Focus Features is out with Morgan Neville’s documentaryLorne at414locations, a behind-the-scenes look at Lorne Michaels, the creator ofSaturday NightLive and one of television’s most influential creative forces.
The doc features rare footage and never-before-seen archival materials and wide-ranging conversations with some of SNL’s most influential cast members and writers including Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, John Mulaney, Andy Samberg, Conan O’Brien and Chris Rock among others.
Focus and Neville previously collaborated onPiece By Piece, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, and Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Best Documentary at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Limited releases
A24’s Mother Mary by David Lowery debuts in five theaters in New York and Los Angeles. The LA locations (AMC Burbank, The Grove, Century City) will have the added benefit of premium large formats. Lowery is hosting sold-out opening-weekend Q&As at Lincoln Square and Angelika inNY. The film (Deadline review here) stars Anne Hathaway as a troubled Madonna-style pop icon searching for spiritual answers and to rebuild her bond with Michaela Coel — whom she dropped as a costume designer and friend a decade earlier when stardom hit – for one last concert. With FKA twigs andHunter Schafer.
Janus Films opens Sophy Romvari’s acclaimed debut Blue Heron at IFC Center, adding L.A. on April 24 then expanding. The coming-of-age film premiered at Locarno and won the Rogers Best Canadian Film award. It’s top rated on Metacritic and at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (33 reviews).
In the late 1990s, 8-year-old Sasha and her Hungarian immigrant family relocate to a new home on Vancouver Island. Their fresh start is interrupted by increasingly dangerous behavior from Jeremy, the family’s oldest child. See Deadline’s interview with Romvari. Stars Eylul Guven, Iringó Réti, Ádám Tompa, Edik Beddoes and Amy Zimmer. Romvari is doing Q&As this weekend before a hometown Toronto Q&A moderated by David Cronenberg and a North American tour through Boston, San Francisco, Montreal and Vancouver starting next week.
TIFF and Sundance-premiering Erupcja by Pete Ohs, from 1-2 Special, opens in NY (Angelika) and L.A. (Nuart). A romantic vacation goes awry when a volcanic eruption strands Bethany (Charli xcx) and her soon-to-be fiancé (Will Madden) in Warsaw, Poland. She takes the explosive event as a sign to ditch her baggage, reunite with childhood friend (Lena Góra) and traipse, becoming entangled in an emotional web that challenges her sense of self. Also stars Jeremy O. Harris. Q&As this weekend include Olivia Wilde and Hari Nef. See Deadline interview with stars Madden and Góra.
Kino Lorber opens Fatih Akin’s Amrum at the Quad in NYC. Premiered at Cannes (see Deadline review). The latest by the German-Turkish filmmaker behind Venice Golden Bear winnerHead-On(2004), Cannes Best Screenplay-winnerThe Edge of Heaven(2007) and Golden Globe-winnerIn the Fade(2017). Set in the waning days of WWII on the German island of Amrum, the synopsis reads, 12-year-old Nanning spends days working the farm and nights fishing. Despite the hardship, life on the windswept isle seems idyllic. When farmer Tessa mentions to Nanning that the war will soon be over, the boy, too young to understand the political implications, is pleased to imagine that his Nazi officer father might soon be coming home. But word of Germany’s imminent defeat sends his mother into decline, and as Nanning looks to his community for support, he learns that the true enemy is far closer than he imagined.
Stars Diane Kruger, Laura Tonke, Jasper Billerbeck, Lisa Hagmeister. Written by Akin and Hark Bohm. Adds the Laemmle Royal in L.A. next weekend.
Mad Bills to Pay from Oscilloscope, the feature debut of Joel Alfonso Vargas, opens in NYC at the Film Forum and Regal Concourse in the Bronx, the director ‘s hometown. Hailing from Sundance, it stars Juan Collado as Rico, hustling his way through the summer, selling nutties out of a beach cooler and chasing girls without a care in the world in his tight-knit Dominican American community in the Bronx. But when his teenage girlfriend Destiny (Destiny Checo) begins crashing at his place with his family, turning their small apartment into a stage for their messy, complicated young love, it’s only a matter of time before they’re hit with the sobering reality of growing up too fast in a city that waits for no one.With Yohanna Florentino, Nathaly Navarro.
Actor and author Ben McKenzie’s directorial debutEveryone Is Lying to You for Moneyfrom The Forge opens in New York (IFC Center, Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn) and L.A. (Laemmle Royal, AMC Burbank). Based on the book McKenzie — known for his roles on The OC, Gotham and Southland — co-authored with Jacob Silverman, Easy Money, it traces his transition from acting to being an outspoken critic of the cryptocurrency industry. Rolls out to Boston, DC, San Francisco, Austin, Portland, Seattle and Chicago and other markets in coming weeks. See Deadline’s interview with McKenzie from the Miami Film Festival.