AFI FEST 2008 presented by Audi: AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival has announced that Joel Hopkins’s LAST CHANCE HARVEY will be a late addition to the Festival’s Centerpiece Screenings. LAST CHANCE HARVEY will have its World Premiere on Saturday, November 8, 2008 at the ArcLight Hollywood Cinerama Dome.
Academy Award® winners Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson reunite in LAST CHANCE HARVEY, a hopeful romance that celebrates new beginnings—at any age. The heartfelt romantic comedy, which takes place in London, is about a man down on his luck (Hoffman) who finds an unlikely companion (Thompson) while in London attending his daughter’s wedding. The growing connection between the pair inspires both as they unexpectedly transform one another’s lives.
The film also stars Kathy Baker, James Brolin Eileen Atkins, Liane Balaban and Richard Schiff. The Overture Films release is due in theaters December 26, 2008 in New York and Los Angeles and then in theaters nationwide January 23, 2009.
The director, Hopkins, as well as Hoffman and Thompson, are confirmed to attend.
“AFI holds a standard of excellence for all things film and beyond. We are honored that LAST CHANCE HARVEY was chosen for the festival this year. It’s a film that Overture is proud to share with audiences worldwide and we’re delighted AFI will be its premiere destination”, commented Overture Films’ CEO Chris McGurk.
“We consider ourselves very fortunate to have the opportunity to add LAST CHANCE HARVEY as a Centerpiece Screening. This is a classic romantic film with two of the most beloved stars, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, who make a wonderful screen pairing. We held a few places in our schedule just in case a film like this would become available after we had locked our programming and in this particular case our strategy paid off very well,” said AFI FEST Artistic Director, Rose Kuo.
AFI FEST also announced the addition of the following to the 2008 schedule:
BOYFRIEND FOR MY WIFE (Argentina)
Director: Juan Taratuto
From the producers of THE SON OF THE BRIDE, LA ANTENA and XXY, the film is a black comedy about ‘El Tenso’ – a man who doesn’t know how to deal with his wife, ‘La Tana.’ Wanting a divorce, El Tenso recruits ‘The Raven Flores’, an old fashioned Latino lothario to seduce her until she falls in love with him so she will divorce El Tenso.
DIM SUM FUNERAL (USA)
Director: Anna Chi
Drama follows the resulting fireworks when a group of estranged Chinese-American siblings reunite after the death of their “Dragon Lady” mother for a traditional Chinese funeral.
PATRIK 1.5 (Sweden)
Director: Ella Lemhagen
A married gay couple relocates to a village to realize their dream of adopting a child. This smart, sensitive, textured and amusing exploration of the rifts in contemporary gay life also explores how our expectations imprison us and separate us from one another.
TOKYO SONATA (Japan)
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Drama follows the effects on a family after the father loses his job, his sons spin into alienation and his wife tries to hold it all together. Kurosawa, the master of Japanese genre turns his sights on a mundane, yet (in his hands) thrilling, disturbing subject: the secret lives of an ordinary Japanese family.
YELLOW SUBMARINE (1968)
Director: George Dunning
Courtesy of Apple Redcords, the animated Beatles classic will be screened in the ArcLight Hollywood Cinerama Dome as AFI FEST celebrates the 40th Anniversary of the film’s release. Parents and their children can all go to “Pepperland” once again as AFI FEST offers another family friendly event.
Last Chance Harvey rocks! Don’t miss it!