A screening followed by a Q&A with director Leah Meyerhoff.
Moderated by Michael Sladek, filmmaker.
Synopsis
I Believe in Unicorns takes us on a road trip through the stunning and complex landscape of troubled young love. Davina (Natalia Dyer) is an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl who often escapes into a beautifully twisted fantasy life. Having grown up quickly as the sole caretaker of her disabled mother (Toni Meyerhoff), she looks for salvation in a new relationship with an older boy (Peter Vack). Davina is swept into a whirlwind of romance and adventure, but the enchantment of her new relationship quickly fades when his volatile side begins to emerge.
I Believe in Unicorns premiered at SXSW, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Atlanta Film Festival, Best Score at the Nashville Film Festival, Best Cinematography at First Time Fest, and additional awards from The Woodstock Film Festival, Anchorage Film Festival, San Francisco Film Society, IFP, Tribeca Film Institute and the Adrienne Shelly Foundation. Starring rising talents Natalia Dyer, Peter Vack and Julia Garner, I Believe In Unicorns is being released in select theaters and on demand May 29th 2015.
The New York theatrical run (IFC Center May 29th - June 4th) will include filmmaker discussions every night with special guests including Mary Harron (American Psycho), Nicole Kassell (The Woodsman), Bette Gordon (Variety), Eliza Hittman (It Felt Like Love), Anja Marquardt (She's Lost Control), Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation), Sara Colangelo (Little Accidents) and many more.
“Sensitively observed and arrestingly impressionistic” - Joe Leydon, VARIETY
“Dreamy and quirkily twisted” - Mark Adams, SCREEN DAILY
“Refreshing in its sexual frankness and uniquely feminine perspective on young love’s complications, the dreamily evocative Unicorns is a beautiful 16mm nightmare, one of the most visually accomplished feature debuts of late”
- Josh Williams, THE SKINNY
Panelist Bio
Leah Meyerhoff
Leah Meyerhoff's debut feature film I Believe in Unicorns premiered in competition at SXSW 2014, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Atlanta Film Festival, Best Score at the Nashville Film Festival, Honorable Mention at the Woodstock Film Festival, and additional awards from IFP, SFFS, Tribeca Film Institute and the Adrienne Shelly Foundation. It was the opening night film in Austin, Brooklyn, Santa Cruz and Lausanne and has since screened in dozens of festivals worldwide, including Edinburgh, Munich, Jerusalem, Sydney and Poland. I Believe in Unicorns was acquired by Gravitas Ventures for domestic distribution and will be released theatrically in 2015. Meyerhoff's previous short films have screened in over 200 film festivals, won a dozen awards, and aired on IFC, PBS, LOGO and MTV. She was one of eight filmmakers chosen to participate in the IFP Emerging Narrative Labs, IFP Narrative Finishing Labs and the Tribeca All Access Labs. She was also one of ten filmmakers chosen to participate in the Emerging Visions program at the New York Film Festival. She has been featured in Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and The New York Times and starred on the docudrama Film School on IFC. Meyerhoff is the founder of Film Fatales, a female filmmaker collective based in New York with ten local chapters around the world, dedicated to the creation of more films by and about women. She holds a BA in Art-Semiotics from Brown University and an MFA in Directing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
