Gotham Alumni at SXSW 2023
by Gotham on March 8, 2023 in Gotham Alumni News
An essential destination for global professionals, the annual March event features sessions, music and comedy showcases, film screenings, exhibitions, professional development, and a variety of networking opportunities. SXSW proves that the most unexpected discoveries happen when diverse topics and people come together. Congratulations to all 11 Gotham alumni films at this year’s SXSW! They are:
Fancy Dance
Following her sister’s disappearance, a Native American hustler kidnaps her niece from the child’s white grandparents and sets out for the state powwow in hopes of keeping what is left of their family intact.
Directed by Erica Tremblay, written by Erica Tremblay and Miciana Alise, and produced by Erica Tremblay, Deidre Backs, Heather Rae, Nina Yang Bongiovi, and Tommy Oliver.
Screening in the Festival Favorites section.
Gotham Alum: Fancy Dance is an alumnus of the 2021 Gotham Week Project Market.
Frybread Face and Me
It’s 1990. Benny is a Native American boy growing up in San Diego who plays with dolls and listens to Fleetwood Mac. Everything Benny thinks he knows about himself and his family is turned upside down when his parents force him to spend the summer at his Grandma Lorraine’s sheep ranch on the reservation in Arizona. There he meets his cousin Dawn— AKA Frybread Face, a pudgy 11-year-old vagabond, tough-as-nails tomboy. Benny has never met anyone like her, and he is equally intimidated and impressed by her knowledge of Navajo language and tradition. Benny is introduced to Navajo life on the Rez, and his unruly uncle Marvin. Together, Benny and Fry create a memorable summer.
Written and directed by Billy Luther; produced by Chad Burris.
Screening in the Narrative Spotlight section.
Gotham Alum: Frybread Face and Me is an alumnus of the 2020 Gotham Week Project Market.
Kite Zo A
In 1791, in Haiti, Dutty Boukman presided over a Vodou ritual in Bois-Caïman that led to the creation of the first Black republic. Since then, rituals of transformation and artistic expression have been at the core of a thriving culture as the country faces oppression, poverty, and natural disasters. Kite Zo A (Leave the Bones) is a sensorial film about rituals in Haiti, from ancient to modern, made in collaboration with poets, dancers, musicians, fishermen, daredevil rollerbladers, and Vodou priests, set to poetry by Haitian author Wood-Jerry Gabriel.
Directed by Kaveh Nabatian and produced by Kaveh Nabatian, Zach Niles, and Joseph Ray.
Screening in the Global section.
Gotham Alum: Kite Zo A is an alumnus of the 2022 Gotham Week Project Market.
Late Bloomers
Louise, an aimless, 28 year-old Brooklynite, recently single, sort of a musician, depressed without admitting to it, drunkenly falls while doing something stupid and breaks her hip. This lands her in a physical therapy ward full of people twice her age. There, she meets Antonina – a cranky elderly Polish woman, who speaks no English. Louise gets a job caring for her. Neither woman loves the arrangement but it’s time to face the truth about aging. We all have to grow up sometime.
Directed by Lisa Steen; written by Anna Greenfield; and produced by Alexandra Barreto, Taylor Feltner, and Sam Bisbee.
Screening in the Narrative Feature Competition.
Gotham Alum: Late Bloomers is an alumnus of the 2020 Gotham Week Project Market.
Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes
Max Roach was a musician whose far-reaching ambitions were inspired and challenged by the inequities of the society around him. His stunningly diverse seven-decade career marked him as one of the great musical artists of the 20th century and a pioneering cultural activist at times when the nation was steeped in racism. The film follows Roach across a rich and complicated life, years of now-legendary achievement, deep personal struggle, and the price he paid for his outspoken views. His was an epic musical journey — from the revolutionary Jazz of the 1940s to the Civil Rights years, through experiments in hip hop, multi-media works, and beyond.
Directed and produced by Samuel Pollard and Ben Shapiro.
Screening in the 24 Beats Per Second section.
Gotham Alum: Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes is an alumnus of the 2017 Gotham Week Project Market and is fiscally sponsored by The Gotham.
Pay or Die
Today, nearly 2 million Americans are being held for ransom. Without insulin, they’ll be dead in days. Pay or Die follows 3 families on the receiving end of these ransom notes, revealing the harrowing reality of life with chronic illness in the richest country in the world. From a mother-and-daughter struggling to rebuild their lives after losing their home when they had to spend their rent money on insulin, to a young adult diagnosed with type 1 diabetes during the COVID-19 pandemic, to a Minnesota family thrust into the national spotlight when their 26-year-old son dies from rationing his insulin, Pay or Die lays bare the human cost of America’s insulin affordability crisis.
Directed by Rachael Dyer and Scott Alexander Ruderman; produced by Rachael Dyer, Scott Alexander Ruderman, and Yael Melamede.
Screening in the Documentary Feature Competition.
Gotham Alum: Pay or Die is an alumnus of the 2022 Gotham Week Project Market.
Queendom
Gena, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, dresses in otherworldly costumes made from junk and tape, and protests the government on the streets of Moscow. Born and raised on the harsh streets of Magadan, a frigid outpost of the Soviet gulag, Gena is only 21. She stages radical performances in public that become a new form of art and activism. By doing that, she wants to change people’s perception of beauty and queerness and bring attention to the harassment of the LGBTQ+ community. The performances – often dark, strange, evocative, and queer at their core – are a manifestation of Gena’s subconscious. But they come at a price.
Directed by Agniia Galdanova and produced by Igor Myakotin and Agniia Galdanova.
Screening in the Documentary Feature Competition.
Gotham Alum: Queendom is an alumnus of the 2022 Gotham Week Project Market.
Scotty’s Vag
The night of a sorority hazing event, Scotty, a college freshman, must make an impression on the older girl she wants as her “big”. As the night goes on, Scotty realizes how far she’s willing to go to prove herself. Power dynamics are not what they seem.
Written and directed by Chaconne Martin-Berkowicz; produced by Cailin Lobb-Rabe, Chaconne Martin-Berkowicz, Gia Rigoli, Vero Kompalic.
Screening in the Narrative Shorts Competition.
Gotham Alum: Scotty’s Vag is fiscally sponsored by The Gotham.
The Starling Girl
Seventeen-year-old Jem Starling struggles with her place within her Christian fundamentalist community, but everything changes when her magnetic youth pastor Owen returns to their church.
Written and directed by Laurel Parmet and produced by Kevin Rowe and Kara Durrett.
Screening in the Festival Favorites section.
Gotham Alum: The Starling Girl is an alumnus of the 2019 Gotham Week Project Market.
This World is Not My Own
For most of her life, Nellie Mae Rowe made art in obscurity in her home outside of Atlanta. Six years before her death, a wealthy gallerist introduced her work to the art world. Over four acts, This World is Not My Own traces the lifespan of an artist who struggles to dedicate her life to art while exploring the personal and political events that shaped her singular body of work. The film mixes traditional documentary techniques with animations and scripted scenes based on Nellie Mae Rowe quotes. In sets that reimagine Nellie’s home, actress Uzo Aduba, embodies an animated 3D character based on Nellie’s likeness. Her recorded dialogue, movements, and song make Nellie come to life.
Directed by Petter Ringbom and Marquise Stillwell; written by Ruchi Mital and Petter Ringbom; and produced by Ruchi Mital.
Screening in the Documentary Spotlight section.
Gotham Alum: This World is Not My Own is an alumnus of the 2020 Gotham Week Project Market.
Until Branches Bend
Robin lives with her sister Laney in the idyllic orchard town of Montague. While at work at the fruit packing house, she finds a insect that she believes to be invasive. When her boss Dennis brushes away her concerns, Robin goes public with her finding. The reaction is swift: the factory shuts down, the farms are placed under quarantine, and the majority of the people in Montague find themselves unemployed with Robin to blame. Meanwhile, Robin has been struggling to get an abortion. Unable to take control of her own body, she devotes herself entirely to finding proof that the bug she found was real. The parallel between these two invasions becomes clear as she loses herself in her obsession.
Written and directed by Sophie Jarvis; prduced by Tyler Hagan, Sara Blake, Magali Gillon-Krizaj, Michela Pini, and Olga Lamontanara.
Screening in the Visions section.
Gotham Alum: Until Branches Bend is an alumnus of the 2019 Gotham Week Project Market.
You Were My First Boyfriend
What if you could rewrite your adolescence? In this high school reunion movie turned inside out, filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo embarks on a fantastical quest to reconcile her tortured teen years. She ‘goes back’ in more ways than one, tracking down old foes and friends while also reenacting visceral memories of youthful humiliation and desire.
Oscillating between present and past, hallucination and reality, You Were My First Boyfriend is a hybrid documentary that explores the power of adolescent fantasy, the subtle violence of cultural assimilation, and the fun house mirror of time’s passage. Perhaps we will all learn something about growing older and making peace with what haunts us.
Directed by Cecilia Aldarondo and Sarah Enid Hagey; produced by Ines Hofmann Kanna and Cecilia Aldarondo.
Screening in the Documentary Feature Competition.
Gotham Alum: You Were My First Boyfriend is a New True Stories Grantee.