Awards Season Fires Up With Jennifer Lawrence, Sydney Sweeney, Russell Crowe & Cannes Grand Prix Winner ‘Sentimental Value’ – Specialty Preview
Contenders are rolling into theaters fast and furious from Sentimental Value with Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve, to Russell Crowe as Herman Göring (Nuremberg), Sydney Sweeney as boxing legend Christy Martin (Christy) and Jennifer Lawrence on the brink of madness in Die My Love. Sentimental Value is a limited release, the other three are opening wide, repping an indie trend away from platforming.
They’re joined by Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams, Ira Sachs’ experimental Peter Hujar’s Day, Johnny Depp’s curious Modigliani biopic Modi and Lost & Found In Cleveland, which is testing a new digital theatrical marketplace.
Neon’s Cannes Grand Prix-winner and Norway’s official Oscar selection for Best International Feature, Sentimental Value, written and directed by Oscar-nominated Joachim Trier, opens on two screens each in New York (Angelika, AMC Lincoln Square) and L.A. (AMC Grove, AMC Century City). Reviews are great, see Deadline’s here and it’s Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh at 97%. Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas star as sisters Nora and Agnes, who reunite with their charismatic estranged father, Stellan Skarsgård, a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, he gives her part to an eager young Hollywood star, played by Ellen Fanning, complicating family dynamics.
This is Trier’s second collaboration with Neon following breakout comedy The Worst Person In The World, the two-time Academy Award-nominated film starring Reinsve.
After Cannes, it screened at Telluride, TIFF and the New York Film Festival, won the Audience Award at the Hamptons International Film Festival and racked up accolades on the festival circuit.
Mubi opens Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson on 1,983 screens. Premiered at Cannes, see Deadline’s review, which calls the film “a brutal but beautiful portrait of a woman on the edge.” The woman is Grace, a Manhattan author who has moved to the rural middle of nowhere to be close to the family of her husband (Pattison), who has inherited his uncle’s house. They are isolated, far from the nearest neighbor, but within walking distance of his mother (Sissy Spacek), and it’s not going well. LaKeith Stanfield and Nick Nolte also star. Written by Ramsay, Enda Walsh and Alice Birch based on the novel by Argentinian writer Ariana Harwicz. Lawrence was nominated for a Gotham Award for Outstanding Lead Performance as the film racked up eight British Independent Film Award nominations. Martin Scorsese is a producer and jumpstarted the project after reading the novel and sending it on to Lawrence.
Nuremberg from Sony Pictures Classics, written and directed by James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, Truth), opens wide at 1,802 theaters. With the Allies, led by unyielding chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon), tasked with ensuring the Nazi regime answers for the horrors of the Holocaust, a U.S. Army psychiatrist (Rami Malek) is locked in a dramatic psychological duel with former Reichsmarschall and Hitler’s No. 2, Herman Göring (Russell Crowe). Premiered at TIFF, Deadline review here. Based on the book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai. With Leo Woodall, John Slattery, Mark O’Brien, Colin Hanks, Wrenn Schmidt, Lydia Peckham and Richard E. Grant. The film is being released the same month 80 years after the tribunal opened on November 21, 1945.
Black Bear’s inaugural outing as a distributor, Christy, starring Sydney Sweeney as boxing legend Christy Martin, opens at 2,000 locations with the film tracking for a circa $3 million weekend. The biopic directed by David Michôd world premiered at TIFF (see Deadline review) and screened at AFI. Black Bear’s new U.S. theatrical distribution division plans a curated slate of up to 12 films a year. Synopsis: Christy Martin never imagined life beyond her small-town roots in West Virginia until she discovered a knack for knocking people out. Fueled by grit, raw determination, and an unshakable desire to win, she revolutionizes the world of boxing under the guidance of her trainer and manager-turned-husband, Jim (Foster). But while Christy flaunts a fiery persona in the ring, her toughest battles unfold outside it, confronting family, identity, and a relationship that becomes life-or-death.
With a story by Katherine Fugate and screenplay by Mirrah Foulkes and Michod, the film also stars Ben Foster, Merritt Wever, Katy O’Brian, Ethan Embry, Jess Gabor, Chad Coleman, Bryan Hibbard, Tony Cavalero and Gilbert Cruz.
Lost & Found In Cleveland, produced, written and directed by Marisa Guterman and Keith Gerchak, opens on about 350 screens with varied showtimes, the first film testing a new theatrical distribution and online digital marketplace called Attend developed by the Fithian Group. The ensemble comedy follows the personal odysseys of five very different people whose lives intertwine when America’s favorite televised antiques appraisal show comes to Cleveland. The starry cast includes June Squibb, Martin Sheen, Stacy Keach, Jon Lovitz and Mark L. Walberg, Host of Antiques Roadshow. Premiered at the Newport Beach Film Festival.
The Fithian Group, launched in 2023 by former National Association of Theatre Owners (now Cinema United) executives John Fithian, Patrick Corcoran and Jackie Brenneman, said there’s been very little paid media for the film but a good amount of local and national earned media and that exhibitors have helped with trailer play, in-theater marketing and choosing markets. It was able to lock in showtimes three to four weeks ahead of release and get tickets on sale a few weeks before so local marketing could go forward — a commitment by exhibitors “that opens up real possibilities for indie film,” said Corcoran.
Peter Hujar’s Day from Janus Films, written and directed by Ira Sachs, opens at Film Forum in NY and at the Laemmle Royal and AMC Burbank Town Center 8 in L.A. Stars Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall in a cinematic rendering of a conversation recorded in 1974 between photographer Hujar and writer Linda Rosenkrantz. Their talk that day focused on a single 24 hours in the life of Hujar, the brilliant and famously uncompromising artist who was one of the most important figures in downtown New York’s legendary cultural scene of the 1970s and 80s. Set entirely in Rosenkrantz’s Manhattan apartment, the film recreates the long-ago afternoon and the wonderfully discursive exchange between these two singular individuals as the photographer vividly describes interactions with leading cultural figures of the day, including Allen Ginsberg and Susan Sontag, as well the challenges of living on limited financial resources in 1970s New York. Premiered at Sundance, see Deadline’s Sundance Studio.
Netflix’s Sundance and TIFF-premiering Train Dreams opens at 90 theaters in 45 markets including The Paris in 35mm, IFC Center and Alamo Drafthouse in NYC and Landmark Westwood in 35mm, Landmark Sunset, Los Feliz Cinemas and Laemmle Royal in L.A. At 96% with RT critics, see Deadline Contenders London video. Directed by Clint Bentley, who wrote the screenplay with Greg Kwedar (the duo behind Sing Sing), based on the novella by Denis Johnson. Stars Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker “who leads a life of unexpected depth and beauty in the rapidly-changing America of the early 20th Century.” Also stars Felicity Jones, with Kerry Condon and William H. Macy. Narrated by Will Patton. Streaming Nov. 21.
Vertical’s Modi – Three Days On The Wing Of Madness directed by Johnny Depp opens on ten screens including the Quad Cinema in NYC and Laemmle Monica in L.A. Premiered at San Sebastian, see Deadline review. Seventy-two hours in the whirlwind life of bohemian artist Amedeo Modigliani (Riccardo Scamarcio), known as Modi to his friends, the film follows a chaotic series of events through the streets of wartorn Paris in 1916 with fellow artists Maurice Utrillo (Bruno Gouery), Chaïm Soutine (Ryan McParland), Modi’s muse, Beatrice Hastings (Antonia Desplat) and his art dealer and friend Leopold Zborowski (Stephen Graham). After a night of hallucinations, Modi faces American collector, Maurice Gangnat (Al Pacino), who has the power to change his life.
Event: Fathom Entertainment presents the latest in the The Met: Live in HD season with Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Puccini’s La Boheme Saturday on 700 screens. Stars soprano Juliana Grigoryan making her company role debut as Mimì, and tenor Freddie De Tommaso in his company role debut as Rodolfo. Gary Halvorson will direct the Live in HD presentation for theaters and tenor Matthew Polenzani will host the transmission, sharing exclusive behind-the-scenes content and interviews during the two intermissions. Fathom will present two encores on Wednesday at 1 pm and 6:30 pm local time.
