Dances With Films LA to Screen 279 Films and 36 World Premieres at Its 29th Edition
The festival opens with YALE starring Caitlin McGee and closes with TENDER at TCL Chinese Theatre.
Dances With Films: LA announced the film lineup for next month's return of Los Angeles' largest indie film-focused film festival (June 18-28) for its 29th edition platforming films not produced by studios or with big budgets.
Those films include DWF: LA's critically-acclaimed Midnight Horror and Genre, and Pilots sections, as well as continuing the celebration of music, dance, and family-friendly programming in the Downbeat and Kidz sections. This year's packed schedule will be bookended by the world premieres of Jay Silverman's drama Yale with Caitlin McGee, Kevin Dunn, and Rachael Harris, as the Opening Night selection, and Adam Hoelzel's thriller Tender with Jesse Garcia, Jess Weixler, David Koechner, and Robert Longstreet, on Closing Night. In an environment where multiplexes can struggle to consistently fill houses, DWF: LA expects to once again draw record-breaking audiences to its screenings and events at the TCL Chinese Theatre on 6925 Hollywood Blvd. in the Ovation Complex.
This year's DWF: LA's lineup includes 279 films, including 41 narrative features, 17 documentary features, 4 midnight features, 33 television and streaming pilots, and 184 short films (99 narrative and 21 documentaries, 32 midnight, 15 Kidz section, 17 Downbeat/Music), with an impressive number of films making world, North American, or U.S. premieres.
Dances With Films has built an indisputable reputation as a discovery film festival that year in and year out features the most world premieres of any festival in Los Angeles and a significant discovery festival in the US. Additional narrative features (beyond the two gala selections) making their world premieres in June include: Andrew David Paterson's American Flake, Jay Diaz's Angeleno, Brian L. Tan's Bandit, John Brownell's Coin, Sean Perry's Coaled Blood, Daniel Katz and Brad Dickson's Dave vs. Hollywood, Joel David Santner's Directors' Commentary, Gerald Fillmore's Face Love, Mädchen Amick's Fractured, Rachel Carey's Good Thoughts, Doug Bremner's The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, Jordan Rowe's Hamilton House, Jonathan Oster's Jane's Not Here, Jason Laurits' Loves Company, JJ Lippman's Mind Games, Stephen McNamee's Muffled, Robyn Symon's Queen of Shock, D.J. Hale's Rescued, Dustin Brown's Solidarity, David Ketterer Spencer's Souvenir, RJ Zabasky's Sync, Marcus Niehaus' Tales From the Crypto, Gregory J. Green's Tempest, Debra De Liso's Wilma, Wu, and a Stripper Named Lorraine, and Njedeh Anthony's Yellow Broken Road. Making their North American Premieres will be Tristan Barr's Deathkeeper, Aleksandra Hansen's Life at Sandy's, and Scott Tinkham and Michael Woloson's Littermates, and Mason Howard's U A P.
Feature-length documentaries making their world premieres at DWFLA include: Kern Konwiser's Autumn Gold, Hrag Yedalian's Beneath the Ashes: The Past Reimagined, Cam Lui, and Michael Schnee's Better Call Babs, David Booth Gardner's The Last Place on Earth, Beatrix Ryle's My Name is Gitta, Jordan Kronick's Peaking: Psychedelics and the Pursuit of Happiness, Jon Bolerjack's Stan Lee: The Final Chapter, Brad Alexander's Tell Me About Tomorrow, and Boaz Dvir's To Kill a Nazi.
Dances With Films' founders, Leslee Scallon and Michael Trent, said, "For close to three decades Dances With Films has exhibited 'The Power of Indie Film' and this year's lineup is filled with unique and diverse voices from filmmakers working outside of the studio system and without the benefit of bigger budgets, will entertain and surprise film lovers with the cinematic magic DWF is well-known for. As always, we couldn't be more thrilled to introduce them all and connect our filmmakers with audiences, film distributors, and other industry veterans in the best way imaginable: at the TCL Chinese Theatres right in the heart of Hollywood."
Thursday, June 18 features the World Premiere Opening Night presentation of Jay Silverman's drama Yale. The film focuses on a woman who must find and ask for help from the father who abandoned her when she was a child in order to save her son, who needs an emergency kidney transplant. The film stars Caitlin McGee, Dominic Leeder, Kevin Dunn, and Rachael Harris.
Sunday, June 28, DWF: LA offers another world premiere as its Closing Night selection, Adam Hoelzel's drama Tender. The film follows a couple trapped in a failing marriage and drowning in debt who discover a hidden stash of gold buried within the walls of their home. What begins as a lifeline quickly spirals into danger, as the pair devise a high-stakes plan to offload the fortune and escape their financial ruin. The impressive cast includes Jesse Garcia, Jess Weixler, David Koechner, Robert Longstreet, Mark St. Cyr, Keli Price, Stephen Ellis, Robert Peters, and Sonja O'Hara.
Additional highlights among the narrative feature films making their world premieres include Jay Diaz's home grown drama Angeleno. The LA-based story follows a first-generation Latino American whose filmmaking dreams have taken a back seat to family responsibilities and crises that derailed him in his youth. However, a new opportunity might finally help him break through and convince him that it's never too late in a city built for dreamers. Also making its world premiere, David Ketterer Spencer's Souvenir focuses on two estranged friends whose unexpected encounter leads to an unexpected day-long adventure through New York City as they attempt to return a dead self-help guru's lost wallet. The cast includes Janeane Garafalo, Ruby Cruz, and Eric Berryman. Mädchen Amick makes her feature film directorial debut with the thriller Fractured. Based on a true story, and starring Bruce Dern and Julia Ormond, the film centers on a woman whose past filled with tragedy and trauma catches up with her when an ex-boyfriend shows up and triggers memories of her father's death. Adam Jumba's Lone Rider stars Jack Alcott as a young man whose impulsive decision to steal back his beat-up '89 Mustang from his estranged father leads to a quixotic journey through middle-of-nowhere diners, old stomping grounds, and midnight highways, crossing paths with old friends, strangers, and moments that feel like echoes of another life.
Matt Flanders' romantic comedy How to Date Again follows Michael (Rob Mor), a heartbroken animator struggling to re-enter the dating world after a devastating loss. He finally meets Leigh (Natasha Loring), an emotionally intuitive record exec and they embark on a spontaneous California coast road trip to confront their pasts and learn how to heal. The film also stars Haley Joel Osment and Kevin Nealon. Jason Lauritis' fish out of water comedy Loves Company will make its world premiere at DWFLA. In the film, a faded game show personality is rescued after a car crash in the Everglades by his #1..and only...fan. The outcast woman soon reaches her limit with his bad behavior, but now she can't get rid of him. The cast includes Rachel Dratch, Jack Plotnick, Sarah Baker, and Dustin Ingram. Guy Jacobson's screwball comedy Out of Order stars Brandon Routh as an ambitious lawyer who accepts a job offer from a big snobbish rival law firm; that is, until his current boss suffers a heart attack and begs him to take one last case. Convinced he can do it, he decides to swing both positions until he realizes that he is now representing opposite sides of the same case. The film also stars Brooke Shields, Sandra Bernhard, Sam Huntington, and Luis Guzman.
Dances With Films: LA has an equally strong slate of documentaries with a number of films making their world premieres. One of the films making its debut is Cam Lui, and Michael Schnee's Better Call Babs which places the audience in Babs Fry's iconic van for a ride along, witnessing her Red-Cross award-winning work of recovering lost pets and rehabilitating feral dogs, but through the personal challenges that shaped the woman she is today. Also making its world premiere is Boaz Dvir's To Kill a Nazi, which follows the saga of Michel Cojot's journey to find Klaus Barbie and get revenge for Cojot's father's death at Auschwitz. Rob Arthur's Frampton traces Peter Frampton's rise to global rock and roll fame, the struggles that tested his identity and resilience, and his relentless reinvention. As personal sacrifices surface, the cost of fame becomes clear. Now facing a degenerative muscle disease, Frampton confronts his limits with urgency and grace. Making its world premiere is Jon Bolerjack's Stan Lee: The Final Chapter which looks at Lee's experiences at conventions where Stan's signatures and memorabilia were converted into millions of dollars and rival hucksters double-crossed each other to control his fortune.
Dances With Films' critically acclaimed Midnight section of films including the following features making their North American premieres: Tristan Barr's Deathkeeper pits a reclusive angel against a charming demon in disguise in order to save a possessed woman. Mason Howard's U A P takes place during a Fourth of July reunion, where five friends discover a mysterious sphere that draws the attention of government forces and private interests, and is possibly manipulating humanity itself. Making its world premiere is Stephen McNamee's Muffled, where two true crime enthusiasts return to their hometown to solve the mystery of what happened to their childhood friend, who had vanished without a trace.
The pilots category platforming projects with streaming and broadcast ambitions has a varied selection of programming including Alexander Jeffery's Fixation. Inspired by true events the series begins following the death of a young Korean woman which is deemed routine until an autopsy uncovers something far more sinister. Making its World Premiere is the docuseries People of the West. Directors on the project are Christopher Nataanii Cegielski, Phillip Montgomery, and Josh Baker. The docuseries reveals the untold history of California through Indigenous eyes, from creation to the present day, cutting through myth to expose the forces that shaped the land we now call California. Also making its world premiere are funny high-concept projects like Zach Trent's Knighted, about a scientist who inadvertently drops a medieval knight into his living room, and now must teach the knight how to survive in the scientist's modern world. Another high concept pilot making its debut is Paige Ivy's Pain in the Neck. Set in a post-apocalypse Hollywood, an actress must deal with a zombie landlord, and her vampire roommate, who she might just be falling in love with. Another pilot with an LGBTQIA+ romance is Mandy Fabian's You Are Here, which follows a fifty-something single gay man, and his tight-knit circle of friends navigating life, friendship, sex, and the horrors of dating after 50.
DWF: LA's prodigious short films lineup includes the world premiere of Alyssa Limperis and Emily Murnane's Going Home in which a woman decides to go to her childhood home and visit her parents after suffering through a really bad day. The film stars Limperis and Patton Oswalt. Page Kennedy's Macbeth in Compton delivers a hip-hop-infused reimagining of Shakespeare's classic tragedy set in 1990s Compton. Jeff Perreca's sci-fi short Conflicting Reports has characters finding themselves in a situation described by two mysterious broadcasts. One claims that aliens have arrived and are peaceful. The other says they're hostile invaders. The cast includes Noel Fisher, Meghan Leathers, Guillermo Diaz, and Andrew Jacobs. Also making its world premiere is Jingbei Bai's American Boy. The very timely drama tells the story of an undocumented Chinese immigrant, finding joy in a classic night out with his two friends, until their celebration is cut short by ICE agents. Other short highlights include the world premieres of Katherine Connor Duff's This Little Piggy Went to Market, which explores parasocial relationships, female financial autonomy, and the effect of the insatiable gaze of social media, Darcy Miller's Captain Milo, a touching look at a child's defensive fantasies, and Autumn Palen's outrageous globe-trotting coming of age EDM-themed romp Breakfast At Berghain, produced by DWF's own Frankie Campisano.
For more information about the Dances With Films: LA film lineup, events, passes, and tickets, go to: https://danceswithfilms.com/.
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