Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winner ‘Atropia’, Dick Van Dyke Tribute & Slasher Reboot ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ – Specialty Preview

Writer-director Hailey Gates’ satire Atropia, produced by Luca Guadagnino and winner of the Sundance U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Features, starts a week-long run at the IFC Center in New York City. Santa slasher reboot Silent Night, Deadly Night from Cineverse opens wide screens and well-reviewed TIFF-premiering Dust Bunny is out in moderate release. Dick Van Dyke: 100th Celebration is on 800+ screens for two days only.

The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, Chile’s Oscar pick this year and winner of the main Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes, opens in New York and Los Angeles. Cannes Prix Spécial-winner Resurrection opens in NY and LA. Sony Pictures Classics is launching limited Academy runs for Scarlet at ten theaters and The President’s Cake at two (NY,LA). It’s a bit of a hodgepodge ahead of the Christmas onslaught, and with indie distributors like the rest of the industry obsessing over the future of movies and theatrical releasing with Warner Bros. in play.

Dick Van Dyke turns 100 on Dec, 14, marked by Dick Van Dyke: 100th Celebration Saturday and Sunday via Fathom Entertainment. The feature-length film event from Steve Boettcher and Michael Trinklein honors the career of the actor, singer, dancer and comedian, weaving together classic TV and film clips, interviews with Van Dyke and his legendary co-stars and a visit with the star to his hometown of Danville, Illinois.

Chita Rivera, in one of her final interviews, recalls Van Dyke’s explosive Tony Award winning breakout role as her co-star in Broadway’s Bye Bye Birdie; his The Comic co-star, Michele Lee praises his heartbreaking dramatic turn in the film. There are interviews with hometown neighbors and longtime family friends, clips from his beloved films including Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, TV series The Dick Van Dyke Show and Diagnosis Murder, and appearances in Mary Poppins Returns and Night at the Museum. Conversations with Van Dyke anchor the project.

“This film has been a labor of love for more than thirty years,” says Boettcher. “We’ve spent decades interviewing Mr. Van Dyke and his friends and co-stars, capturing the moments and memories that define his incredible journey. From Broadway to Hollywood to his touching return to Danville, the film is a living tribute to one of the greatest entertainers in history — a man whose career has spanned more than 80 years and who’s still going strong! It’s a joyful celebration of a truly extraordinary life.”

Comedy Atropia from Vertical has booked sold out shows at IFC through the weekend with Q&As including tonight’s with Gates and star Chloe Sevigny moderated by filmmaker Celine Song (Past Lives). Aubrey Plaza moderated an early screening Tuesday with Alia Shawkat, who stars as an aspiring actress in a military role-playing facility who falls in love with a soldier (Callum Turner) cast as an insurgent– and their un-simulated emotions threaten to derail the performance.

Atropia is an invented nation just close enough to Los Angeles for Hollywood set builders to create the fake villages, but far enough away that the performers who live on-site are not exactly flourishing in their acting careers. See Deadline review. Zahra Alzubaidi, Tony Shawkat (Alia Shawkat’s dad), Jane Levy, Tim Heideckerand Lola Kirke also star. Great cameo by Channing Tatum. National rollout starts in January.

The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo from Altered Innocence screens Friday (12/12) and Sunday (12/14) at the Roxy in New York with director Diego Céspedes in person. The film also joined the inaugural slate of titles available on the Letterboxd Video Store yesterday, and further theatrical is planned for the new year. The film reimagines the early AIDS era as a surreal Western. It’s set in the year 1982 in a remote Chilean mining town inhabited by two neighboring and, on paper, vastly different communities: the single men who still reside in the workers’ town, and a household of queer performers who have found refuge together under the guidance of Mama Boa, and who pass their nights by putting on drag shows.

At the center of the film is a myth, that a mysterious plague infecting the men of the town is spread not through physical means but, instead, through the gaze, creating a climate of fear and hysteria. Told through the eyes of 12-year-old Lidia, newcomer Tamara Cortés alongside a cast of many nonactors or first-timers. Rooted in Céspedes’ own experience growing up outside of the city and witnessing the hardships his mother felt as she lost friends to AIDS.

See interview with Céspedes at Deadline’s Contenders International.

In sci-fi drama Resurrection from Janus Films, Chinese director Bi Gan (Long Day’s Journey Into Night) envisions a future where humanity has surrendered its ability to dream in exchange for immortality. An outcast (Jackson Yee) finds illusion, nightmarish visions, and beauty in an intoxicating world of his own making in a vast and ever-shifting worlds on the brink of collapse. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at its Cannes premiere, see Deadline review. Opens in New York at Film at Lincoln Center and Los Angeles at the Laemmle Royal with sold-out Q&As with the filmmaker, who also drew crowds to preview screenings in Boston and San Francisco earlier this week.

Roadside Attractions opens Bryan Fuller’s Dust Bunny at 397 locations. Ten-year-old Aurora (Sophie Sloan) has a mysterious neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) who kills real-life monsters. He’s a hit man for hire. So, when Aurora needs help killing the monster she believes ate her entire family, she procures his services. Suspecting that her parents may have fallen victim to assassins gunning for him, Aurora’s neighbor guiltily takes the job. Now, to protect her, he’ll need to battle an onslaught of assassins — and accept that some monsters are real. With David Dastmalchain, Sheila Atim, Rebecca Henderson and Sigourney Weaver.

Fuller, who also produced with Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee, just nabbed an Independent Spirit Award nom for Best First Feature. Nicole Hirsch Whitaker was nominated for Best Cinematography.

Slasher reboot Silent Night, Deadly Night from Cineverseopens on 1,600+ screens. When Billy witnesses his parents’ grisly murder at the hands of Santa, it ignites a lifelong mission to spread holiday fear. Every Christmas, he dons the red suit and embarks on a blood-soaked massacre to feed his twisted sense of justice. By Mike P. Nelson. Starring Rohan Campbell as Billy Chapman and Ruby Modine as Pamela. With Mark Acheson, David Lawrence Brown and David Tomlinson.

Produced by the original 1984 TriStar film’s producers Scott Schneid and Dennis Whitehead and New Dimension’s Jamie R. Thompson, Rebel 6’s Erik Bernard and White Bear Films’ Jeremy Torrie, with executive producers Steven Schneider, Anthony Masi and Sarah Eilts.

Terrifier’s Brandon Hill and Brad Miska will oversee for Cineverse and will executive-produce alongside Erick Opeka and Yolanda Macias, Bondit Media Capital’s Matthew Helderman and Luke Taylor.

The first Silent Night, Deadly Night movie, the story of a young man who goes on a murderous rampage dressed as Santa after being released from an orphanage, became one of the most controversial of the year, causing altercations outside theaters and letters, parents demanded the film be pulled from theaters, which it was.