Nash Edgerton’s The Captain joins Sundance Film Festival
Taika Waititi in The Captain
Film-maker Nash Edgerton has received his second nod of approval from the Sundance Film Festival in as many years with his short film The Captain being accepted into competition.
The only Australian short film to get accepted in 2013, The Captain, was co-written by Edgerton, Hesher director Spencer Susser, who also co-directed the film, and Taika Waititi, who wrote and directed the New Zealand film Boy.
It follows Edgerton’s acceptance into the festival for 2012 with his film Bear. This is Edgerton’s sixth short film to feature at the festival.
Edgerton said:
“It’s a huge honor for Spencer and I that The Captain has been selected to screen at Sundance especially seeing as we co-wrote it with our friend Taika Waititi who also stars in it, someone whom we met at Sundance years ago. It’s such a privilege for us to get to make films with our friends.”
The Captain follows a man who wakes up with a hangover, only to discover the consequences of his actions.
The film was produced by Benjamin Gilovitz for Blue-Tongue Films in association with Burbank Gamma Ray and made with the assistance of Mobli, executive produced by Sue Yeon Ahn.
It was shot by Greig Fraser who this week won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for best cinematography for his work on Kathryn Bigelow’s film Zero Dark Thirty.
Fraser has worked with Edgerton and his Blue Tongue Films team in the past, including Edgerton’s short film Spider and David Michod’s Netherland Dwarf.
The Captain will run in the US Narrative Short Films category, as Susser is American.
It joins two other Australian productions at the festival. Top of the Lake, a TV series by Jane Campion and Emile Sherman and Iain Canning’s See-Saw Films has already been accepted to screen at Sundance, as the first TV series to screen in its entirety. Australian-French co-production Two Mothers, directed by Anne Fontaine and starring Naomi Watts and Robin Wright will also screen at the festival.
The Blue Tongue Films news continues with the addition of Mirrah Foulkes to the collective’s line up. Foulkes has been nominated for two AACTAs this week for her short film Dumpy Goes to the Big Smoke, for Best Short Fiction Film and Best Screenplay for a Short Film. Foulkes is the first woman to join the collective.
