Neon opens Anora, its fifth consecutive Cannes Palm d’Or winner, in limited release this weekend — the highest-profile awards contender to hit theaters this awards season in a lively specialty weekend.
Sean Baker’s comedy debuts on six screens in New York (Lincoln Center, Angelika, Alamo Brooklyn) and LA (Grove, Century City and Burbank). The three NYC locations will be playing select screenings in the film’s original 35mm. Presales have been solid, and Neon will add San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Toronto next week, expanding thereafter to wide release by mid-to-late November.
Anora, its ensemble cast of Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yuriy Borisov, Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan in a comic variation of a modern Cinderella story, play well with audiences. Critics have swooned over the film with a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score (see Deadline review), a similar trajectory to Neon’s 2019 Palme d’Or winner Parasite.
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Baker, who also wrote the screenplay, is a huge proponent of theatrical and has, along with the cast, been actively supporting the film.
In a melding of art and commerce, Neon’s had theatrical success with its Croisette wins, from Triangle of Sadness in 2022 to Anatomy Of A Fall last year. The award is a stamp of approval and major motivator for arthouse fans, helping films cross over to a broader audience. Neon’s Titane, a more challenging film, took the top prize at Cannes in 2021.
The film stars Mikey Madison (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) as Ani, a young sex worker from Brooklyn, whose life takes an unexpected turn when she meets and impulsively marries Vanya, the impetuous son of a Russian billionaire. When Vanya’s parents catch wind of the union, they send their henchmen to annul the marriage, setting off a wild chase through the streets of New York.
Anora marks Baker’s eighth writing-directing endeavor, with previously titles including Red Rocket (2021), The Florida Project (2017) and Tangerine (2015).
“There are few filmmakers as deserving as Sean,” said an exec at a rival distributor. “Every person in the indie space that cares about cinema is rooting for him regardless of whether they’re competitors or not.”
Michael Keaton-starring Goodrich from Ketchup Entertainment, written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer (Home Again) opens today on just over 1,000 screens. Keaton is Andy Goodrich, whose life is upended when his wife (Laura Benanti) and mother of their nine-year-old twins enters a 90-day rehab program, leaving him on his own with their young kids. Thrust into the world of modern parenthood, Goodrich leans on his daughter from his first marriage, Grace (Mila Kunis), as he ultimately evolves into the father Grace never had. With Andie MacDowell, Carmen Ejogo, Kevin Pollak and Michael Urie. See Deadline review.
Roadside Attractions opens Exhibiting Forgiveness in moderate release on 774 screens. The feature debut of contemporary painter Titus Kaphar stars André Holland, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, John Earl Jelks and Andra Day, who is also releasing her original song “Bricks”, which she wrote and performed for the film.
Tarrell (Holland) is an admired American painter who lives with his wife, singer Aisha (Day), and their young son. (Tarrell’s artwork in the film is Kaphar’s own.) His path to success is derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, La’Ron (Jelks), a conscience-stricken man desperate to reconcile.
Exhibiting Forgiveness premieried at Sundance (Deadline review here) and sits at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes with a bit of awards buzz. Roadside’s marketing included constructing a special screening room inside the Gagosian Gallery in L.A. surrounded by Kaphar’s artwork.
Rumours from Bleecker Street by directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson and starring Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander, Roy Dupuis, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Charles Dance, releases in over 600 theaters. World premiered at Cannes and screened at TIFF, the New York Film Festival, and BFI London.
Ricocheting between comedy and apocalyptic horror, Rumours follows the seven leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies at the annual G7 summit, where they attempt to draft a provisional statement regarding a global crisis. Premiered at Cannes. Deadline’s review called it “a smart, sharp & quirky satire.”
Documentary Union by Stephen Maing and Brett Story (Adam McKay is an executive producer), debuts at NYC’s IFC Center with Level Ground Productions self-distributing. Winner of the Sundance Special Jury Award, the doc follows a group of ordinary workers who, on April 1, 2022, made history by successfully winning their election to become the very first unionized Amazon workplace in the U.S. — heralded as the most important win for labor since the 1930s.
This feat would be extraordinary for any union, let alone the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which had no prior organizing experience, no institutional backing, and a total budget of $120k raised on GoFundMe. The doc captures the ALU’s historic grassroots campaign to unionize thousands of their co-workers. From day one of organizing against a corporate superpower and with legal protections at a drastic low for workers, all odds are against the ALU but this rag-tag ensemble remains unswayed in their beliefs in collective action and the dignity and power of the working-class.
Just played the New York Film Festival.
Utopia opens Ethan Berger’s film debut, fraternity hazing drama The Line starring Alex Wolff at NYC’s Regal Union Square, expanding in select theaters nationally to about 35-50 screens and potentially wider in November. Written by Berger and Alex Russek. Premiered at Tribeca, see Deadline review. Wolff (Oppenheimer, A Quiet Place: Day One, Hereditary) plays Tom, a scholarship student desperate to break free from his working-class background and increasingly seduced by fraternity life at Kappa Nu Alpha. He’s torn between a romance with a classmate played by Halle Bailey (The Little Mermaid) outside of his social circle, and the manipulative scheming of his frat president (Lewis Pullman) as the hazing of new pledges gets pushed to dangerous places during the inevitable “hell week”. Justin Abrams, Bo Mitchell, Cheri Oteri, Scoot McNairy, Denise Richards and John Malkovich also star. The late Angus Cloud plays the stoner role in his last film appearance.
Credits acknowledge the horrendous death caused by hazing of Penn State’s Timothy Piazza.
Strand Releasing opens High Tide, the feature film directorial debut of writer-director Marco Calvani, starring Brazil’s leading actor Marco Pigossi in his first English language film, with James Bland and Marisa Tomei.
Heartbroken and adrift, undocumented Brazilian immigrant Lourenço searches for purpose in the queer mecca of Provincetown. As the summer season ends, he sparks an intense and unexpected romance with Maurice. Together, the two reconcile the pasts they’ve left behind and their uncertain futures. Premiered at SWSX (at 100% RT critics score on 11 reviews) and opens at the IFC Center in NYC. Expands to Los Angeles next Friday (Laemmle’s Royal, NoHo 7) adding additional cities in November.
Expansion: A24’s We Live in Time expands big to 955 theaters with John Crowley’s breakout indie romance starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh seeing a 98% audience score. The film has racked up $820k including a $226k opening weekend in five NYC and LA theaters and $500k Thursday. The audience is majority female and under 35, primarily led by the star power of the star but also the duo’s support on social media.
Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan’s documentary Nocturnes from Grasshopper Films opens at the Metrograph. This visually rapturous look at the nighttime lives of moths, with Sundance-winning immersive sound design, explores the beauty and fragility of nature.
Netflix opens documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin limited in NY, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Expands next week to LA and San Francisco. The film by Benjamin Ree (The Painter and the Thief) premiered at Sundance. The subject is Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer who died of a degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25. His parents mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life, when they started receiving messages from online friends around the world. On streamer next week.