The Dallas International Film Festival continues to make news with the upcoming festival including the announcement that three-time Academy Award nominee and Emmy Award winner Laura Linney will be honored with a Dallas Star Award at the Dallas Film Society Honors. Todd Louiso’s HELLO I MUST BE GOING and Marius A. Markevicius’ THE OTHER DREAM TEAM will be screened in DIFF’s coveted Saturday and Thursday Centerpiece slots respectively. Also, the previously announced LIBERAL ARTS is confirmed as the Opening Night Gala presentation.
DIFF 2012 will kick off on April 12 with the film LIBERAL ARTS which premiered earlier this year at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Starring Zac Efron, Elizabeth Olsen, Josh Radnor, Richard Jenkins and Allison Janney, LIBERAL ARTS centers on 30-something Jesse, who falls for a young 19-year old college student when he is invited back to his alma mater.
The Saturday Centerpiece will be the comedy HELLO I MUST BE GOING from actor, writer and director Todd Louiso (HIGH FIDELITY (2000); THANK YOU FOR SMOKING (2005)). The new film, which also premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, stars Melanie Lynskey (WIN WIN (2011); UP IN THE AIR (2009)) as Amy, a recently divorced New York photographer who moves back in with her parents in suburban Connecticut, then shakes up her life by starting an affair with a young actor. Co-starring Blythe Danner, Christopher Abbott and Julie White, the film had its North American rights snapped up by Oscilloscope Laboratories in preparation for a theatrical release this year.
Completing the Centerpiece line-up, THE OTHER DREAM TEAM is the incredible story of the 1992 Lithuanian basketball team coached by Donnie Nelson, known now as the general manager of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. The Lithuanian athletes struggled under Soviet rule, but they became symbols of Lithuania’s independence movement and against all odds they triumphed at the Barcelona Olympics. Members of the original team will join Donnie Nelson and director Markevicius at the Landmark Magnolia Theatre screening on Thursday, April 19.
Finally, two additional screenings have been added to the film schedule:
BERNIE (USA)
Director: Richard Linklater
In small-town Texas, the local mortician strikes up a friendship with a wealthy widow but when he kills her, he goes to great lengths to create the illusion that she’s alive. Starring Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey and Shirley MacLaine
GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS (USA)
Directors: Shana Sosin, Barbara Stepansky, Jennifer Chambers Lynch, Beth Grant, Tracie Laymon, America Young
Six filmmakers were awarded $1000 each to make a short film. The filmmakers were given only two rules: it had to be written, directed, produced, shot, and edited by women, and the finished product had to express what “feminine strength” meant to the filmmakers. GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS is the result of these terrific collaborations, a half a dozen short films that showcase the diverse and unique voices of young female filmmakers from around the country.
CONVENTION OF DYING
MY OWN PRIVATE DEMON
HOW TO HAVE A HAPPY MARRIAGE
THE PERFECT FIT
A HIDDEN AGENDER
LOCKED-IN