Exclusive: Factory 25 Brings ‘Two Gates of Sleep’ to Final Resting Place

Factory 25, the uber cool Brooklyn NY label responsible for making sure that Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo and You Wont Miss Me get some love from the movie-going public have picked up one of my favorite films from the 2010 campaign in the Cannes Director’s Fortnight selected Two Gates of Sleep. Alistair Banks Griffin’s debut film easily puts him in a category apart of budding U.S filmmakers to watch out for (I’d include Lance Hammer, Antonio Campos, Jeff Nichols and more recently Sean Durkin) in that pack of remarkable first time efforts.

TGOS will receive a one week release this Friday (April 1st) at the Re-Run Theater. I imagine other markets including Los Angeles (where the film was previously shown in AFI Fest) will follow and for sure we’ll get some whacked out DVD release for the film — I think of Factory 25 as a mix between Criterion and the defunct Palm Pictures label in terms of the packaging and presentation.

Gist: Featuring actors Brady Corbet (who’ll most likely be in Cannes with not one but two pics in Melancholia and Antonio Campos’ Simon Killer) and David Call (Tiny Furniture and upcoming Northeast from Gregory Kohn), somewhere on the Mississippi-Louisiana border, brothers Jack and Louis prepare for their mother’s imminent death. Their communication limited to glances, they hunt a gorgeous animal, cook a special meal and share last moments of quiet intimacy with the woman who bore them. Once she succumbs, they ignore society’s expectations and undertake an arduous journey to bury her along the riverbank.

Worth Noting: This is produced by Andrew Renzi (ANW25 2010) and Josh Mond along with his BorderLine Films partners executive producers Sean Durkin and Antonio Campos — we’ll be posting our Sundance interview with the BL team next week.

Do We Care? Among our top three favourite films from last year’s Cannes (the other two are Le Quattro Volte which gets released today and Cristi Puiu’s Aurora which will receive a release this year), this portrait with minimal dialogue is worth its weight in gold with lensing from Jody Lee Lipes and an hallucinatory score from Daniel Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans (Martha Marcy May Marlene). This is a must see folks and perfect timing for those getting ready for Malick’s Tree of Life.