Frears, Delpy, Dupieux, Slama: Europeans make it big at Sundance
by Liza Foreman
Midway through this year’s Sundance Film Festival, a number of European films were generating heat. Sony Pictures Classics kick-started the deal-making on Friday by picking up the Swedish-British documentary Searching for Sugar Man. The story follows Rodriguez, “the greatest 1970’s American rock star who never was”.
British director Stephen Frears was given mixed reviews for his film Lay the Favorite earlier in the week, which likewise dealt with American subject matter, set in the world of Las Vegas gambling.
What happens when a French family comes to town was the subject of Julie Delpy’s latest effort Two Days in New York [+see also:
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Meanwhile, the French title Wrong [+see also:
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Other highlights unspooling here were the French-Israeli-Palestinian film 5 Broken Cameras, which follows a Palestinian farmer who takes a non-violent approach to the Israelis encroaching upon his land when he starts filming the Middle East conflict.
Czech director Bohdan Slama’s family drama Four Suns was also fielding offers mid-way through the festival. And the U.S./Serbia/Montenegro documentary Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present, about the Belgrade-born artist, was one of the most talked about events of the festival.
Following the screening, guests were given white doctor’s coats and space-age headphones and were asked to wander around the cocktail venue, a local art gallery, in silence, and in so doing, take part in another impromptu Abramovic art event in which the artist intermingled with her guests in silence. The film follows a retrospective of her work at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2010.
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