Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2011: Julia Loktev’s The Loneliest Planet

#22. The Loneliest Planet

Director/Writer: Julia Loktev
Producers: Helge Albers, Marie-Therese Guirgis, Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy
Distributor: Rights Available.

The Gist: A chamber-piece set in a landscape that is both overwhelmingly open and frighteningly closed. A young couple is backpacking in the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia a year after tensions with Russia erupted in a brief war and settled into an uneasy peace. The couple hires a local guide to lead them on a several-day hiking trip, and the three set off into an alien, isolated wilderness. In a moment of fear, something happens, an involuntary gesture, a gesture that takes only two or three seconds, a gesture that’s over almost as soon as it begins…(more)

Cast: Gael García Bernal, Hani Furstenberg and Bidzina Gudjabidze

List Worthy Reasons…: The entire packaging of Loktev’s sophomore film is alluring. First you have this filmmaker not afraid to move into uncharted territory (Day Night Day Night was recently banned from television). You have this film that’ll surely bring us to uncomfortable heights (location-wise) and places (relationship woes). You have indie-film visionaries Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy producing the project and finally we have Gael García Bernal in the type of roles we think he is best suited for: dramatic and tension-filled.

Release Date/Status?: I’m smelling a Director’s Fortnight or a Un Certain Regard showing in Cannes especially with Bernal toplining.