Filmmaker Aaron Schimberg’s Chained For Life which World Premiere at BAM cinemaFEST 2018 will open in theaters in New York on September 11 at IFC Center and in Los Angeles, September 13 at Landmark Nuart, followed by national rollout. Chained For Life stars Jess Weixler, Adam Pearson, Charlie Korsmo, Sari Lennick and Stephen Plunkett

Building on the promise of his hallucinogenic debut Go Down Death, filmmaker Aaron Schimberg delivers another brilliantly oddball, acerbically funny foray into gonzo surrealism. In a deft tragicomic performance, Jess Weixler (Teeth) plays Mabel, a movie star “slumming it” in an outré art-horror film being shot in a semi-abandoned hospital. Cast opposite her is Rosenthal (Under the Skin’s Adam Pearson), a gentle-natured young man with a severe facial deformity. As their relationship evolves both on and offscreen, Schimberg raises provocative questions about cinematic notions of beauty, representation, and exploitation. Tod Browning crossed with Robert Altman crossed with David Lynch only begins to describe something this startlingly original and deeply felt. – BAMcinemaFest

As a filmmaker with a facial difference, I have never seen my experience accurately represented on screen. This film – the first, as far as I know, made by and starring disfigured people – is my humble attempt to remedy that.

Director Aaron Schimberg

Director Aaron Schimberg has enjoyed success as a filmmaker with his first feature-length film Go Down Death (2014), a harrowing tale set in a remote war-torn village and based on Jonathan Mallory Sinus’s folktales. Go Down Death was an official selection at the Fantasia Film Festival, the Raindance Festival, and the Northside Film Festival, among others. Schimberg was born with a bilateral cleft palate and uses his experience to inspire his work, all of which deals with disability or disfigurement in some way. Schimberg has written and directed both of his films.