Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.Find all of our Cannes 2024 coverage here.Eephus.Founded in 2011 by a group of college friends in Boston, Omnes Films is a production company that’s quietly created some of the most unique American movies of the last half-decade. Now based in Los Angeles, Omnes came to prominence in 2019 with Ham on Rye, a magical-realist coming-of-age fable set in suburban Long Island that solidified the collective’s four main players: director Tyler Taormina, cinematographer Carson Lund, producer Michael Basta, and music supervisor Jonathan Davies—all of whom have subsequently directed their own films under the Omnes banner.Omnes’s two latest projects, Eephus and Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (both 2024), directed by Lund and Taormina, respectively, both premiered in Cannes as part of this year’s Directors’ Fortnight—a programming decision further confirming the section’s renewed interest in American cinema following the inclusion of The Sweet East,...
- 6/4/2024
- MUBI
Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.For more Cannes 2024 coverage, subscribe to the Weekly Edit newsletter.Eephus.For all the thrills that come from watching the latest film by this or that renowned auteur, I don’t come to Cannes for confirmation, but for the pleasure of discovery. And nothing quite matches the exhilaration of reckoning with a new voice—the kind that jolts you out of your festival torpor and reminds you of all the beauty and magic the cinema can muster. As usual, those epiphanies were a lot harder to come by in the official competition than in the risk-friendlier Directors’ Fortnight, an independent sidebar born in 1969 as a counterprogram dedicated, per its mission statement, “to showcasing the most singular forms of contemporary cinema.” It is here that some of the greatest have shown their earliest stuff, an illustrious pedigree that’s flaunted before each screening through a short reel...
- 5/29/2024
- MUBI
When Filmmaker featured the startup film collective Omnes Films in our 2021 25 New Faces list, the L.A. outfit’s first two microbudget features — Jonathan Davies’ Topology of Sirens and Tyler Taormina’s Ham on Rye — had both premiered at festivals and received U.S. releases from Factory 25, its members had produced shorts and music videos, and new features were in the works. One of the few companies or collectives to land on our list over its history, Omnes impressed us with not only the quality of the films but the ambition — and optimism — evinced by a group […]
The post “We’re Very Preoccupied with Making Personal Arthouse Features”: With Two Films in Cannes, Carson Lund and Tyler Discuss Production Company, Omnes Films first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post “We’re Very Preoccupied with Making Personal Arthouse Features”: With Two Films in Cannes, Carson Lund and Tyler Discuss Production Company, Omnes Films first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 5/21/2024
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
When Filmmaker featured the startup film collective Omnes Films in our 2021 25 New Faces list, the L.A. outfit’s first two microbudget features — Jonathan Davies’ Topology of Sirens and Tyler Taormina’s Ham on Rye — had both premiered at festivals and received U.S. releases from Factory 25, its members had produced shorts and music videos, and new features were in the works. One of the few companies or collectives to land on our list over its history, Omnes impressed us with not only the quality of the films but the ambition — and optimism — evinced by a group […]
The post “We’re Very Preoccupied with Making Personal Arthouse Features”: With Two Films in Cannes, Carson Lund and Tyler Discuss Production Company, Omnes Films first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post “We’re Very Preoccupied with Making Personal Arthouse Features”: With Two Films in Cannes, Carson Lund and Tyler Discuss Production Company, Omnes Films first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 5/21/2024
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Most baseball movies are not, per se, about baseball. To take some examples: The Natural is about a prodigy overcoming trauma; Eight Men Out is about greed and corruption; Bad News Bears is a foul-mouthed coming-of-age flick; Bull Durham is all about Kevin Costner’s sex appeal; Moneyball carries the sport into the information age; and Field of Dreams (Costner, again) is haunted by the ghosts of baseball past.
First-time director Carson Lund clearly had this in mind when he made his feature debut Eephus, a movie steeped in nostalgia for the game itself, as well as what it represents for a bunch of men past their prime: the long afternoons in the sun, the trash-talking at the plate, the brewskies in the cooler and the kind of camaraderie you can only find in the dugout.
In many ways, this existential and increasingly surreal indie effort, which seems to be...
First-time director Carson Lund clearly had this in mind when he made his feature debut Eephus, a movie steeped in nostalgia for the game itself, as well as what it represents for a bunch of men past their prime: the long afternoons in the sun, the trash-talking at the plate, the brewskies in the cooler and the kind of camaraderie you can only find in the dugout.
In many ways, this existential and increasingly surreal indie effort, which seems to be...
- 5/19/2024
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Writing on Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island in 2010, Anthony Lane whipped a quote from Umberto Eco: “Two cliches make us laugh but a hundred clichés move us, because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion.” Eco’s words resonate even stronger in Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point, a fascinating simulacrum of festive movies in which references to annual favorites are thrust together with about as much delicacy as the family it tenderly depicts. The island isn’t Shutter but Long, specifically a small town in Suffolk County where we meet four generations of the Bolsanos, a blue-collar family going through the motions and rituals of their annual get-together, adoring and enduring each other as best they can in what might be their last year in the family home. The filmmaker behind this delicate, strange, reflective bauble is Tyler Taormina, co-founder of the...
- 5/18/2024
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Cannes film festival
There isn’t much plot in Tyler Taormina’s very charming and rich movie about one huge family’s festivities, but it’s engrossing, exalted even
At first glance, there’s some reason to be suspicious of this film, with its possible nepo shenanigans. It’s about an extended blue collar family with a tinge of crime … and it features Francesca Scorsese, daughter of Martin. It’s also about the teeming warmth of a suburban American home, whose inhabitants seem on the verge of something epiphanic … and it features Sawyer Spielberg, son of Steven. But for all the influence-anxiety that anything like this carries with it, this is a very charming and rich movie, teeming with ambient detail, from very original and distinctive film-maker Tyler Taormina, whose previous picture Ham on Rye I very much admired.
Despite or because of the fact that almost nothing really happens in any conventionally dramatic sense,...
There isn’t much plot in Tyler Taormina’s very charming and rich movie about one huge family’s festivities, but it’s engrossing, exalted even
At first glance, there’s some reason to be suspicious of this film, with its possible nepo shenanigans. It’s about an extended blue collar family with a tinge of crime … and it features Francesca Scorsese, daughter of Martin. It’s also about the teeming warmth of a suburban American home, whose inhabitants seem on the verge of something epiphanic … and it features Sawyer Spielberg, son of Steven. But for all the influence-anxiety that anything like this carries with it, this is a very charming and rich movie, teeming with ambient detail, from very original and distinctive film-maker Tyler Taormina, whose previous picture Ham on Rye I very much admired.
Despite or because of the fact that almost nothing really happens in any conventionally dramatic sense,...
- 5/17/2024
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
It’s the holidays, and strings of gaudy rainbow lights twinkle from gables. In cozy living rooms, the elders doze in their chairs while middle-aged siblings bicker and booze it up around the dining table. Little kids squirm in makeshift beds trying to stay awake for Santa, while truculent teenagers sneak out into the suburban night to do secret teenager things. Ok, so there are no chestnuts roasting on an open fire — instead there is a salad bowl full of red and green M&Ms — but in almost every other respect, Tyler Taormina’s delightful stocking-stuffer “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” is as alive to the domesticated magic of the season as a classic carol. Taormina’s fondly multivalent, Millennial-Norman-Rockwell perspective incorporates a child’s experience of the holiday, overlaid with a teen’s and a parent’s and a grandparent’s and so on. It feels as though...
- 5/17/2024
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Three features into his filmmaking career, it’s evident that director Tyler Taormina loves faces — though not in the way of Bergman or Cassavetes. Unlike those art house paragons, he doesn’t isolate his characters in order to peer intently into their souls. He collects faces by the dozen and dreams up crowded tableaus.
His debut film, Ham on Rye, presented a mysterious and unsettling teen ritual in which the faces never connected to conventional stories. Five years later, Taormina is still inspired by group dynamics, and he’s still experimenting with the fusion of aesthetics and storytelling, but this time on more familiar terrain. Veering at times into sensory overload as it reconfigures the holiday-gathering template, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point can feel like a party that refuses to end, one that could have used some judicious streamlining. But it’s a memorably adventurous party, fueled by intense hopefulness,...
His debut film, Ham on Rye, presented a mysterious and unsettling teen ritual in which the faces never connected to conventional stories. Five years later, Taormina is still inspired by group dynamics, and he’s still experimenting with the fusion of aesthetics and storytelling, but this time on more familiar terrain. Veering at times into sensory overload as it reconfigures the holiday-gathering template, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point can feel like a party that refuses to end, one that could have used some judicious streamlining. But it’s a memorably adventurous party, fueled by intense hopefulness,...
- 5/17/2024
- by Sheri Linden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Like any Christmas film worth the time it took to wrap, Tyler Taormina’s wry but melancholy “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” has a bone-deep understanding of why all the best holidays are so painfully bittersweet: They bring the evanescence of our lives into focus, crystallizing the passage of time, while slowing it down just enough for us to appreciate how much of it has already melted into memory. Unlike the rest of its way too crowded genre, Taormina’s contribution has precious little interest in doing anything else.
And god bless this movie for that, because its tinselly charm depends on conjuring a feeling so pure and hyper-specific that even the slightest flurry of a plot might threaten to dilute the effect. Even more so than Taormina’s previous features, “Christmas in Miller’s Point” is just happy to be an immaculately conceived vibe.
Instead of scenes, there are fleeting glimpses.
And god bless this movie for that, because its tinselly charm depends on conjuring a feeling so pure and hyper-specific that even the slightest flurry of a plot might threaten to dilute the effect. Even more so than Taormina’s previous features, “Christmas in Miller’s Point” is just happy to be an immaculately conceived vibe.
Instead of scenes, there are fleeting glimpses.
- 5/17/2024
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
We’ve only just got Easter out of the way, and here comes the most immersive Christmas movie of the year, an abstract but very much controlled study based in and around a festive party thrown by a very large family from Long Island, New York. Despite the specificity of the setting, however, Tyler Taormina’s third feature film is a surprisingly relatable experience, part anthropological study, part nostalgia kick, lit up (literally) like a Christmas tree in a yuletide riot of red, white and green.
It begins in a car ferrying members of the Balsano family — mother and father, brother and sister — to the home of the family’s matriarch, where four generations of Balsanos have gathered for their annual get-together. This is about as much of a set-up as you’re going to get,...
It begins in a car ferrying members of the Balsano family — mother and father, brother and sister — to the home of the family’s matriarch, where four generations of Balsanos have gathered for their annual get-together. This is about as much of a set-up as you’re going to get,...
- 5/17/2024
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
Exclusive: Michael Cera caught Tyler Taormina’s feature directing debut Ham on Rye after a friend suggested he check it out. He was so impressed that he signed himself up as a sort of producing “cheerleader” on the filmmaker’s latest picture Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, which plays in Directors’ Fortnight on Friday,May 17, at the Cannes Film Festival.
Cera’s quick to point out that Krista Minto, co-writer Eric Berger and others did the heavy-lifting producer duties on the picture that’s almost like a fly-on-the-wall exploration of a sprawling Long Island family’s holiday get-together.
“They’re the ones who actually made the movies,” he stressed.
The film’s Cannes screening comes at a time when Cera, who has made short films, has two films in development, both of which he will direct. One of them is called Gummy, the other is untitled. The untitled one is likely to go first,...
Cera’s quick to point out that Krista Minto, co-writer Eric Berger and others did the heavy-lifting producer duties on the picture that’s almost like a fly-on-the-wall exploration of a sprawling Long Island family’s holiday get-together.
“They’re the ones who actually made the movies,” he stressed.
The film’s Cannes screening comes at a time when Cera, who has made short films, has two films in development, both of which he will direct. One of them is called Gummy, the other is untitled. The untitled one is likely to go first,...
- 5/16/2024
- by Baz Bamigboye
- Deadline Film + TV
Omnes Films has a goal. “Our mission is to fill a void in modern cinema,” says its website. “Our films are passionate, ambitious works made by friends that favor atmosphere over plot and study the many forms of cultural decay in the 21st Century. Whatever the subject or genre, we seek projects that are original in conception and feel like they’ve never been made before.” It sounds wildly ambitious, and maybe it is, but Cannes audiences will be the judge of that when two of its films — Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point by Tyler Taormina and Eephus by Carson Lund — premiere in Directors’ Fortnight.
Taormina and Lund met at college in Boston, where the former was studying screenwriting and the latter film production. Lund, says Taormina, “was always like the crazily prodigious cinematographer. Everyone was very intimidated by this man.” Taormina, meanwhile, wanted to make kids TV. While waiting for a script to sell, Taormina had the idea for a loose indie called Ham on Rye (2019). Lund signed on as DoP, and Omnes was born.
Says Lund, “Omnes is a loose collective that’s becoming tighter. In college I made a short film called Omnes. It’s a sort of a Latin term that’s used often in theater by a director when he needs to get the attention of the cast and crew. And so, we started to tag our films as Omnes Productions. And then we said, ‘You know what? We should make this a real thing.’ So, we rebranded from Omnes Productions to Omnes Films. We wanted to really make it a cinema collective. We’re not an official company, in the sense that we don’t have an LLC or anything. To us, just a symbol of our friendship, our collaboration.”
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
First out of the gate was Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, based on the director’s experience of family gatherings in the early 2000s. “This movie came from many things,” he says, “but I think the genesis was watching my parents’ wedding video on their 30th anniversary. This was some years ago now, and it deeply moved me.”
“I started to revisit some home videos at that time,” he continues, “and I realized pretty quickly that I actually have a total incapability of watching them. I’m too sentimental. It’s too heavy for me to watch my family when we were all so much younger.” That was when the idea of making a Christmas movie came to him. “Once I had that, I knew it would be the way to go. Or, maybe I didn’t know, but I figured that it would be the way that I could reanimate and dwell in the sentimentality that means so much to me.”
Taormina’s film is notable for its striking barrage of kitsch pop classics, which cineastes will recognize from Kenneth Anger’s experimental 1963 film Scorpio Rising. “The option of using Christmas music was just an absolute no. That would’ve been a real cringe-worthy move. But I’m very inspired by Kenneth Anger, very much so, to the point where there’s a central scene in my previous film, Ham on Rye, which was originally conceived and shot to the song he uses in Kustom Kar Kommandos [1965].
“Anger has remained an inciting inspiration for all the work I’ve done so far,” he continues, “and, for this one, Scorpio Rising was there at the beginning. I think we subconsciously realized that this music from the ’60s would make perfect Christmas music, because groups like The Ronettes and so on and so forth went on to make all these famous Christmas songs, so you hear that sound and it immediately feels festive. So, it was kind of a cheat. And on top of that, which ones to choose was very fun for me, because I was actually really interested in how the lyrics of these songs speak so much to the themes of the movie, because the context for a lot of these songs is love and love lost, you know?”
Eephus
Lund, meanwhile, had been cooking up Eephus, a personal story of his own, about a baseball field that is being demolished to build an elementary school. “We shot Eephus five months before Miller’s Point,” he recalls. “Tyler, I believe, had conceived of Miller’s Point maybe a little bit before I started writing Eephus, though I know we were kind of discussing the ideas at a similar time. I wrote Eephus largely during the pandemic, over Zoom, with my two co-writers, Mike Bassa and Nate Fisher. And then eventually when we finally got to work together in a room, we felt like things moved a bit quicker.”
Read the digital edition of Deadline’s Disruptors/Cannes magazine here.
Most of Lund’s career has been as a cinematographer and an editor. “I’d made short films, but I’d never written many screenplays,” he says. “I’m very attracted to location and light — that’s sort of the engine for my creative process — I had stumbled upon an idea where that was sort of the emphasis. Eephus is almost a landscape film, in that respect. I play baseball, and I play in a Sunday League, like the one depicted in the film. I was looking for material that would be personal to me but that also scratched this itch of making a film that would track the process of day turning to night over the course of one afternoon in New England and in fall, which is to me the most beautiful time for baseball.”
The directors were taken aback when both films made it into Cannes. “Honestly,” says Lund, “when one of them got in, we thought, ‘Ok, maybe they won’t program both.’ I mean, we don’t want to look like we’re trying to corner the market! But it happened, and we’re thrilled and a little surprised, for sure. But I think it’s a testament to the Fortnight that they’re keeping their eye on these kind of homegrown, handmade, independent films from America. Films that have a kind of different tone and vision.”...
Taormina and Lund met at college in Boston, where the former was studying screenwriting and the latter film production. Lund, says Taormina, “was always like the crazily prodigious cinematographer. Everyone was very intimidated by this man.” Taormina, meanwhile, wanted to make kids TV. While waiting for a script to sell, Taormina had the idea for a loose indie called Ham on Rye (2019). Lund signed on as DoP, and Omnes was born.
Says Lund, “Omnes is a loose collective that’s becoming tighter. In college I made a short film called Omnes. It’s a sort of a Latin term that’s used often in theater by a director when he needs to get the attention of the cast and crew. And so, we started to tag our films as Omnes Productions. And then we said, ‘You know what? We should make this a real thing.’ So, we rebranded from Omnes Productions to Omnes Films. We wanted to really make it a cinema collective. We’re not an official company, in the sense that we don’t have an LLC or anything. To us, just a symbol of our friendship, our collaboration.”
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
First out of the gate was Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, based on the director’s experience of family gatherings in the early 2000s. “This movie came from many things,” he says, “but I think the genesis was watching my parents’ wedding video on their 30th anniversary. This was some years ago now, and it deeply moved me.”
“I started to revisit some home videos at that time,” he continues, “and I realized pretty quickly that I actually have a total incapability of watching them. I’m too sentimental. It’s too heavy for me to watch my family when we were all so much younger.” That was when the idea of making a Christmas movie came to him. “Once I had that, I knew it would be the way to go. Or, maybe I didn’t know, but I figured that it would be the way that I could reanimate and dwell in the sentimentality that means so much to me.”
Taormina’s film is notable for its striking barrage of kitsch pop classics, which cineastes will recognize from Kenneth Anger’s experimental 1963 film Scorpio Rising. “The option of using Christmas music was just an absolute no. That would’ve been a real cringe-worthy move. But I’m very inspired by Kenneth Anger, very much so, to the point where there’s a central scene in my previous film, Ham on Rye, which was originally conceived and shot to the song he uses in Kustom Kar Kommandos [1965].
“Anger has remained an inciting inspiration for all the work I’ve done so far,” he continues, “and, for this one, Scorpio Rising was there at the beginning. I think we subconsciously realized that this music from the ’60s would make perfect Christmas music, because groups like The Ronettes and so on and so forth went on to make all these famous Christmas songs, so you hear that sound and it immediately feels festive. So, it was kind of a cheat. And on top of that, which ones to choose was very fun for me, because I was actually really interested in how the lyrics of these songs speak so much to the themes of the movie, because the context for a lot of these songs is love and love lost, you know?”
Eephus
Lund, meanwhile, had been cooking up Eephus, a personal story of his own, about a baseball field that is being demolished to build an elementary school. “We shot Eephus five months before Miller’s Point,” he recalls. “Tyler, I believe, had conceived of Miller’s Point maybe a little bit before I started writing Eephus, though I know we were kind of discussing the ideas at a similar time. I wrote Eephus largely during the pandemic, over Zoom, with my two co-writers, Mike Bassa and Nate Fisher. And then eventually when we finally got to work together in a room, we felt like things moved a bit quicker.”
Read the digital edition of Deadline’s Disruptors/Cannes magazine here.
Most of Lund’s career has been as a cinematographer and an editor. “I’d made short films, but I’d never written many screenplays,” he says. “I’m very attracted to location and light — that’s sort of the engine for my creative process — I had stumbled upon an idea where that was sort of the emphasis. Eephus is almost a landscape film, in that respect. I play baseball, and I play in a Sunday League, like the one depicted in the film. I was looking for material that would be personal to me but that also scratched this itch of making a film that would track the process of day turning to night over the course of one afternoon in New England and in fall, which is to me the most beautiful time for baseball.”
The directors were taken aback when both films made it into Cannes. “Honestly,” says Lund, “when one of them got in, we thought, ‘Ok, maybe they won’t program both.’ I mean, we don’t want to look like we’re trying to corner the market! But it happened, and we’re thrilled and a little surprised, for sure. But I think it’s a testament to the Fortnight that they’re keeping their eye on these kind of homegrown, handmade, independent films from America. Films that have a kind of different tone and vision.”...
- 5/15/2024
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
This holiday season is one where the offspring of iconic Hollywood families come together, apparently.
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” which is set to debut in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes, stars Francesca Scorsese and Sawyer Spielberg, two film stars in their own rite who hail from respective auteurs Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
Decade-plus indie staple Michael Cera leads the latest feature directed by Tyler Taormina; Cera also produces the ensemble family dramedy that marks Taormina’s follow-up to his 2019 coming-of-age comedy “Ham on Rye.”
Set during one Christmas Eve, a family gathers for what could be the last holiday in their ancestral home. As the night wears on and generational tensions arise, one of the teenagers sneaks out with her friends to claim the wintry suburb for her own, per the official synopsis. Cera is seen donning a cop uniform in one of the first look images,...
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” which is set to debut in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes, stars Francesca Scorsese and Sawyer Spielberg, two film stars in their own rite who hail from respective auteurs Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
Decade-plus indie staple Michael Cera leads the latest feature directed by Tyler Taormina; Cera also produces the ensemble family dramedy that marks Taormina’s follow-up to his 2019 coming-of-age comedy “Ham on Rye.”
Set during one Christmas Eve, a family gathers for what could be the last holiday in their ancestral home. As the night wears on and generational tensions arise, one of the teenagers sneaks out with her friends to claim the wintry suburb for her own, per the official synopsis. Cera is seen donning a cop uniform in one of the first look images,...
- 5/6/2024
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
Magnify, the rebranded international sales arm of Magnolia Pictures, has acquired global and U.S. sales rights to “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” in the run up to its world premiere at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.
Directed and co-writer by Tyler Taormina (“Ham on Rye”), the film stars Michael Cera (“Barbie”), Francesca Scorsese, Maria Dizzia (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”), Ben Shenkman (“Billions”), Elsie Fisher (“Eighth Grade”), Gregg Turkington (“Entertainment”), Sawyer Spielberg (“Masters of the Air”) breakout actor Matilda Fleming, among others.
Written by Taormina and Eric Berger, the film revolves around a rambunctious extended family descending upon their small Long Island hometown for the holidays where hijinks, generational squabbles, and family traditions ensue.
“Taormina takes a singular approach to the classic holiday family movie, bringing his absurdist humor and dynamic filmmaking to life with a charming and perfectly cast ensemble,” said Lorna Lee Torres, Magnify SVP of Global Sales. “We...
Directed and co-writer by Tyler Taormina (“Ham on Rye”), the film stars Michael Cera (“Barbie”), Francesca Scorsese, Maria Dizzia (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”), Ben Shenkman (“Billions”), Elsie Fisher (“Eighth Grade”), Gregg Turkington (“Entertainment”), Sawyer Spielberg (“Masters of the Air”) breakout actor Matilda Fleming, among others.
Written by Taormina and Eric Berger, the film revolves around a rambunctious extended family descending upon their small Long Island hometown for the holidays where hijinks, generational squabbles, and family traditions ensue.
“Taormina takes a singular approach to the classic holiday family movie, bringing his absurdist humor and dynamic filmmaking to life with a charming and perfectly cast ensemble,” said Lorna Lee Torres, Magnify SVP of Global Sales. “We...
- 4/25/2024
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Cannes parallel section Directors’ Fortnight has unveiled the line-up for its 56th edition running from May 15 to 23, at a press conference in Paris’ Forum des Images cultural center.
The section, launched in 1969 and overseen by the French Directors Guild, will present 21 feature films and 10 short films.
It is the second line-up overseen by Delegate General Julien Rejl, who took up the role last year.
Discoveries of his inaugural edition included Georgian director Elene Naveriani’s late coming-of-age drama Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry; U.S. indie film Riddle Of Fire by Weston Razooli, as well as Vietnamese filmmaker Phạm Thiên Ân’s 2023 Cannes Caméra d’Or winner Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell.
The 2024 edition will open with late director Sophie Fillières’ final feature This Life of Mine, starring Agnès Jaoui as a woman whose sense of self starts to unravel as she turns 55.
Fillières died shortly after completing the shoot and her...
The section, launched in 1969 and overseen by the French Directors Guild, will present 21 feature films and 10 short films.
It is the second line-up overseen by Delegate General Julien Rejl, who took up the role last year.
Discoveries of his inaugural edition included Georgian director Elene Naveriani’s late coming-of-age drama Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry; U.S. indie film Riddle Of Fire by Weston Razooli, as well as Vietnamese filmmaker Phạm Thiên Ân’s 2023 Cannes Caméra d’Or winner Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell.
The 2024 edition will open with late director Sophie Fillières’ final feature This Life of Mine, starring Agnès Jaoui as a woman whose sense of self starts to unravel as she turns 55.
Fillières died shortly after completing the shoot and her...
- 4/16/2024
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Ham on Rye (2019) and Happer’s Comet (2022) filmmaker Tyler Taormina went into festive mode for his third feature in less than four years. Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point moved into production during the summer on Long Island with Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, Maria Dizzia, Francesca Scorsese, Ben Shenkman, Gregg Turkington, Sawyer Spielberg, and newcomer Matilda Fleming. Written by Taormina and Eric Berger, the project will be featured at the American Film Festival’s U.S. in Progress in Wroclaw.
Gist: On Christmas Eve, Balsanos gather for what could be the last holiday in their ancestral home. As the night wears on and generational tensions arise, cousins Emily and Michelle sneak away to a winter wonderland, where suburban teenagers find their rebellious paradise.…...
Gist: On Christmas Eve, Balsanos gather for what could be the last holiday in their ancestral home. As the night wears on and generational tensions arise, cousins Emily and Michelle sneak away to a winter wonderland, where suburban teenagers find their rebellious paradise.…...
- 11/8/2023
- by Eric Lavallée
- IONCINEMA.com
Today we’re sharing the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for No Sleep Till, the feature debut from French-American filmmaker Alexandra Simpson. So far, $3,735 has been raised by 21 backers toward a flexible $25,000 goal, with 29 days remaining to secure funds through the campaign. Producing the film is Ham on Rye and Happer’s Comet director Tyler Taormina, a member of the filmmaking collective Omnes Films, which appeared on our 25 New Faces of Film list in 2021. Also on board in Zurich-based producer Michael Graf, who produced the Sundance ’23 short White Ant. Here’s a general synopsis and pitch of No […]
The post Crowdfunding Campaign Launched for Alexandra Simpson’s Feature Debut No Sleep Till, Produced by Tyler Taormina first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post Crowdfunding Campaign Launched for Alexandra Simpson’s Feature Debut No Sleep Till, Produced by Tyler Taormina first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 8/4/2023
- by Natalia Keogan
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Today we’re sharing the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for No Sleep Till, the feature debut from French-American filmmaker Alexandra Simpson. So far, $3,735 has been raised by 21 backers toward a flexible $25,000 goal, with 29 days remaining to secure funds through the campaign. Producing the film is Ham on Rye and Happer’s Comet director Tyler Taormina, a member of the filmmaking collective Omnes Films, which appeared on our 25 New Faces of Film list in 2021. Also on board in Zurich-based producer Michael Graf, who produced the Sundance ’23 short White Ant. Here’s a general synopsis and pitch of No […]
The post Crowdfunding Campaign Launched for Alexandra Simpson’s Feature Debut No Sleep Till, Produced by Tyler Taormina first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post Crowdfunding Campaign Launched for Alexandra Simpson’s Feature Debut No Sleep Till, Produced by Tyler Taormina first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 8/4/2023
- by Natalia Keogan
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
We’ll be getting some American indie holiday cheer via Ham on Rye / and the just released Happer’s Comet helmer Tyler Taormina sometime next year. Deadline reports that production is now complete on a comedy titled Long Island on Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point – a project that stars Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, Maria Dizzia, Francesca Scorsese, Ben Shenkman, Gregg Turkington, Sawyer Spielberg, and newcomer Matilda Fleming. Producers included Cera, Krista Minto, Taormina, David Croley Broyles and Duncan Sullivan. The executive producers are Jeremy Gardner, Joseph Lipsey IV, Brock Pierce and Jason Stone.
Written by Taormina, Eric Berger and Kevin Anton, the film watches as four generations of the Balsano family gather for what may be the last Christmas in the family home.…...
Written by Taormina, Eric Berger and Kevin Anton, the film watches as four generations of the Balsano family gather for what may be the last Christmas in the family home.…...
- 6/16/2023
- by Eric Lavallée
- IONCINEMA.com
Exclusive: Filmmaker Tyler Taormina (Ham on Rye) has wrapped production on Long Island on Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point, a Christmas comedy to star Michael Cera (Life & Beth), Elsie Fisher (Barry), Maria Dizzia (The Good Nurse), Francesca Scorsese (We Are Who We Are), Ben Shenkman (Billions), Gregg Turkington (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania), Sawyer Spielberg (Masters of the Air) and newcomer Matilda Fleming.
Written by Taormina, Eric Berger and Kevin Anton, the film watches as four generations of the Balsano family gather for what may be the last Christmas in the family home. As they lose themselves in rowdy celebration, cousins Emily and Michelle sneak away to a winter wonderland, where suburban teenagers find their rebellious paradise.
The project hails from Omnes Films and was produced in association with Crypto Castle Productions and Puente Films. Producers included Cera, Krista Minto, Taormina, David Croley Broyles and Duncan Sullivan. The executive producers are Jeremy Gardner,...
Written by Taormina, Eric Berger and Kevin Anton, the film watches as four generations of the Balsano family gather for what may be the last Christmas in the family home. As they lose themselves in rowdy celebration, cousins Emily and Michelle sneak away to a winter wonderland, where suburban teenagers find their rebellious paradise.
The project hails from Omnes Films and was produced in association with Crypto Castle Productions and Puente Films. Producers included Cera, Krista Minto, Taormina, David Croley Broyles and Duncan Sullivan. The executive producers are Jeremy Gardner,...
- 6/15/2023
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
Following a number of disappointing blockbusters in May, there are a few promising ones this month (as glimpsed in our honorable mentions below), but it feels like we’ll have to wait until July for a trio of heavy hitters. In the meantime, June brings an eclectic mix of sturdy debuts, auteur-driven offerings, and accomplished documentaries.
15. Shadow Kingdom (Alma Har’el; June 6)
Technically released in limited capacity a couple years ago, the Bob Dylan concert film Shadow Kingdom is now getting proper distribution. As Nick Newman said in our summer movie preview, “Your local Bob Dylan obsessive has surely mentioned Shadow Kingdom, the 2021 concert film that saw him rework an assortment of earlier songs––some established, some deeper in the back catalogue. One case (‘To Be Alone with You’) marked an almost-total rewrite, and courtesy the end credits (which we now know is called ‘Sierra’s Theme’) an entirely new track.
15. Shadow Kingdom (Alma Har’el; June 6)
Technically released in limited capacity a couple years ago, the Bob Dylan concert film Shadow Kingdom is now getting proper distribution. As Nick Newman said in our summer movie preview, “Your local Bob Dylan obsessive has surely mentioned Shadow Kingdom, the 2021 concert film that saw him rework an assortment of earlier songs––some established, some deeper in the back catalogue. One case (‘To Be Alone with You’) marked an almost-total rewrite, and courtesy the end credits (which we now know is called ‘Sierra’s Theme’) an entirely new track.
- 6/2/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
After its debut at Sundance in January, where it earned the World Cinema Dramatic Competition award for directing, Ukrainian wartime drama “Klondike” nabbed top honors for best international film at the Chile’s 18th Santiago International Film Festival (Sanfic).
“Klondike,” written, directed and edited by Ukrainian filmmaker Marina Er Gorbach (“Omar and Us”), tells the story of expectant couple Irina and Anatoly who live in the village of Grabove, near the Russia-Ukraine border during the high conflict that coincides with downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. The couple faces devastation up-close as Irina refuses to relocate, even as troops close in.
Best director went to Chile’s Roberto Baeza for his documentary effort “Punto de Encuentro,” a gripping portrait of filmmakers striving to recreate the story of their fathers, tortured and imprisoned under the dictatorship.
Tyler Taormina (“Ham On Rye”) feature “Happer’s Comet,” which examines alienation by focusing on characters from his Long Island hometown,...
“Klondike,” written, directed and edited by Ukrainian filmmaker Marina Er Gorbach (“Omar and Us”), tells the story of expectant couple Irina and Anatoly who live in the village of Grabove, near the Russia-Ukraine border during the high conflict that coincides with downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. The couple faces devastation up-close as Irina refuses to relocate, even as troops close in.
Best director went to Chile’s Roberto Baeza for his documentary effort “Punto de Encuentro,” a gripping portrait of filmmakers striving to recreate the story of their fathers, tortured and imprisoned under the dictatorship.
Tyler Taormina (“Ham On Rye”) feature “Happer’s Comet,” which examines alienation by focusing on characters from his Long Island hometown,...
- 8/21/2022
- by Holly Jones
- Variety Film + TV
Easy to overlook in the looming shadow of the Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and New York Film Festivals (and all of the awards season hoopla they portend), Switzerland’s historic Locarno Film Festival has remained so distinct and essential precisely because of its refusal to concede to industry pressures or chase attention over artistry.
While the magical Piazza Grande has been home to its fair share of glitzy outdoor screenings over the years — the next few days will see the 8,000-seat town square transform into an impromptu “Bullet Train” station, for example — Locarno has always prided itself on providing a more curious and less hostile platform for elite auteurs whose work may not conform to the commercial demands of the international marketplace; recent winners of the festival’s prestigious Golden Leopard award include Pedro Costa (“Vitalina Varela”), Lav Diaz (“From What Is Before”), and the great Chinese documentarian Wang Bing (“Mrs.
While the magical Piazza Grande has been home to its fair share of glitzy outdoor screenings over the years — the next few days will see the 8,000-seat town square transform into an impromptu “Bullet Train” station, for example — Locarno has always prided itself on providing a more curious and less hostile platform for elite auteurs whose work may not conform to the commercial demands of the international marketplace; recent winners of the festival’s prestigious Golden Leopard award include Pedro Costa (“Vitalina Varela”), Lav Diaz (“From What Is Before”), and the great Chinese documentarian Wang Bing (“Mrs.
- 8/2/2022
- by David Ehrlich and Sophie Monks Kaufman
- Indiewire
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Danny DeVito, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Ivan Reitman. (Via Arnold Schwarzenegger.) The prolific director and producer Ivan Reitman has died. Though best known for films like National Lampoon's Animal House, Kindergarten Cop, and the original Ghostbusters, Reitman started out by producing two early horror films by David Cronenberg: Shivers and Rapid. Though he mostly produced and directed comedies, in his later career he produced more dramatic films like Hitchcock and his son Jason Reitman's Up in the Air. His final directorial effort was 2014's Draft Day, a sports drama about the NFL. Reitman was known to take the genre of comedy very seriously, stating in 2000: "The great cliché is about how damn tough comedy is. But of course, nobody really gives that any respect." Michael Mann's film Ferrari has finally started its engine.
- 2/16/2022
- MUBI
Spotting Covid-era ephemera was novel in the films of 2021—even in some of the best. As early as last February we saw masks being worn, some pointedly below the nose, in Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn and later in the year in Drive My Car; even Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy ended with a nod to the lockdown era. If a crop from this year’s Berlinale are something to go by, 2022 already looks to be ushering in a wave of smaller-scale projects from filmmakers who continued creating during that time and, whether directly or indirectly, express how it felt to be right in the thick of it.
Screening in the festival’s more left-field Forum section (and chief among those I’ve seen) is Happer’s Comet, a hypnotic, sensory, dialogue-free film that comes in at a polite 62 minutes. The director is Tyler Taormina, an LA filmmaker who...
Screening in the festival’s more left-field Forum section (and chief among those I’ve seen) is Happer’s Comet, a hypnotic, sensory, dialogue-free film that comes in at a polite 62 minutes. The director is Tyler Taormina, an LA filmmaker who...
- 2/16/2022
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Chris Evans and Adam Kersh have launched Fusion Management, an artist-driven management company that will focus on actors, filmmakers and creators.
Their initial management roster features a number of notable clients with a particular focus on indie multi-hyphenates and auteurs. The list includes Sean Baker, who earned raves for “Red Rocket”; filmmaker and actor Amy Seimetz, the co-creator of “The Girlfriend Experience” on Starz and the star of “No Sudden Move”; Cooper Raiff, a writer, director, producer and actor whose film “Cha Cha Real Smooth” premiered at Sundance this week to critical acclaim; and Kelly O’Sullivan, the writer and star of the award-winning “Saint Frances.”
Evans, formerly a manager at One Entertainment, and Kersh, co-founder of Brigade Marketing, bring more than two decades of combined experience within the entertainment industry. The two want Fusion to be a landing ground for both established creators and emerging talent both in front of and behind the camera.
Their initial management roster features a number of notable clients with a particular focus on indie multi-hyphenates and auteurs. The list includes Sean Baker, who earned raves for “Red Rocket”; filmmaker and actor Amy Seimetz, the co-creator of “The Girlfriend Experience” on Starz and the star of “No Sudden Move”; Cooper Raiff, a writer, director, producer and actor whose film “Cha Cha Real Smooth” premiered at Sundance this week to critical acclaim; and Kelly O’Sullivan, the writer and star of the award-winning “Saint Frances.”
Evans, formerly a manager at One Entertainment, and Kersh, co-founder of Brigade Marketing, bring more than two decades of combined experience within the entertainment industry. The two want Fusion to be a landing ground for both established creators and emerging talent both in front of and behind the camera.
- 1/25/2022
- by Brent Lang
- Variety Film + TV
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Fox Maxy's Maat Means Land (2020) MoMA has announced the lineup and schedule for “To The Lighthouse,” a thrilling carte blanche program by curator Mark McElhatten featuring new films by Nathaniel Dorsky, Ernie Gehr, Jodie Mack, Dani and Sheilah ReStack, and more, along with older films by Rivette, Joseph H. Lewis, Claire Denis, and Marguerite Duras.An essential annual list, Filmmaker Magazine's 25 new faces of film for 2021 includes Kate Gondwe (the founder of Dezda Films), filmmaker Fox Maxy, Omnes Films (the collective behind Tyler Taormina's Ham on Rye), and others. A24 and Emma Stone’s production company, Fruit Tree Banner, have come together to back Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw The TV Glow. The film, a follow-up to Schoenbrun's debut from this year, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, follows...
- 10/13/2021
- MUBI
Filmmaker, actor, and NoBudge founder Kentucker Audley has always thought of his discovery-minded website as a streaming platform. Sort of. First launched by Audley in 2011 as a curated Tumblr blog that shared new films from rising stars, NoBudge slowly expanded into a full-fledged website in 2015. While Audley initially posted a new film each month, by 2018, he was posting a fresh offering each day, most of them shorts. Even then, Audley said, he couldn’t kick the idea of launching a streaming platform.
“I’ve always not quite known what NoBudge is,” Audley said with a laugh during a recent interview with IndieWire. “I think there’s part of me [for whom] it’s really appealing to just say, ‘It’s a streaming site.’ It’s a very clear-cut service. This is what it does. This is how you interact with it.”
With today’s launch of NoBudge2, Audley and his online labor...
“I’ve always not quite known what NoBudge is,” Audley said with a laugh during a recent interview with IndieWire. “I think there’s part of me [for whom] it’s really appealing to just say, ‘It’s a streaming site.’ It’s a very clear-cut service. This is what it does. This is how you interact with it.”
With today’s launch of NoBudge2, Audley and his online labor...
- 4/19/2021
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: David Fincher and Gary Oldman on the set of Mank (2020). David Fincher's Mank leads this year's nominations for the Academy Awards. A complete list of all nominations can be found here.Legendary actor Yaphet Kotto, best known for his charismatic presence in films like Alien, Blue Collar, and Live and Let Die has died.Spike Lee will be leading the 2021 Cannes Film Festival Jury, promising to return after the cancellation of last year's festival: "Book my flight now, my wife and I are coming!" After a months-long hiatus, Film Comment has announced its return, marked by a new weekly letter and two new episodes of the Film Comment podcast. Recommended VIEWINGAbove: Mark Rappaport's The Stendhal Syndrome or My Dinner with Turhan Bey. Today's the last day to watch two new essay films...
- 3/17/2021
- MUBI
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Crestone (Marnie Ellen Hertzler)
Exploring the bohemian lives of SoundCloud rappers who find their own oasis (or perhaps are living in a mirage of one) in the middle of the Colorado desert, Crestone is a brief, but complicated look at such a way of life. With a breezy Animal Collective score guiding the rather beautiful imagery, director Marnie Ellen Hertzler is also keen on showing the failures that come with such a life off the grid. Cuisines featuring terrible-looking bologna sandwiches and ketchup-infused ramen along with donation pleas for an $80K GoFundMe with $0 pledged show this escape from society may not be the luxurious, meditative experience as promoted on...
Crestone (Marnie Ellen Hertzler)
Exploring the bohemian lives of SoundCloud rappers who find their own oasis (or perhaps are living in a mirage of one) in the middle of the Colorado desert, Crestone is a brief, but complicated look at such a way of life. With a breezy Animal Collective score guiding the rather beautiful imagery, director Marnie Ellen Hertzler is also keen on showing the failures that come with such a life off the grid. Cuisines featuring terrible-looking bologna sandwiches and ketchup-infused ramen along with donation pleas for an $80K GoFundMe with $0 pledged show this escape from society may not be the luxurious, meditative experience as promoted on...
- 2/19/2021
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Tyler Taormina's Ham on Rye is showing exclusively on Mubi starting January 11, 2021 in the Debuts series.Ham on Rye, the feature film debut of Long Island-native, Los Angeles-beached Tyler Taormina, is one of the strangest and most discomfiting “coming-of-age” films of recent memory. I put “coming-of-age” in quotes because, yes, ostensibly it follows children between the ages of 15 and 18 becoming Something Else, Something Bigger. But both Taormina and his film are notoriously reticent about what this Something Else entails. Ham on Rye doesn’t play any of the familiar beats of similar funny films in the John Hughes/Eighth Grade (2018) ilk. There’s no single teenager we’re asked to keep close track of. Taormina is not nailing the truth of endless grade-school dances, parties, and games of gossipy Telephone so much as swirling surrealistically around them, those unexplained rejections and evasive moves that are romanticized as part of the process of growing up,...
- 1/22/2021
- MUBI
In the beginning, and just for a little while, Tyler Taormina‘s “Ham on Rye” seems like every other no-budget suburban coming-of-ager you’ve ever seen, if maybe better shot. Carson Lund‘s superb cinematography, apparently influenced by photographers like William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, picks out boys riding skateboards, borrowing Dad’s Volvo, and talking about the crucial importance of boning, like it’s a philosophy, like they’re the first ones ever to have had so original a thought.
Continue reading ‘Ham On Rye’ Is A Wonderfully Weird, Surreal Coming-Of-Age Satire [Review] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Ham On Rye’ Is A Wonderfully Weird, Surreal Coming-Of-Age Satire [Review] at The Playlist.
- 1/20/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- The Playlist
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Acasă, My Home (Radu Ciorniciuc)
When encountering the societal and economic structures of everyday life, it’s not a rare dream for many to wonder what life may look like off the grid and out of the hands of a bureaucratic entity that doesn’t have your best interests in mind. For one family living in the vast water reservoir of the Bucharest Delta, they have made this their reality for the last eighteen years. The Enache family and their nine children call this abandoned area their home, sleeping in their homemade hut, fishing for food, and taking gentle care of this slice of nature directly outside the hectic Romanian capital.
Acasă, My Home (Radu Ciorniciuc)
When encountering the societal and economic structures of everyday life, it’s not a rare dream for many to wonder what life may look like off the grid and out of the hands of a bureaucratic entity that doesn’t have your best interests in mind. For one family living in the vast water reservoir of the Bucharest Delta, they have made this their reality for the last eighteen years. The Enache family and their nine children call this abandoned area their home, sleeping in their homemade hut, fishing for food, and taking gentle care of this slice of nature directly outside the hectic Romanian capital.
- 1/15/2021
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Michael Apted by Andrew H. Walker. Filmmaker Michael Apted, best known for an eclectic filmography that includes Coal Miner's Daughter, The World is Not Enough, and the Up documentary series, has died at 79. In his obituary, Peter Bradshaw writes that the Up series, Apted's epic masterpiece, "had an incalculable effect on [...] the thinking of the British progressive left – as it asked us to ruminate on the inescapability or otherwise of class, and what narratives were possible for working people."Recommended VIEWINGAbove: John Gianvito's Her Socialist Smile (2020). John Gianvito's Her Socialist Smile, one of the best films of 2020, is now playing at the National Gallery of the Arts' website. Read our review of the film by Michael Sicinski here.To commemorate avant-garde filmmaking titan Stan Brakhage's birthday on January 14, Re:voir will be...
- 1/13/2021
- MUBI
A crippling year for theatrical exhibition, the pandemic-forced shutdowns meant most films weren’t available for viewing in their ideal presentation. However, through the invention and proliferation of Virtual Cinemas as well as festivals going online, it meant more people could get access to films they otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do so for some time. And with nearly all blockbusters delayed to 2021 or beyond, it meant the more nimble ecosystem of independent and foreign film got the spotlight. Which is to say, there were a few bright points in an otherwise bleak cinematic landscape. So, as we look to hopefully a more promising year, it’s my hope exhibition can survive alongside this more accessible virtual world.
Looking back at the 2020 new releases, there’s a number of films that narrowly missed my top 15, including Dick Johnson Is Dead, The Assistant, Bacurau, Boys State, Minari, Mangrove,...
Looking back at the 2020 new releases, there’s a number of films that narrowly missed my top 15, including Dick Johnson Is Dead, The Assistant, Bacurau, Boys State, Minari, Mangrove,...
- 1/11/2021
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The idea that high school should end with a prom is relatively new to the UK, and largely a consequence of John Hughes films. To those of us old enough to have avoided it, the idea of turning the pathetic but harmless phenomenon of the school disco into something formal and structured, encouraging participants to attend with dates at an age when many of them are certain they're so hideous that they'll be single for life, and entrenching social hierarchies by picking out a King and Queen is both bizarre and terrifying. Though what it covers isn't exactly a prom, taking place in the basement of a small town delicatessen, Tyler Taormina's Ham On Rye is alert to all this strangeness. It opens in the vein of those classic Eighties teen romances but unfolds more like an ethnography of US heterosexual mating rituals, before going somewhere that is literally and.
- 1/10/2021
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Tyler Taormina's Ham on Rye is showing exclusively on Mubi starting January 11, 2021 in the Debuts series.Ham on Rye was born from a joke that a friend made in passing, something about how people go to delicatessens to hookup. My eyes went wide, and I fell very much in love with the idea. At 25 years old, I was quite confused and dejected, and there was something so tender and absurd about this joke that struck a chord in me. I said right then and there that I had to make a movie about this place. Nobody had warned me about what it’s like to first realize that your childhood is dead and gone, that you’ve crossed a threshold of no return. I had yearned to cross this barrier throughout my youth, and the scent of romance was my ticket out. I was always dreaming of it. Then suddenly,...
- 1/8/2021
- MUBI
Coming of age movies are a dime a dozen, but they normally don’t include sandwiches — that is, until “Ham on Rye.” The new trailer brings about a different coming of age story.
Read More: The 25 Best Films Of 2020 You Didn’t See
The movie follows a bizarre tradition in protagonist Haley’s hometown. Kids dress in their grandparents’ clothing and make a pilgrimage to the local deli.
Continue reading ‘Ham On Rye’ Trailer: Festival Fave Indie Reinvigorates The Coming Of Age Film & Arrives Next Week at The Playlist.
Read More: The 25 Best Films Of 2020 You Didn’t See
The movie follows a bizarre tradition in protagonist Haley’s hometown. Kids dress in their grandparents’ clothing and make a pilgrimage to the local deli.
Continue reading ‘Ham On Rye’ Trailer: Festival Fave Indie Reinvigorates The Coming Of Age Film & Arrives Next Week at The Playlist.
- 1/7/2021
- by Brynne Ramella
- The Playlist
Well, let’s never do that again. With 2020 nearly over and done with — and good riddance — it’s time to look ahead to what can only be a better year to come. And what better way to prepare for 2021 than by getting excited for a slate of much-anticipated films that have already caught our fancy? Hell, maybe we can actually check these movies out in actual theaters, wouldn’t that be something?
From festival standouts that played earlier in the year or via one of 2020’s many virtual events to delayed releases and awards contenders anteing up for wide showings beyond their 2020 qualifying runs, we’ve been lucky enough to catch some real gems that will call 2021 home. From heavy-hitting contenders like Regina King’s “One Night in Miami,” Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari,” and Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” to heart-stopping indies like Heidi Ewing’s “I Carry You with Me,...
From festival standouts that played earlier in the year or via one of 2020’s many virtual events to delayed releases and awards contenders anteing up for wide showings beyond their 2020 qualifying runs, we’ve been lucky enough to catch some real gems that will call 2021 home. From heavy-hitting contenders like Regina King’s “One Night in Miami,” Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari,” and Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” to heart-stopping indies like Heidi Ewing’s “I Carry You with Me,...
- 12/31/2020
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
While we aim to discuss a wide breadth of films each year, few things give us more pleasure than the arrival of bold, new voices. It’s why we venture to festivals and pore over a variety of different features that might bring to light some emerging talent. This year was an especially notable time for new directors making their stamp, and we’re highlighting the handful of 2020 debuts that most impressed us.
Below, one can check out a list spanning a variety of different genres and many are available to stream here. In years to come, take note as these helmers (hopefully) ascend.
The 40-Year-Old Version (Radha Blank)
Playwright Radha Blank’s spirited directorial debut The 40-Year-Old Version in an often hilarious and heartfelt autobiographical tale of reinvention. Surrounded in a shoebox apartment of memories of her past including 30 Under 30 Awards, Blank plays herself, a playwright who is faced...
Below, one can check out a list spanning a variety of different genres and many are available to stream here. In years to come, take note as these helmers (hopefully) ascend.
The 40-Year-Old Version (Radha Blank)
Playwright Radha Blank’s spirited directorial debut The 40-Year-Old Version in an often hilarious and heartfelt autobiographical tale of reinvention. Surrounded in a shoebox apartment of memories of her past including 30 Under 30 Awards, Blank plays herself, a playwright who is faced...
- 12/15/2020
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
The word-of-mouth party line on Tyler Taormina’s Ham on Rye is that it begins as a loose, lo-fi teen comedy — a hazy, drifting, and personality-driven series of detours through the problems of youth, like John Hughes by way of Dazed and Confused. And then, the story goes, the movie switches lanes to become something inexplicable, magically surreal and eerie in ways that cannot totally be accounted for by the end.
This is a pretty fair description … though to its great credit, this coming-of-age tale is a little strange from the start.
This is a pretty fair description … though to its great credit, this coming-of-age tale is a little strange from the start.
- 10/26/2020
- by K. Austin Collins
- Rollingstone.com
It’s fair to say that one of the most common genres dominating the American independent film realm is the coming-of-age film. From present-set, relentlessly up-to-the-date affairs to more nostalgic evocations, they have formed a considerable contingent, manifesting themselves even in some of the most heralded films of the past decade. With that saturation, however, tends to come a feeling of weary familiarity, as the same base concerns seem to recur over and over, reducing the complex masses of hormones and neuroses that are teenagers into walking stereotypes.
A stark contrast to this state is Tyler Taormina’s feature debut Ham on Rye, which both leans into and defiantly avoids many of the generic pitfalls. Broadly speaking, the film takes place in two parts, set over the course of what appears to be two days and a night in a nondescript suburban area; the foliage, houses, and light quality seem...
A stark contrast to this state is Tyler Taormina’s feature debut Ham on Rye, which both leans into and defiantly avoids many of the generic pitfalls. Broadly speaking, the film takes place in two parts, set over the course of what appears to be two days and a night in a nondescript suburban area; the foliage, houses, and light quality seem...
- 2/23/2020
- by Ryan Swen
- The Film Stage
Smells Like Teen Spirit: Three Locarno Standouts Consider the Beauty and Torment of Being a Teenager
The following essay was produced as part of the 2019 Locarno Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring film critics that took place during the 72nd edition of the Locarno Film Festival.
Growing up is hard.
For an adolescent just making their way into the world, it seems like the physical changes, mood swings, and all the conflicting emotions that come with transitioning into adulthood are the most cataclysmic events in the world — a matter of life and death.
But what does it mean to observe this period from some distance, particularly through the cold lens of a movie camera? ‘’I probably never saw a happy teenager.” Italian director David Maldi remarked casually while promoting his new film “L’Apprendistato,” which premiered at the 72nd Locarno Festival in the Cineasti del presente competition.
It might seem like a joke, but Maldi takes very seriously this job of documenting adolescence, especially as a...
Growing up is hard.
For an adolescent just making their way into the world, it seems like the physical changes, mood swings, and all the conflicting emotions that come with transitioning into adulthood are the most cataclysmic events in the world — a matter of life and death.
But what does it mean to observe this period from some distance, particularly through the cold lens of a movie camera? ‘’I probably never saw a happy teenager.” Italian director David Maldi remarked casually while promoting his new film “L’Apprendistato,” which premiered at the 72nd Locarno Festival in the Cineasti del presente competition.
It might seem like a joke, but Maldi takes very seriously this job of documenting adolescence, especially as a...
- 9/15/2019
- by Wilfred Okiche
- Indiewire
Rites-of-passage comedy centres on bizarre ceremony at local delicatessen.
New York-based Factory 25 has acquired worldwide rights to Tyler Taormina’s Locarno Film Festival selection and coming-of-age comedy Ham On Rye.
Taormina’s feature directorial debut explores a suburban community where the fate of teenagers’ lives hinges on a bizarre ritual that takes place in the local deli. The film received its international premiere in Locarno on Aug. 10.
Haley Bodell, Cole Devine, Audrey Boos, Gabriella Herrera, and Adam Torres lead an ensemble of more than 100 performers, including non-actors, musicians, and Nickelodeon child stars from the 1990s.
Taormina wrote the screenplay...
New York-based Factory 25 has acquired worldwide rights to Tyler Taormina’s Locarno Film Festival selection and coming-of-age comedy Ham On Rye.
Taormina’s feature directorial debut explores a suburban community where the fate of teenagers’ lives hinges on a bizarre ritual that takes place in the local deli. The film received its international premiere in Locarno on Aug. 10.
Haley Bodell, Cole Devine, Audrey Boos, Gabriella Herrera, and Adam Torres lead an ensemble of more than 100 performers, including non-actors, musicians, and Nickelodeon child stars from the 1990s.
Taormina wrote the screenplay...
- 8/16/2019
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
Celebrating its 72nd edition this year, the Locarno Film Festival has been the birthplace for the finest in international arthouse cinema and this year’s lineup looks to continue the tradition. Ahead of the festival, running August 7-17, the full slate has been announced.
Top highlights include the world premieres of Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela (pictured above), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s To the Ends of the Earth, Ben Rivers & Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Krabi, 2562, Ben Russell’s Color-blind, Denis Côté’s Wilcox, Fabrice Du Welz’s Adoration, as well as a new 12-minute short film from Yorgos Lanthimos titled Nimic and starring Matt Dillon. Other titles that have caught out eye are Echo, from Sparrows director Rúnar Rúnarsson, and A Girl Missing, from Harmonium director Koji Fukada.
The festival will also kick off with some star power as Patrick Vollrath’s 7500, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, will premiere. Check out the lineup below,...
Top highlights include the world premieres of Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela (pictured above), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s To the Ends of the Earth, Ben Rivers & Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Krabi, 2562, Ben Russell’s Color-blind, Denis Côté’s Wilcox, Fabrice Du Welz’s Adoration, as well as a new 12-minute short film from Yorgos Lanthimos titled Nimic and starring Matt Dillon. Other titles that have caught out eye are Echo, from Sparrows director Rúnar Rúnarsson, and A Girl Missing, from Harmonium director Koji Fukada.
The festival will also kick off with some star power as Patrick Vollrath’s 7500, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, will premiere. Check out the lineup below,...
- 7/17/2019
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The following guest essay on the making of Ham on Rye is from cinematographer Carson Lund. The film premieres at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival this week, and the official site is here. For independent filmmakers, Los Angeles is a city of contradictions: it’s both an ideal place to congregate with likeminded artists and craftspeople, and a truly daunting place to actualize on-location productions if you’re low on cash. Between inflated permitting fees, hefty fines for unlawful shooting, and a police force with plenty of experience enforcing these standards, there’s no shortage of ways in which the city formally discourages guerrilla […]...
- 2/5/2019
- by Carson Lund
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The following guest essay on the making of Ham on Rye is from cinematographer Carson Lund. The film premieres at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival this week, and the official site is here. For independent filmmakers, Los Angeles is a city of contradictions: it’s both an ideal place to congregate with likeminded artists and craftspeople, and a truly daunting place to actualize on-location productions if you’re low on cash. Between inflated permitting fees, hefty fines for unlawful shooting, and a police force with plenty of experience enforcing these standards, there’s no shortage of ways in which the city formally discourages guerrilla […]...
- 2/5/2019
- by Carson Lund
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
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