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IFC makes ‘Ballast’ move – pick up Lance Hammer’s Sundance fav

Published on February 5, 2008

Here is a great story, post-Sundance and pre-Berlin for a film that I’m personally looking very much forward to seeing (01/28/08 Top 91 Most Anticipated Films of 2008). IFC has picked up the N-American rights to Lance Hammer’s Ballast.The directorial debut won a pair of prizes at Sundance, takes place in the vast Mississippi Delta flatscape where a middle-aged man is immobilized by grief in
the darkness of a small rural home. The stinging portrait down south was bought for six-figures and as Variety states will come with “plus gross participation and a real P&A commitment”.

The film is about to preem in-competition at the Berlin Film Festival and will receive the day-and-date distribution perhaps this summer(?).

Lance Hammer graduated from the
University of Southern California with a degree in Architecture and worked as an
art director in the studio film system.

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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).