3rd Annual Dances With Films - NYC announces lineup for premiere-rich film event (December 5-8)

Celebrated truly indie-focused film festival will feature 77 Feature-length Narrative and Documentary films, Pilots and Shorts making World, North American, and US Premieres. Evan Oppenheimer’s PEAS AND CARROTS makes its World Premiere as the Opening Night selection, and Christina Elioupolos’ HERE’S YIANNI! is the Closing Night selection.

Photo: Peas and Carrots

Dances With Films announced the film lineup for the 3rd New York City edition of the bicoastal film festival juggernaut. December 5-8 will be packed with an incredible number of feature-length narratives, documentaries, pilots, and shorts making their world, North American, and US premieres as DWF showcases those new works as part of the only indie film-focused film festival with a foothold in both Los Angeles and The Big Apple. Evan Oppenheimer’s Peas and Carrots makes its world premiere on Opening Night, and Christina Elioupolos’ Here’s Yianni! is the Closing Night selection.

Among DWF NYC’s lineup of 141 films, including 22 narrative and midnight features, 9 documentary features, 18 television and streaming pilots, and 92 short films (76 combined narrative and midnight, with 16 documentaries). More than half of this year’s DWF NYC presentation will be making their world, North American or US premieres during the ambitious four-day film event in December. All screenings will take place at Regal Union Square (850 Broadway).

In addition to Oppenheimer’s Peas and Carrots, additional feature length films making their world premieres are Liam Le Guillou’s A Cursed Man, Victoria Kupchinetsky’s Calico Rebellion, Jason Mendoza’s Good Friday, Bari King’s Itch!, Mikaela Shwer’s The Kids Are Not Alright, Dom Cutrupi’s Lola Dust, William Tyler Wiseman’s Moonwater, Paul Bickel’s One Happy Place, Jarrett Jung’s Sergeant Pickle Breath And The Rooftop Warriors, and Kristen Hansen’s Sonny Boy. Andrew Bell’s Bleeding, and Howard Goldberg’s Double Exposure will make their North American Premieres, and Nicola Rose’s Magnetosphere will make its US Premiere at DWF NYC.

Pilots for TV and streaming series making their world premieres, include Sergio Camacho’s United Crafts Of America, Victoria Myers’ A Legend Is Hatched: I Become Famous... In My Own Mind, Lucy Hirschfeld’s Dropped, Christine Lakin’s The Fun In Funny, Christopher Gerson and Julie Kramer’s Gasbag, Dan Jones’ Hive, Olivia Lambert’s Like Comment Subscribe, Serena Schuler’s Makeshift Society, Karl Janisse’s Passage, Ana Breton’s Rat Czar, and Ruthie Marantz’s Raging Doll. 

Cited by Moviemaker Magazine as one of the 2024 “Coolest Film Festivals” in the world, Dances With Films’ rapid growth in New York City along with its current place as L.A.’s top film festival for platforming truly independent filmmaking, makes DWF the only film festival organization offering “discovery” titles in major film festival events in both of those cities. Showcasing brand new work by filmmakers on both coasts, most of which have yet to be seen or picked up for distribution has become a hallmark for Dances With Films’ Founders and Directors Leslee Scallon and Michael Trent.

Scallon and Trent said, “We take the responsibility of discovering these films and filmmakers and
thus providing an opportunity for them to get distribution and representation furthering their careers. Just as New York City's energy and excitement has been a driving force for us, we embrace the absolute joy of seeing so much great work on the big screen for the very first time and helping our ever-growing family of filmmakers take their next steps toward realizing their dreams under the spotlight of this great city. We hope the audiences feel it the same way we do.”

 
Thursday, December 5 will feature the World Premiere Opening Night presentation of DWF alumni Evan Oppenheimer’s Peas and Carrots. Oppenheimer’s film The Auteur Theory screened at DWF in 1999 with a early appearance by Natasha Lyonne. Peas and Carrots follows a teenage girl in New York who is the child of a couple that were one-hit wonders in the 90s. She also travels in a bizarre alternate reality, where everybody only says three words: “Peas and Carrots”. Naturally, her family forms a new band and start rocking out together. The film stars Kirrilee Berger, Jordan Bridges, and Amy Carlson, and the local NYC-based production also includes the involvement of numerous legendary New York musicians. Members of the Ramones, Sonic Youth, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and Guster all contributed to this movie, both with new music in the score and (in some cases) with appearances on screen.

Closing Night on Sunday, December 8, will feature Christina Eliapolous’ Here’s Yianni!. The whimsical comedy drama stars Joe Cortese, as the title character, and Julia Ormond as a longtime couple who run a beachside family diner. Yianni develops dementia and slips into a parallel realm, believing he is the host of a late-night talk show with the diner’s staff and customers as guest stars. Meanwhile, his wife tries to hide his illness from their coworkers and best friends (Kevin Pollak and Rosanna Arquette). When a woman and her seven-year-old son move in across the street, Yianni becomes convinced that the young boy is the son they lost 30 years ago and after he escapes home and runs into the boy, Yianni must find a moment of clarity so he can navigate them both back to the diner and their worried families. The film also stars Eric Roberts and Sofia Vassileva.

Good Friday, Double Exposure, Magnetosphere

Additional narrative feature films making their world premieres are Jason Mendoza’s drama Good Friday, about poor street kids who find themselves himself at odds with loan sharks and the neighborhood’s street tyrant, after a botched house robbery. Dom Cutrupi’s Lola Dust focuses on an aspiring actress who finds herself the subject of a deep fake campaign featuring her image and thrusting her unwillingly into a threatening world hidden in plain sight. William Tyler Wiseman’s Moonwater follows the efforts of a man, battling his own alcoholism while trying to revive his late father’s old, dilapidated moonshine still deep in the woods for one final batch. The Midnight category is led by the world premiere of Bari King’s survival tale Itch! in which a horrific outbreak transforms its victims into self-destructive shells. A widower grappling with grief, takes refuge in a seemingly safe department store with his estranged young daughter, Olivia. However, their sanctuary quickly becomes a nightmarish trap, as the infection quickly closes in on them.

Making its North American premiere is Howard Goldberg’s Double Exposure. The film features the dramatic collision of the past and present, as a man, in a life and death struggle with himself, combats his guilt over what happened to his first love in a #MeToo tragedy. DWF alumni (Goodbye, Petrushka 2022) Nicola Rose returns with her second feature Magnetosphere, which will be making its US premiere. At the center of the film is a 13-year-old girl with a rare ability to see sound and hear color. Her attempts to keep it a secret are shaken up when her dad mounts a ramshackle theatre production which introduces her to a host of influential new people.

Itch!, Calico Rebellion

Documentaries making their world premieres at DWF NYC are Liam Le Guillou’s A Cursed Man in which the filmmaker’s exploration of the world of witchcraft and the occult, leads him to have a curse placed on him forcing him to question the nature of reality and belief. Victoria Kupchinetsky’s Calico Rebellion looks at a family of farmers in the Catskill Mountains whose ancestors staged the Anti-Rent War 200 years ago, changing the cause of American history, and paving way to the anti-slavery movement and to Abraham Lincoln’s new political party. Mikaela Shwer’s The Kids Are Not Alright looks at the abuse suffered at the hands of the Troubled Teen Industry, an unregulated network of for-profit institutions claiming to fix wayward teenagers.

Dropped, The Fun in Funny

The television, web series pilots, and episodics also have a healthy number of world premieres. Those include Victoria Myers’ A Legend Is Hatched: I Become Famous... In My Own Mind about an   unflappable gal-about-town and her madcap quest to get her own television show. Lucy Hirschfeld’s Dropped follows a struggling actor who gets dropped by his agent in the middle of teaching a master class to a group of children at his old Catholic Middle School. Christine Lakin’s The Fun In Funny focuses on a stand-up comedian inspired to take the mic one more time due to an unlikely friendship with a young girl. Christopher Gerson and Julie Kramer are the directors of Gasbag, a coming-of-age comedy series about a lovable recently-out overtalker discovering what (and who) he really wants… thanks to a new shakeup at work and his unexpected candidacy as President of his Condo association. Dan Jones’ Hive finds five strangers discovering they’re trapped inside a tacky, low-budget sitcom and watched by an unseen audience ever hungry for entertainment. Sabina Olivia Lambert’s Like Comment Subscribe features two BFFs and top influencers in Toronto faced with the challenge of helping a vegan leather bag company recover from a trans-exclusionary scandal.

Makeshift Society, Raging Doll, United Crafts of America

Additional pilots making their world premieres are Serena Schuler’s comedy series pilot Makeshift Society which is a female take on the tech industry via a young woman’s effort to build her own start up after being fired by her tech bro boss. Set in 1914, Karl Janisse’s Passage focuses on a ship’s stowaway who becomes entangled in a 100,000-year-old secret fueled by a mysterious entity infecting the minds of the ship’s crew. Ruthie Marantz’s Raging Doll is centered on a delusional millennial from The Bronx planning to get in the ring with a junior boxing champion. Ana Breton’s comedy Rat Czar follows New York's newly appointed director of rodent mitigation and her staff as they attempt to win an unwinnable war against both the Mayor of New York and the city’s growing rat population. Sergio Camacho’s United Crafts Of America debut episode also features New York City, but in a much more pleasurable angle as it provides an intimate look into America’s most vibrant craft beer cities, uncovering the country’s most innovative breweries and the passionate people behind them.

Dances With Films NYC once again will feature the world premieres of several short films. Narrative shorts debuting include Dustin Cook’s Artificial, Jack Campbell’s Baby, Jesse Cowell’s B!Tch I'm Early (B.I.E.), Fraser Clubb’s Blue Plaque, Tommy Heffernan’s Body Buddies, Timur Guseynov’s Brooklyn, Sara Newton’s Bullet Proof, Paula Blanco Pérez’s Canchas, Daniel Casey’s Charon, Dylan Levine’s The Clock Painter, Will Crouse’s The Coder, Grant Raun’s Composure, Misha Gankin’s Dead Pet Shark, Daniel Rocha’s El Secreto, Megan Robinson’s Have We Met?, Taylor Anthony Miller’s It’s Not You… It’s The Aliens!, Elizabeth Katz’s Role Play, Emily Coutts’ Rosebud, Juan Zuloaga Eslait’s Salve, Anima, Sofia Lane’s Sid The Kid, Andrew Lucido’s Sky, Hunter Woelfle’s Sweet & Crunchy, Emma Elizabeth Steiger’s   

Wait To Tell Mother, Shawn Dempewolff’s We Good?, and Nate Hapke’s Why Are You Like This?.

Hive, Watching Walter

Other notable narrative shorts are Felipe Vargas’ Hive, which stars Xochitl Gomez (Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Dancing with the Stars) as a teenager forced to confront an insidious entity hidden among a group of children including a girl she’s babysitting, and Mitch Yapko’s Watching Walter, which stars Stephen Tobolowsky portraying Holocaust survivor-turned watchmaker Wladyslaw "Walter" Wojnas.

Documentary shorts making their world premieres include Aisha X. Elliott, Cheryl Wilkins, Kathy Boudin, and Jake Ratner’s Degrees Of Freedom, Simantini Chakraborty, and Godfrey Reggio’s The Original Badass, and Justin Wheelon’s Tides Of Change. Midnight shorts making their big debut on the New York “stage” include Luke Paron’s Arachnid, Alan Arias’ Walter, and Vinnie Hogan’s Werewolf Scouts.      

For more information about the Dances With Films NYC film lineup, events, passes, and tickets, go to: https://danceswithfilms.com/.

The 2024 Dances With Films NYC official selections:

OPENING NIGHT FEATURE

Peas And Carrots    

WORLD Premiere I USA, 2024, 96 min.

DIRECTOR: Evan Oppenheimer

Joey Wethersby is a typical 16-year-old New York girl -- if your typical New Yorker had parents who were in a one-hit wonder band in the 90’s. And if your typical New Yorker found themselves travelling every night to a bizarre alternate reality, where everybody only says three words: “Peas and Carrots”. Joey finds herself navigating this weird new world, while also dealing with her changing family dynamic, after she suggests that she and her parents (and, to her chagrin, her siblings) form a new band and start rocking out together.

CLOSING NIGHT FEATURE

Here’s Yianni!  

NEW YORK Premiere I USA, 2024, 101.5 min.

DIRECTOR: Christina Elioupolos

Yianni and Plousia (Joe Cortese and Julia Ormond) own a charming family diner by the beach, where Yianni is a convivial host. Lately, Plousia has noticed that her husband of 40 years is not quite himself and is often wistfully distracted. One day, Yianni slips into a parallel realm, a world of his fractured mind, imagining himself as the host of a late-night talk show. The show features beloved diner staff and customers as guest stars. Plousia learns that Yianni is facing dementia but hides his illness from coworkers and best friends (Kevin Pollak and Rosanna Arquette). As his condition worsens, Plousia becomes Yianni’s full-time caregiver and lifeline. When a woman and her seven-year-old son move in across the street, Yianni is convinced that the young boy is the son they lost 30 years ago. After a day of escaping home and running into the boy, Yianni, in a moment of clarity, navigates them to the diner, reuniting them with their worried families. Knowing he misses his customers, Plousia conceives a whimsical idea of building a mini diner on their front porch for Yianni in his final days. Yianni serves up toast and bottomless coffee to his cherished patrons, making the world happier for everyone he meets.

ADDITIONAL NARRATIVE FEATURES

A/Way

USA, 2024, 62 min.

DIRECTOR: Derek Shane Garcia

After suffering a profound loss, a travel journalist is sent on assignment to Martinique, sparking a candid reflection of her unsettled life.

Adventure Tom  

EAST COAST Premiere I USA, 2024, 110 min.

DIRECTOR: Miguel Duran

Tom, an unhappy artist, must fly to Minneapolis when he learns his mother has died. Lilly, an accountant, is on the same flight. Lilly has an incident on the plane and ends up on the no-fly list. Tom is driving home because he hates flying. They agree to go together. Once they’re on the road, Lilly convinces Tom to take a more scenic route. They discuss their lives on the road as they get to know each other. The two reflect on their journey when they reach the Grand Can yon, and the large unknown future ahead of them.

Boundary Waters     

NEW YORK Premiere I USA, 2024, 98 min.

DIRECTOR: Tessa Blake

In this lyrical coming-of-age film, 12-year-old Michael Murray relishes the carefree joys of early adolescence - girls and friends - until his mom has a black eye and a busted lip. Michael is desperate to know what happened, but his father Brian avoids him, Granny shushes him, and his usually resilient mother can’t get out of bed. While his family weighs the cost of keeping secrets against the price of telling the truth, Michael is determined to fix what happened as he tries to become a man in a world where men cause harm.

The Collaborator  

EAST COAST Premiere I USA, 2024, 124.5 min.

DIRECTOR: Travis Hodgkins

As war rages in Kashmir in the early 1990s, a young man from a nearby village is recruited by an Indian army officer to perform a grim task, to go into the conflict zone where militants have been killed and retrieve their weapons and ID cards. Based on the critically acclaimed novel by Mirza Waheed.

Double Exposure   

NORTH AMERICAN Premiere I USA, 2024, 93 min.

DIRECTOR: Howard Goldberg

How does a bride compete with a beautiful influencer who comes back from the dead to steal her husband? The past and present mysteriously collide as a man, in a life and death struggle with himself, combats his guilt over what happened to his first love in a #MeToo tragedy.

The Ego Death Of Queen Cecilia

EAST COAST Premiere I USA, 2024, 86 min.

DIRECTOR: Chris Beier

A washed-up YouTube star blackmails an old rival in an attempt to reclaim her fame. But when things go awry, she finds herself ensnared by a drug trafficking ring. As Cecilia spirals out of control, she's forced to confront her true place in society.

Good Friday   

WORLD Premiere I USA, 2024, 62 min.

DIRECTOR: Jason Mendoza

Niño, a pacified child of the street is recently diagnosed with leukemia and committed to turning a new leaf. After catching Niño trying to leave for Church in his old basketball sneakers, his mother begs him to buy a decent pair by Easter mass. After enlisting estranged childhood friend and corner store crook, Dee, to help him make the money by any means, the boys realize that they’re far from shoplifting grocery stores anymore when a botched house robbery puts them at the hands of loan sharks and infamous street tyrant, Big Brother.

Lola Dust  

WORLD Premiere I USA, 2024, 90.5 min.

DIRECTOR: Dom Cutrupi

After attending an audition, an aspiring actress finds herself the subject of a deep fake campaign targeting the British Minister for Immigration. In her quest to expose the truth behind the scandal and find the perpetrators, she loses agency over her personal image and becomes a victim of digital harassment, leading her to a world hidden in plain sight.

Magnetosphere    

US Premiere I USA, 2024, 89.5 min.

DIRECTOR: Nicola Rose

It's 1997. Comet Hale-Bopp is passing Earth, and 13-year-old Maggie has a secret. She sees sound, hears colour, and her senses do other unusual things besides. Shy and cautious, Maggie keeps it all to herself. But when her family moves cross-country, Maggie’s world is shaken up. When she starts school and her dad mounts a ramshackle theatre production of "The Pirates of Penzance," everything changes. Maggie meets several important people: her first love, a true friend, an insightful teacher, and Gil, a loony exterminator with a formidable talent. Together, they'll lead Maggie to realize her differences have a name — synesthesia.

Moonwater    

WORLD Premiere I USA, 2024, 118 min.

DIRECTOR: William Tyler Wiseman

A reclusive alcoholic discovers his late father’s old, dilapidated moonshine still deep in the woods and sets out to revive it for one final batch, reconnecting with his brother and his father’s legacy in the process.

Our Happy Place  

WORLD Premiere I USA, 2024, 91 min.

DIRECTOR: Paul Bickel

Raya wakes in the forest, cold and confused, with no memory of how she got there. Each day, it happens again. By the third day, she wakes in a shallow grave. The graves deepen each time, as if an unseen force is burying her alive. Back in her cabin, she’s haunted by visions of tortured women whose screams echo in her mind. Night after night, her visions intensify, blurring the line between dream and reality. As the hauntings intensify, Raya must confront a horrifying truth that shatters everything she had believed.

Screams From The Tower  

EAST COAST Premiere I USA, 2024, 118 min.

DIRECTOR: Cory Wexler Grant

Screams From the Tower is a gay, coming-of-age comedy that follows Julien Rosdahl, his best friend Cary, and their outcast friends through high school in the 1990’s. The only thing Julien dreams of is having a show on the high school radio station, but his brand of comedy is very... weird.

Sergeant Pickle Breath And The Rooftop Warriors  

WORLD Premiere I USA, 2024, 78 min.

DIRECTOR: Jarrett Jung

A pot dealing man-baby is forced to find a new crib when his roommate/best friend threatens to destroy his teddy bear if he doesn't move out.

Sonny Boy    

WORLD Premiere I USA, 2024, 90 min.

DIRECTOR: Kristen Hansen

After a failed writing career, a Korean Italian American playwright returns home to reconcile with his dying father. Sonny Caso discovers life back home has changed. He tries to make peace with a broken dream before finding a second calling as a teacher. Still, his gift for teaching falls short of his father's expectations. Sonny tries to make amends before it’s too late but can’t find the approval he’s always wanted. When Sonny has finally forged his path, he makes an inexcusable mistake with a troubled student. Returning home is Sonny’s undoing and chance to discover who he can still become.

Step Back, Doors Closing     

EAST COAST Premiere I USA, 2024, 98 min.

DIRECTOR: Carter Ward

This is a charming love story between Ryan and Julisa, two young adults who long for authentic and emotionally intelligent relationships. After a chance encounter on the DC metro, they spend the..