Madeleine Gavin’s Sundance award-winning documentary “Beyond Utopia” has garnered the best documentary and best doc editing honors at the 24th annual Woodstock Film Festival.
The documentary, which was recently acquired by Roadside Attractions, is vying for Academy Award attention.
Using hidden camera footage, the doc follows the high-stakes journey that a handful of desperate families make in order to defect from North Korea — a country with the most brutal regime on earth, led by a dictator, Kim Jong-un.
Doc jurors included directors Barbara Kopple (“Harlan County USA”) Richard Rowley (“ Kingdom of Silence”) and Heidi Ewing (“Jesus Camp”).
“This year’s winner is an astonishingly intimate, white-knuckle thriller following families trying to escape North Korea,” the jurors said in a joint statement. “Stitched together from raw, first person footage, it is impossible not to feel the heart-breaking courage as a family clings to each other during a nighttime crossing of the Mekong River.
The documentary, which was recently acquired by Roadside Attractions, is vying for Academy Award attention.
Using hidden camera footage, the doc follows the high-stakes journey that a handful of desperate families make in order to defect from North Korea — a country with the most brutal regime on earth, led by a dictator, Kim Jong-un.
Doc jurors included directors Barbara Kopple (“Harlan County USA”) Richard Rowley (“ Kingdom of Silence”) and Heidi Ewing (“Jesus Camp”).
“This year’s winner is an astonishingly intimate, white-knuckle thriller following families trying to escape North Korea,” the jurors said in a joint statement. “Stitched together from raw, first person footage, it is impossible not to feel the heart-breaking courage as a family clings to each other during a nighttime crossing of the Mekong River.
- 10/1/2023
- by Addie Morfoot
- Variety Film + TV
The arrival of a fresh, new voice on the indie filmmaking scene is always an exciting event and the latest debut on our radar is that from Chelsea Bo, producer of Joshua Leonard’s Fully Realized Humans and Sarah Adina Smith’s The Drop. Written, directed, and starring Bo, No Right Way is set for a fall festival tour and now we’re pleased to exclusively debut the trailer for the film, following the journey of half-sisters.
Also starring Ava Acres, Eliza Coupe-Marks, Jim Hanks, and Sufe Bradshaw, here’s the official synopsis: “Georgie, a brazen 13-year-old, has her life uprooted when she’s thrust into the guardianship of her half-sister Harper and torn away from her life in Vegas. Harper sees this turbulent time as a window of opportunity to pave a brighter future for her half-sister, but Harper’s self-righteous attempts to protect Georgie only lead to exposing their paralleled childhood wounds.
Also starring Ava Acres, Eliza Coupe-Marks, Jim Hanks, and Sufe Bradshaw, here’s the official synopsis: “Georgie, a brazen 13-year-old, has her life uprooted when she’s thrust into the guardianship of her half-sister Harper and torn away from her life in Vegas. Harper sees this turbulent time as a window of opportunity to pave a brighter future for her half-sister, but Harper’s self-righteous attempts to protect Georgie only lead to exposing their paralleled childhood wounds.
- 8/30/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
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