Nordeste was show in 2005’s Un Certain Regard section, however it may not have to wait for a festival showing in order to be picked up. The theatrical fate of the film depends on the market’s appetite for more sci-fi content.