FIELD OF STREAMS presents work from AFF participants
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As the 25th edition of the Austin Film Festival kicks off today, Field of Streams presents a handful of movies from writer-directors that will be screening new works at this year’s fest. These films are a good homework assignment to get ready for for these filmmakers’ newest works.
THE CHILDHOOD OF A LEADER (Netflix)
Opening night centerpiece Vox Lux comes from actor-turned-director Brady Corbet. It features Natalie Portman and Jude Law in a drama set in the world of pop music. It looks to be a startling and intense film.
2015’s The Childhood of a Leader has its own intensity. Set in post-WWI France, this family drama features a child slowly coming into his own, and not in a good way. The father is played by Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth from Game of Thrones) and the mother Bérénice Bejo. It’s a stark and simmering tale of a future fascist leader in the making.
YOUNG ADULT (Prime, Hulu)
Jason Reitman closes the fest with The Front Runner, his take on the politico-tragic tale of Gary Hart’s failed presidential campaign. Hugh Jackman stars in this one.
From the political to the personal, Reitman’s 2011 flick Young Adult captures early middle age at its most angsty, following Charlize Theron’s Mavis around a week of hope and dreams both ascendent and dashed. Patton Oswalt plays the perfect sidekick, equal parts bitter and hilarious. (I personally enjoyed seeing Jill Eikenberry as the mom. Took me back to L.A. Law days.)
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY (Hulu)
Mike Leigh’s historical drama Peterloo explores a tragic event in Britain’s history. Rory Kinnear and Maxine Peake star.
Long before she was sleeping with the fishes, Sally Hawkins was living it up in Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky. Set in London, the film showcases a woman who refuses to take life too seriously, even as very serious things are happening around her. Eddie Marsan as her cantankerous driving instructor is a perfect foil for this lucky lady.
PIECES OF APRIL (Prime, Hulu)
Starring the emerging Lucas Hedges and the re-emergent Julia Roberts, Ben Is Back is Peter Hedges’s latest feature. Besides being a father-son affair, this film explores the stretching of family bonds due to drug addiction and is set during not-so-happy holiday season.
Family was front and center in Hedges’s 2003 work Pieces of April. Katy Holmes plays the wayward youth in this one, trying her best to prepare a Thanksgiving meal for a family she barely even knows anymore. Patricia Clarkson and Oliver Platt as the parental units are superb.
The Austin Film Festival celebrates the art of storytelling through film, recognizing the writer as the core of the creative process in filmmaking.
For a full schedule, visit www.austinfilmfestival.com.