These are the movies sold at Sundance 2015. Many of the films that premiere at the Sundance Film Festival are hoping to attract a distributor and find a bigger audience, be it in theaters around the country or distributed through digital VOD. Throughout the festival we will be reporting on all of the movies sold at Sundance 2015. This list should help give you an idea about which movies may someday be available to you either theatrically of VOD. We’re including photo stills from each of the films along with all of the relevant information (director, cast, how much it sold for, the plot synopsis and more). Hit the jump to find out which movies sold at Sundance 2015.
Latest update: Jemaine Clement’s People, Places, Things is picked up by The Film Arcade.
Movies Sold At Sundance 2015 Distributor Breakdown
A24: The End of the Tour, The Witch, Mississippi Grind
Alchemy: Strangerland, Zipper
Bleeker Street: I’ll See You In My Dreams
Broad Green: A Walk in the Woods
Discover Channel: Racing Extinction
Film Arcade: Unexpected, People Places Things
Focus: Cop Car
Fortissimo: Songs My Brothers Taught Me
Fox Searchlight: Mistress America, Me, Earl And The Dying Girl, Brooklyn
Gravitas Ventures: Being Evel
HBO: 3 1/2 Minutes
IFC Films: The D Train, Sleeping With Other People
IFC Midnight: Reversal, The Hallow
Kino Lorber: The Forbidden Room
Lionsgate: Don Verdean, Knock Knock
Magnolia: Results, Tangerine, Best of Enemies, The Wolfpack
Netflix: Hot Girls Wanted
Open Road: Dope
Orchard: The Overnight, Digging for Fire, Finders Keepers, Cartel Land
Oscilloscope: The Second Mother
Relativity Sports: In Football We Trust
Samuel Goldwyn Films Fresh Dressed (with StyleHaul)
Screen Media Films: Ten Thousand Saints
Showtime: Dreamcatcher
Sony Pictures Classics: The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Grandma, Dark Horse
Sundance Selects: City of Gold
Tribeca Film: Misery Loves Comedy
Relativity: The Bronze
These Movies Sold at Sundance 2015
We will be updating this post with 2015 Sundance Film Festival acquisitions throughout the festival. The post is organized from newest to oldest, with the latest acquisitions on the top.
People, Places, Things
Acquired: February 12
By: The Film Arcade
Purchase Price:
Director: Jim Strouse
Starring: Jemaine Clement, Regina Hall, Stephanie Allynne, Jessica Williams, Michael Chernus
Other Info: The Film Arcade plans a Summer 2015 release.
Plot Synopsis:
????From the moment graphic novelist Will Henry accidentally walks in on his wife, Charlie, with another man, his life officially begins to suck. Not only is he exiled from Brooklyn to a tiny studio apartment in Astoria and forced to see his adorable twin daughters only on weekends, but, according to Charlie, the separation is all his fault. As he muddles through single fathering and teaching college, a defeated Will sits up nights at his drafting table, illustrating his frustrations and loneliness—aptly symbolized by an ever-growing brick wall jammed between him and his family. When a student challenges Will to pursue new people, places, and things, his obsessions—both graphic and real—take new form.
Cartel Land
Acquired: February 12
By: The Orchard
Purchase Price: NA
Director: Matthew Heineman
Starring: NA
Other Info: The film won the Sundance Directing Award and Special Jury Award for Cinematography for documentaries. This release will be handled in conjunction with A&E IndieFilms.
Plot Synopsis:
When your government cannot provide basic safety from murderous organized criminals, is it acceptable to take the law into your own hands to protect your family, your land, and your country? That is the question at the heart of Cartel Land, a powerfully visceral journey of two modern-day vigilante movements.
In the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as “El Doctor,” shepherds a citizen uprising against the Knights Templar, the violent drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years. Meanwhile, in Arizona’s Altar Valley—a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley—Tim “Nailer” Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to halt Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across our border.
Racing Extinction
Acquired: February 10
By: Discovery Channel
Purchase Price: NA
Director: Louie Psihoyos
Starring: NA
Other Info: Discovery will release the film in the top 10 markets and then premiere it on TV on every one of their 220 channels. It’ll then go on demand. Read our review.
Plot Synopsis:
Louie Psihoyos’s The Cove (2009 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Documentary Audience Award) exposed viewers to the brutal practice of dolphin slaughter. The Academy Award-winning director now bears witness to a global problem—mankind’s role in precipitating mass extinction, potentially resulting in the loss of half of the world’s species.
Believing that images can stimulate empathy and in turn change behavior, Psihoyos joins forces with activists, scientists, nature photographers, and cutting-edge inventors to draw attention to the dangers we face. While covert operations reveal the horrific black-market trade in endangered aquatic species, the film’s broader lens uncovers the even more disastrous consequences of human activity, chiefly the release of ocean-killing methane and carbon from energy consumption.
Being Evel
Acquired: February 9
By: Gravitas Ventures
Purchase Price: NA
Director: Daniel Junge
Starring: Johnny Knoxville
Other Info: Gravitas will launch the film in theaters and on VOD later this year.
Plot Synopsis:
In the history of sports, few names are more recognizable than that of Evel Knievel. Long after the man hung up his famous white leather jumpsuit and rode his Harley into the sunset, his name is still synonymous with the death-defying lifestyle he led. Notoriously brash, bold, and daring, Knievel stared death in the face from the seat of his motorcycle, but few know the larger-than-life story of the boy from Butte, Montana. After an adolescence riddled with petty thievery and general rabble-rousing, Knievel set his sights on superstardom, a feat he achieved when televisions around the world aired the startling crash footage of his 1967 attempt to jump the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The jump was spectacular, but the failed landing that sent him skidding like a ragdoll across the asphalt was the main attraction. Throughout the 1970s, his legacy as King of the Daredevils spawned action figures, movies, and a generation of kids who wanted to be just like Evel.
Unexpected
Acquired: February 9
By: Film Arcade
Purchase Price: NA
Director: Kris Swanberg
Starring: Cobie Smulders and Gail Bean
Other Info: The film played in the US dramatic competition.
Plot Synopsis:
Samantha is a high school science teacher at a low-income school about to close, and she has just found out she’s pregnant. Though her boyfriend, John, proposes and is thrilled to begin a new life together, Sam struggles with the idea of halting her career to be a full-time mother. Simultaneously, one of Sam’s brightest students, Jasmine, has also become pregnant. Sam makes it her mission to get Jasmine into college and bonds with her over their impending motherhood. Unbeknownst to Sam, Jasmine is wiser than she gives her credit for, and when things don’t go exactly according to Sam’s plan, she must reexamine what is best for herself and for the people she loves. In an age when working mothers are nearly as common as working fathers, Kris Swanberg’s uplifting and honest depiction of modern motherhood is both fresh and comforting. When society often questions whether women can maintain both a family and a career, Swanberg answers with a resounding yes via her characters’ wisdom, courage, and flexibility with circumstances they least expect.
The Second Mother
Acquired: February 6
By: Oscilloscope
Purchase Price: NA
Director: Anna Muylaert
Starring: Regina Casé, Michel Joelsas, Camila Márdila, Karine Teles, Lourenço Mutarelli
Other Info: The film won a Special Jury Award for Acting at Sundance.
Plot Synopsis:
Val is the kind of live-in housekeeper who takes her work seriously. She wears a crisp maid’s uniform while serving perfect canapés; she serves her wealthy São Paulo employers day in and day out while lovingly nannying their teenage son whom she’s raised since toddlerhood. Everyone and everything in the elegant house has its place until one day, Val’s ambitious, clever daughter Jessica arrives from Val’s hometown to take the college entrance exams. Jessica’s confident, youthful presence upsets the unspoken yet strict balance of power in the household; Val must decide where her allegiances lie and what she’s willing to sacrifice..
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