Opening the inaugural BFF will be the 20th Anniversary screening of Gavin O’Connor’s crowd-pleaser Miracle (2004) about the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team’s seemingly impossible path to win the gold medal versus the juggernaut that was the Soviet Olympic team. In attendance to talk about the film will be producer Mark Ciardi and Mike Eruzione, the real-life captain of the legendary team, and Patrick O’Brien Demsey, who played Eruzione in the movie. Preceding the screening will be a presentation of GameAbove Entertainment’s ECHL Unfiltered: Idaho Steelheads–For the Love of the Game, which will be the first episode of the docuseries on the NHL Network. Several Idaho Steelheads hockey team members, as well as director and executive producer Tyler Nimmons, will be in attendance.
A few festival award-winning films include Silje Evensmo Jacobsen’s A New Kind of Wilderness, Zoë Eisenberg’s Chaperone, Alison Tavel’s Resynator, and Alonso Ruizpalacios’ La Cocina. Three films were showcased as part of BFF’s particular focus on films created. They shot in the Pacific Northwest are Eric Esau’s sci-fi feature Saturn, Jacob Ronnow’s dramatic short Mankind, and the world premiere of Kyle LaMontagne’s short Mother of Portland.
In Esau’s Saturn, a family in a picturesque seaside town finds their lives upended when a strange planet appears in the sky on a collision course with Earth. The planet’s appearance forces the father to decide between running from his destiny or sacrificing everything he loves since he just might be humanity’s only hope.
Ronnow’s drama Mankind is sparked by a confrontational run-in between a homeless man “seeking change” outside of a prestigious law firm and a young lawyer who decides to offer the man a chance at redemption. LaMontagne’s documentary short, Mother of Portland, focuses on the life and work of chef and restauranteur Lisa Schroeder.
La Cocina
Additional BFF highlights for narrative features include Zoë Eisenberg’s Chaperone. The winner of two awards at Sundance, including the Grand Jury Prize, the film focuses on a young woman whose satisfaction in her unremarkable life is a stark disappointment to everyone around her until a new relationship with a teenager threatens to shake everything up.
Executive produced by Common, Sam Friedman, and Will Bermudez’s drama Grassland follows the conflict that happens when a single black mother’s illegal marijuana business becomes jeopardized due to her 9-year-old son’s new friendship with their new neighbors: a white boy and his police officer grandfather.
Alonso Ruizpalacios’ La Cocina, a winner at the Deauville Film Festival, stars Rooney Mara and Oded Fehr in a high-stakes drama set in a bustling Times Square kitchen. The back-of-house staff each chases the elusive American dream within that pressure-cooker environment.
Highlights among the documentary features include Silje Evensmo Jacobsen’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, A New Kind of Wilderness. The film follows a family living a wild and free existence on a small farm in the Norwegian forest until a tragedy upends their idyllic world and forces them to forge a new path into modern society.
Don Hardy’s Linda Perry: Let It Die Here looks at the life and career of the 4 Non-Blondes icon and hit songwriter. Alison Tavel’s SXSW Audience Award winner Resynator is the filmmaker’s documentation of a personal project to rescue her father’s synthesizer prototype from her grandmother’s attic and start a curious resurrection project that turns into an insatiable, globe-trotting quest aided by a musical Who’s Who of estranged family, lost friends, fellow inventors, and celebrated musicians including Grace Potter, Peter Gabriel, Fred Armisen, Gotye, and more.
