February 2018
FLIX PREMIERE Close-Up
our latest ORIGINAL
and this month’s upcoming premieres
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Welcome Readers: The purpose of this magazine is to share with our movie-goers, the industry and our partners updates about what is happening at Flix Premiere each month. We aim to highlight and explore the upcoming month’s film premieres in each market, and occasionally announce new developments on our platform. Happy reading!
Bu tte rfl y Kis se s
IN THIS ISSUE:
Hab ana Inst ant
February Premieres Snapshot Learn about our exclusive new premieres showing each week. US February Premieres Snapshot - pg. 3
A Dark Reflec tion
UK February Premieres Snapshot - pg. 4 ur Le gs Sa ve Yo
Close Up: Premieres Feature Reviews A chance to immerse yourself in the wonderful stories premiering each week.
The Ope n
Butterfly Kisses - Theo Stevenson, Liam Whiting, Rosie Day, Thomas Turgoose, Charlotte Beaumont - pg. 5 Habana Instant- Guillermo Iván, Jorge Luis de Cabo, Pedro Calvo, Christopher Márquez, Zair Montes - pg. 6 A Fighting Season - Clayne Crawford, Lew Temple, JB Majors, Jim Hechim, Mathew Lipisko, Carrie Paff - pg. 7 The Open - Maia Levasseur-Costil, James Northcote, Pierre Benoist - pg. 8 Neptune - Jane Ackermann, Tony Reilly, William McDonough III, Dylan Chestnutt, Christine Marshall - pg. 9 Scarlet’s Witch - Avery Kristen Pohl, Emily Pearse, Marcy Palmer, Julie Moss, Carlie Nettles, Callie Haskins - pg. 10 A Dark Reflection - Kevin Leslie, Nicholas Day, Marina Sirtis, Rupert Holliday-Evans, Leah Bracknell - pg. 11
U S
P R E M I E R E
FEBRUARY 2 2018 - 7PM EST
U K
P R E M I E R E
FEBRUARY 3 2018 - 7PM GMT
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US PREMIERES SNAPSHOT
Starring: Theo Stevenson, Liam Whiting, Byron Lyons, Rosie Day, Thomas Turgoose, Elliot Cowan, Charlotte Beaumont
FEBRUARY 2, 2018 - 7pm EST
Starring: Guillermo Ivรกn, Jorge Luis de Cabo, Pedro Calvo, Christopher Mรกrquez, Zair Montes, Michel Labarta, Esteban Leon
FEBRUARY 9, 2018 - 7pm EST
Starring: Maia Levasseur-Costil, James Northcote, Pierre Benoist
FEBRUARY 16, 2018 - 7pm EST
Starring: Avery Kristen Pohl, Emily Pearse, Marcy Palmer, Julie Moss, Carlie Nettles, Callie Haskins, Taylor Edmonds, Bill Kelly
february 23, 2018 - 7pm EST
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UK PREMIERES SNAPSHOT
Starring: Theo Stevenson, Liam Whiting, Byron Lyons, Rosie Day, Thomas Turgoose, Elliot Cowan, Charlotte Beaumont
FEBRuARY 3, 2018 - 7pm GMT
Starring: Clayne Crawford, Lew Temple, JB Majors, Jim Hechim, Mathew Lipisko, Andrew Blazensky, Carrie Paff
FEBRUARY 10, 2018 - 7pm GMT
Starring: Jane Ackermann, Tony Reilly, William McDonough III, Dylan Chestnutt, Christine Marshall
FEBRUARY 17, 2018 - 7pm GMT
Starring: Kevin Leslie, Nicholas Day, Marina Sirtis, Rupert Holliday-Evans, Leah Bracknell, Georgina Sutcliffe, Bill Ward, Angela Dixon, Stephen Tompkinson
FEBRUARY 24, 2018 - 7pm GMT
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Close Up: Premiere Feature Review
Butterfly Kisses
US Premiere FEBRUARY 2 - 7PM EST UK Premiere FEBRUARY 3 - 7PM GMT
Starring: Theo Stevenson, Liam Whiting, Byron Lyons, Rosie Day, Thomas Turgoose, Elliot Cowan, Charlotte Beaumont
Unforgettable. Stephen Fry Confident London story of young love and old secrets. Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
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group of mates from a housing project south of London faces the joys and perils of growing up. Increased freedom and unstable home lives leave these boys to learn about the adult world through older friends and pornography. Obsessed with sex and lured by drugs and petty opportunities for delinquency, Jake and his pals live the restless and shifting life of the young. But Jake has a deep and dark secret, one that he cannot share even with his closest confidants. Butterfly Kisses, Rafael Kapelinski’s debut feature, surprises with an almost-surrealist noir tone that slowly builds throughout the film. Shot in a crisp black and white, it first evokes neorealism and British social realism before gradually diverting from traditional narrative. What begins as a recognizable picaresque coming of age tale shifts into a trance-like and detached revelation of the unspeakable sexual obsession of a young man.
Beautifully produced. John Malkovich
At night, he perches on the top floor of his housing project’s high-rise, to watch “interesting people,” he says. But the camera betrays that there is more erotically-driven voyeurism attached to this ritual than mere observation.
Such tension, between the relatable teen boy and his turn as a menacing threat to his neighbors – keenly felt by the audience – neatly manifests itself in Kapelinski’s film. Dream-like sequences of horses appearing in the urban landscape and adolescents wearing animal head masks at a party are interspersed with a realism-driven approach to urban poverty familiar from film history. The resulting effect is that Butterfly Kisses provides a profound and new look at a taboo subject that is as aesthetically innovative and pleasing as its story is daring and challenging.
Will anyone close to Jake catch on to his secret obsession before he harms himself or others? In Butterfly Kisses, screenwriter Greer Ellison has penned a bold and original drama that breaks boundaries in its exploration of the life of a protagonist that no studio would consider portraying on the big screen. One of the film’s most remarkable attributes is its multi-faceted representation of Jake. Stevenson’s acting and cinematographer Nick Cooke’s meticulous compositions endow him with a high level of humanity and even sympathy. Jake, played by Theo Stevenson, is fundamentally lonely. Uncomfortable with his friends’ probing questions about his experience with girls and his sexual desires, he retrenches into his own world.
Nevertheless, the almost inevitable and fatalistic bend of Jake’s character arch ultimately renders him a monster in both his own and the viewer’s eyes.
That is why we are thrilled to debut it on our platform as our latest Flix Premiere Original.
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Close Up: Premiere Feature Review
Habana Instant
US Premiere FEBRUARY 9 - 7PM EST
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fter 23 years, Charlie is setting foot again on his native island of Cuba. In fleeing by raft so long ago, he left not only memories of his origins there, but also a younger brother, Marcelo. Decades of his absence have burdened Marcelo with the care of their elderly grandfather, and the deep pain of abandonment. Why would a mother choose to take one son to the U.S. and not the other, and why has so much time passed before Charlie’s return?
Habana Instant is a drama about one man’s quest to recover a relationship with a long-lost sibling, and another’s attempt to accept his return. It is also a film about the wide gulf between families torn apart by hostile Cuban and American relations. A geopolitical situation that has scattered Cubans across oceans and rendered Havana a city frozen in time. Suffering from a degenerative disease, Marcelo’s only wish is to share an instant with his brother before it is too late.
Habana Instant portrays a compelling family crisis and realistic vision of contemporary Cuba.
A drama about one man’s quest to recover a relationship with a long lost sibling and another attempt to accept his return.
Director and writer Guillermo Iván transports audiences to Havana with Charlie, a New Yorker whose memory of home is so distant that it seems like a foreign land. There the automobiles date from the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s, life and time take on a slower pace, and the locals practice Santería to heal Marcelo’s illness.
The beauty of Iván’s approach to Havana is that it neither indulges too heavily in nostalgia, nor does it ignore the city’s archaic charms and its symbiotic relationship with the ocean. Rather, Habana Instant portrays a compelling family crisis and a realistic vision of contemporary Cuba that celebrates its vivacity, its intrinsic poetry, and its resilient people, while not shying away from the hardships and challenges that make up a part of daily life there. Iván himself, in addition to directing, plays a compelling Marcelo, tormented by his brother’s absence, wounded by his return, and yet ready to relish each moment they are able to spend together.
Christopher Marquez plays an entirely Americanized Charlie, eager to make amends and reconnect with his brother but incapable of accounting for the past or explaining the twists of fate that led him to a prosperous life abroad while Marcelo struggled. Will the brothers reconcile before it is too late? Take a Habana Instant to find out, and experience Cuba through the eyes of Charlie and Marcelo.
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Close Up: Premiere Feature Review
A Fighting Season
UK Premiere FEBRUARY 10 - 7PM GMT
A Fighting Season is a war drama with a unique angle, bringing the psychological tensions and contradictions of military service to bear on life in the home front itself. Knowing the harsh realities of war, Mason must come to terms with witnessing and participating in Harris’ efforts to sign low-income adolescents without money for college, young offenders and convicts who are offered military service as their only way out of serving time in jail, and young women who must contend with harassment and sexual advances in their quest to serve in the army.
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fter an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) sends him into shock on the battlefield in Iraq, Sergent Mason’s [Clayne Crawford] behavior grows volatile and erratic. When he bursts out in anger at a military interviewer investigating reports that he abused prisoners of war, it is determined that he is unfit for active duty. Reassigned to a desk job at a recruiters’ outpost, Mason soon learns that the war is being fought at home as well – in a battle to enlist new recruits when turnout is low and the need for a military surge is on the rise.
A Fighting Season leaves quite a
It sketches out a series of frequently conflicted motivations for enlistment, including the patriotic, the economic, and the coercive, that are often lumped together under the rubric of a selfless fulfillment of a sense of duty.
sour taste in the mouth on an ethical note. A real eye-opener and one hell of a movie driven by
At the same time, it never demolishes the sincerity and earnestness of the belief that service is carried out precisely to fulfill an obligation to patriotism and the greater good.
stellar performances and a shockingly honest truth being
Clayne Crawford gives a tour de force performance as Sargent Mason. Demonstrating strength and resolve while also betraying reservations and flickers of doubt, Crawford delivers a portrayal with genuine depth. He is well complimented by the contrast of his character with Lew Temple’s Sergent Harris.
projected for all to see. Sean Evans, Back To The Movies
The film is a harsh indictment on the system of an all volunteer military Mason is a wounded hero, suffering from the onset of PTSD. But his new commander, Sargent Harris, has never seen a real battlefield. Rather, the latter strategizes and maneuvers to persuade potential recruits and their parents that a career with such high risks is worth the rewards that it offers.
and surviving an unending war on terrorism and truth. Michael Knox-Smith, Mike’s Film Talk
Full of masculine bravado, and prone to an abrasive barking of orders, Temple’s Harris is a psychologically damaged soldier whose injuries derive from never having seen the action of battle. The conflict between the two men escalates as the film progresses, building to an explosive finale.
A Fighting Season is a critical drama, reflecting on a recent and even contemporary period in American history – it is not to be missed.
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Close Up: Premiere Feature Review US Premiere FEBRUARY 16 - 7PM EST
The Open
A quiet, understated drama, it follows in a line of recent science fiction films such as Into the Forest and Embers that eschew the technological and focus on the introspective, human aspect of the unknown future Shelagh Rowan-Legg, Screen Anarchy
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t the world’s end, all remaining humans are automatic enemies. After nations have crumbled, and modern life has been demolished under the weight of conflict, André and Stéphanie are consumed by a singular obsession – playing tennis. Without tennis balls, without courts, and without strings on their rackets, they train and prepare in untamed nature. Fighter jets zoom by, the world continues its collapse, and they pursue the dream of the final match at Roland Garros. After capturing guerrilla fighter Ralph by force, the pair invites him to return to fighting or join their tournament. Compete against Stéphanie in exchange for training, shelter, food, and community or march to an inevitable lonely death. Initially incredulous and unable to feign engagement, with time Ralph accedes and moulds himself into a credible tennis champion.
Though set amidst a long-running global war, the film keeps combat at its periphery while placing at its centre a strange oasis of improbable pacifism. For a while battle planes roar over a bleak, wintry shoreline, a grief-driven coach and two traumatised tennis pros insist on ignoring the surrounding mayhem, and instead mime out a constructed, rule-bound scenario of peace-time normality… Anton Bitel, Projected Figures
Eventually, it becomes clear that the sport is so much more than a game – it’s a vehicle for optimism and hope. It is a strategy for survival. Director Marc Lahore’s debut feature, The Open is a unique blend of apocalyptic action drama and theater of the absurd. Lahore avows wishing to evoke the unlikely pairing of both Mad Max’s setting and brutality, and Samuel Beckett’s existential humor. The result is an entirely original concept that is as striking in its impact as it is understated in its simplicity.
One might be tempted to think that Lahore has found a formula for budget-conscious cinema of the highest quality. Employ only three principal actors, shoot in desolate, spectacular landscapes, and work with a story of the highest quality. But the concept and delivery of The Open are so exceptional, that it defies formulaic reproduction. The Open’s trio of actors work in synchronization to draw us into a charade of the utmost seriousness and make us feel its palpable stakes. Hailing from France, Pierre Benoist embodies the brutal leader, André, while Maia Levasseur-Costil plays his first trainee, Stéphanie. James Northcote rounds out the group as the English mercenary who is roped into their pantomime. Levasseur-Costil’s performance is particularly impressive in its physicality, and in her portrayal of psychological anguish. Not to be upstaged, the landscape photography of the Scottish Outer Hebrides is striking in its expression of existential isolation and dramatic hopelessness. Making use of minimal costumes, props, and sets, the film’s essence is, nevertheless, epic in scale. The Open is an extraordinary story of the tenacity of human enterprise in the midst of chaos, death, and destruction. Touching on loss and pain through both drama and light humor, it is not a film to be missed.
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Close Up: Premiere Feature Review
Neptune
UK Premiere FEBRUARY 17 - 7PM GMT
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hen Hannah Newcombe [Jane Ackermann] is not studying, or doing chores at the church she calls home, she enjoys long bike rides along the rocky cliffs of a Maine island’s treacherous coastline. Enraptured by the immensity of nature, she is similarly fascinated with television programs depicting telescopic explorations of our solar system and its planets. But when one classmate in her tight-knit community goes missing – believed to have perished in the sea – her reveries gradually transform into foreboding nightmares. The ward of the Reverend Jerry Cook, Hannah is to be sent to an elite boarding school on the mainland to become an ordained minister. However, this unexpected loss in her community pushes Hannah toward a different path. She offers to replace the dead boy on his father’s lobster boat and greatly angers her caretaker in the process.
Kimball infuses his unpredictable debut with a creepy sense of atmosphere all throughout, while displaying a firm grasp of the material and essentially crafting exactly the sort of film that it seems he set out to make. Nick Clement, Podcasting Them Softly
In his feature film debut, Kimball shows off his creativity, rarely playing by the rules of traditional cinematic storytelling. Blair Hoyle, Cinema Slasher
What begins as a local tragedy becomes a personal quest for self-knowledge and self-realization by Hannah, who must fight to begin building the kind of life she desires for herself. All the while, she must contend with her bullheaded guardian and his increasingly punitive fits of rage as he senses his designs for Hannah are slipping from his grasp. Neptune is a lyrical look at childhood that avoids the rose-colored lens so often tied to the coming of age genre. Rather, it explores the morosity that can overwhelm a difficult adolescence – one whose constraints seem impossible to escape.
As we watch scenes from Hannah’s life unfold, we gradually identify the obstacles holding her back from pursuing her dreams. Realistic sequences, shot with beautiful landscape cinematography, suddenly transform into surreal escapist contemplations of nature and death. From the wide-open vistas of the ocean from the lobster boat, to the cramped and smothering space of the church and its broom closet, we come to sense that Hannah must escape her circumstances if she wishes to flourish.
Jane Ackermann offers a breakthrough performance as Hannah, in the tradition of the most memorable and poignant embodiments of childhood found in the cinema. (She was only 14 years old when the feature was shot). Portraying both wonder and despair, curiosity and fear, Ackermann reveals for us, again, the secrets of youth, full of both possibility and challenges. Neptune brings us into the silently tormented world of adolescence in order to send us to the stars and the wide-open seas. Be sure not to miss it on Flix Premiere!
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Close Up: Premiere Feature Review
Scarlet’s Witch
US Premiere FEBRUARY 23 - 7PM EST
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n introverted and solitary child, young Scarlet has only one friend outside of home. A single person understands her. Her companion just happens to be a witch. Scarlet’s Witch is a thriller wrapped in a mystery.
Scarlet’s Witch is described as a fantasy, adult
Who is this sorceress, and why does she make herself visible to and befriend Scarlet?
surface of this enticing mystery-thriller. What’s
fairy tale, but that hardly scratches the
very interesting about Rabbath’s tale is that
With no mother and an uneasy relationship with children her own age, an understanding ear and an inviting grin are welcome novelties for the girl.
no matter how fantastic the magic within, everything that transpires is believable. Film Threat
As years pass, though, the enchantress becomes possessive, jealous, and hurt by Scarlet’s refusal to wield her magic wand. As their camaraderie falters and the hag’s rage grows one wonders: What is the price for offending a witch? The mystery unfolds in a surprising adventure.
Director F.C. Rabbath has a frightening talent for building suspense and establishing an eerie mise en scène from everyday settings and objects.
From the beginning we are drawn into this story in the same way we were drawn into the stories we heard as a child. Loida Garcia, Rogue Cinema
An impressive piece of auteur cinema, Scarlet’s Witch benefits from the unified vision brought by Rabbath’s triple role as writer, director, and cinematographer. The result is an exercise in masterful storytelling in which all of the creative elements of the film work in sync with one another to create a hair-raising tale.
Scarlet’s Witch benefits from a talented cast, with multiple actors sometimes required to bring consistency to the same role.
Under Rabbath’s lens, rural northern Florida and even Florida State University’s campus are transformed into the creepy domain of a vindictive witch.
The techniques Rabbath employs to personify the witch are inventive and effective, creating a simultaneously fearsome and yet enigmatic figure.
A majestic oak tree, dripping with Spanish moss, exercises mysterious power over the frame and within the story. Dirt paths surrounded by lush wildlife tilt ominously. An old cabin appears and vanishes without a trace along with its supernatural inhabitant. Magic wands come to life and lives are turned upside down.
Making a friend out of a witch is both a novel twist on tropes of good and evil. And, as any number of fairy tales might suggest, it is probably not a wise idea. There is only one way to find out. Watch it yourself today, and befriend Scarlet’s Witch.
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Close Up: Premiere Feature Review
A Dark Reflection
UK Premiere FEBRUARY 24 - 7PM GMT
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fter a near-miss at Gatwick Airport, an acclaimed investigative journalist smells a lead when JASP Air officials stonewall the press regarding the incident. Defying industry titans and untrusting crew and personnel, Helen Eastman is on a quest to get to the bottom of a string of suspicious events surrounding JASP aircraft. Will she be able to uncover the truth before they manage to shut her inquiry down? Based on true events, A Dark Reflection represents the best of the tradition of the drama of journalism and the thrill of breaking a story. Evocative of the Oscar-winner Spotlight and this year’s celebrated The Post, it meticulously walks us through the breakthroughs, the dangers, and the stakes involved in exposing hidden information of broad public interest. As time races by and the proportions of the risks and hazards to both flight crew and travelers become clear, so too does Helen’s resolve to find incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing.
What makes the story of A Dark Reflection all the more remarkable is that it was conceived, produced, and executed by members of the very industry at issue in the film. In fact, its director is a former airline pilot whose health was affected by his work, and its producers include airline crew unions and associations.
A Dark Reflection draws us into the world of aviation and invests us in the stakes for flyers everywhere.
Based on true events, A Dark Reflection represents the best of the tradition of the drama of journalism and the thrill of a breaking story.
The heartfelt interest in the material is manifested in the resulting product, as A Dark Reflection draws us into the world of aviation and invests us in the stakes for flyers everywhere. Georgina Sutcliffe gives an inspired performance as the determined Helen.
Undeterred by a recent trauma in the Middle East, we see the determination in her eyes to overturn every stone and examine each clue in her investigation until it reaches an acceptable conclusion. Paul Antony-Barber also gives a multilayered and memorable performance as the conflicted young JASP CEO, Nick Robertson. Father to a sickly daughter himself, he must face his competing interests as a head of industry and a human concerned for the wellbeing of his fellow man. The cast rises to the challenge and, undoubtedly, made its real-world backers proud. A Dark Reflection combines action and suspense with a refreshing dose of humanity to tell the story of the genesis of a real and valuable piece of news. Its creation and propagation make excellent material for this drama, not to be missed on Flix Premiere.
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