A terror virus and a last-day comedy on Earth – both entirely planned, filmed and edited during the pandemic – brought an apocalyptic flavor on Friday to the Sundance film festival, which was transferred to the Internet due to Covid.
Speaking after “virtual” world premieres at the influential US indie event, the film’s creators described how they channeled their boredom and anxiety into creativity, quickly finding ways to shoot safely during long periods of blockage.
“I had a slightly hysterical episode about a week after the closing … I needed to calm down and part of it calmed down was trying to write,” recalled “In The Earth” director Ben Wheatley.
The first new production to be filmed in the United Kingdom after its initial blockade in March, the terror takes place in a remote English forest, where scientists carry out mysterious experiments while a virus sweeps the cities.
“It was a strange pressure on us … all protocols were new at that point,” said Wheatley.
Although Covid-19 does not provide the main plot of the film, it does serve as an essential backdrop for the film’s events.
Wheatley said in an online question and answer session that the introduction of social detachment and blocking made even the freshly finished films look “from another era”.
“You would sit there and watch a movie and have these massive crowd scenes, or all of your worries were concerns from two years ago,” he said.
“I think horror films especially, but films in general, should reflect the moment you are in.”
Meanwhile, the comedy “How It Ends” imagines Los Angeles on the day that an asteroid must destroy the planet.
Liza (played by co-director Zoe Lister-Jones) leaves on foot to confront those who wronged her – and make some last-minute excuses on her own – all on the way to a wild party ending.
Conceived in the first weeks of the California blockade and shot in the summer, the film also takes place almost entirely outdoors – on the city’s permanently sunny streets, gardens and pool decks.
– ‘Home movie’ –
The filmmakers rushed to finish and release the film “while we are all still struggling with some of this emotional minefield,” said Lister-Jones, describing the process as therapeutic during “a very dark period”.
Helen Hunt, Bradley Whitford and Olivia Wilde are among the famous faces who show up for socially distant conversations with Zoe during their “existential treasure hunt” – many shot outside the royal homes of the A-listers.
“Usually, when someone comes in with two cameras and a sound guy and an actor, I’m like, ‘I’m excited to be in your home movie,'” joked Charlie Day, who appears with his wife Mary Elizabeth Ellis.
“It was super fast – one day I got a call saying ‘hey, we’re going to come over to your house tomorrow’ … I really didn’t know what I was getting into,” added Lamorne Morris.
Friday also saw Sundance’s debut of “The Pink Cloud”, in which two strangers are forced to cohabit indefinitely when a toxic cloud spreads across the planet in the middle of their night, making the outside air deadly.
However, the scarily prescient Brazilian sci-fi was written and filmed a year before Covid-19.
The US Independent Film Festival, Sundance, co-founded by Robert Redford, typically takes place each winter in the Utah mountains, where multi-million dollar deals are closed for many of the year’s most coveted art hits.
Due to the pandemic, all 72 films this year are making their debut via online streaming, with the festival abbreviated until February 3.
amz / jfx