Anatomy Of A Fall’s Swann Arlaud will star in Sukkwan Island, a psychological thriller from French director Vladimir de Fontenay that mk2 Films has boarded for sales.
Woody Norman, best known for C’mon C’mon, co-stars in the film about a father and son on a quest for survival deep in the Norwegian fjords. Production started in Norway in February and is being shot in three parts to follow the rhythm of the seasons, with further filming between Glasgow and Norway set for May.
France’s Haut et Court produces and will release Sukkwan Island in France. Co-producers include Norway’s Maipo Film,...
Woody Norman, best known for C’mon C’mon, co-stars in the film about a father and son on a quest for survival deep in the Norwegian fjords. Production started in Norway in February and is being shot in three parts to follow the rhythm of the seasons, with further filming between Glasgow and Norway set for May.
France’s Haut et Court produces and will release Sukkwan Island in France. Co-producers include Norway’s Maipo Film,...
- 5/1/2024
- ScreenDaily
The Sundance queer drama “Sebastian,” directed by up-and-coming Finnish-British director Mikko Mäkelä, has been bought by Kino Lorber for U.S. distribution, along with a string of international buyers.
Represented in international markets by LevelK, the film made its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
“Sebastian” follows Max (Ruaridh Mollica), a 25-year-old freelance writer and aspiring novelist who seems well on his way to success in London’s cultural spheres. Yet by night, he finds a different kind of exhilaration as a sex worker with the pseudonym Sebastian, meeting men via an escorting platform. Max uses his experiences as Sebastian to fuel his stories, and the worthy debut novel that he has been longing to write finally seems within reach. But Max increasingly struggles to remain in control of his double-life, leading him to reckon with whether Sebastian is merely a...
Represented in international markets by LevelK, the film made its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
“Sebastian” follows Max (Ruaridh Mollica), a 25-year-old freelance writer and aspiring novelist who seems well on his way to success in London’s cultural spheres. Yet by night, he finds a different kind of exhilaration as a sex worker with the pseudonym Sebastian, meeting men via an escorting platform. Max uses his experiences as Sebastian to fuel his stories, and the worthy debut novel that he has been longing to write finally seems within reach. But Max increasingly struggles to remain in control of his double-life, leading him to reckon with whether Sebastian is merely a...
- 2/27/2024
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Exclusive: Succession’s Sarah Snook, now the toast of the town for her dazzling one-woman performance playing 26 characters in a breathtakingly innovative staging of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, will likely head to Broadway early in 2025 once she’s had a break, and if she wants to do it.
There are tentative, in no way definite, plans for the production to be filmed for the National Theatre’s Nt Live.
Look, movies and television are great art forms, and I love ‘em to bits like everybody else, but nothing beats watching an artist at the top of their craft live on a theatre stage. And in Snook’s case in The Picture of Dorian Gray, she’s able to command every inch of the Theatre Royal Haymarket stage.
Sarah Snook in ‘Dorian Gray’
Snook went into rehearsals last November to shoot the extensive video content that features...
There are tentative, in no way definite, plans for the production to be filmed for the National Theatre’s Nt Live.
Look, movies and television are great art forms, and I love ‘em to bits like everybody else, but nothing beats watching an artist at the top of their craft live on a theatre stage. And in Snook’s case in The Picture of Dorian Gray, she’s able to command every inch of the Theatre Royal Haymarket stage.
Sarah Snook in ‘Dorian Gray’
Snook went into rehearsals last November to shoot the extensive video content that features...
- 2/17/2024
- by Baz Bamigboye
- Deadline Film + TV
In an exclusive uInterview, Ruaridh Mollica and Mikko Makela open up about their new Sundance film, Sebastian.
Sebastian follows the secret double life of Mollica’s character, Max, who assumes an alias and begins a career as a sex worker to inspire his first novel.
Makela, who directed the film, said that he wanted to create something that did not “problematize sex.”
“Sex was such an important part of the story, the power of sexuality and the empowering potential of self-discovery through sexuality,” Makela told uInterview founder Erik Meers. “I think we’ve seen so many sex worker films and portraits; some are really amazing, inspiring films. But sex work is still problematized and seen as a result or cause of trauma. I wanted to make a film with a character for whom sex work was a conscious choice rather than something done for lack of choices or economic prerogative.
Sebastian follows the secret double life of Mollica’s character, Max, who assumes an alias and begins a career as a sex worker to inspire his first novel.
Makela, who directed the film, said that he wanted to create something that did not “problematize sex.”
“Sex was such an important part of the story, the power of sexuality and the empowering potential of self-discovery through sexuality,” Makela told uInterview founder Erik Meers. “I think we’ve seen so many sex worker films and portraits; some are really amazing, inspiring films. But sex work is still problematized and seen as a result or cause of trauma. I wanted to make a film with a character for whom sex work was a conscious choice rather than something done for lack of choices or economic prerogative.
- 2/8/2024
- by Ava Lombardi
- Uinterview
Swann Arlaud, recently seen as Sandra Hüller’s lawyer in “Anatomy of a Fall,” and Woody Norman, who appeared alongside Joaquin Phoenix in 2021 crowdpleaser “C’mon C’mon,” are set to lead the cast of “Sukkwan Island.”
Ruaridh Mollica, who turned heads in this year’s Sundance following his lead turn in “Sebastian,” and Alma Pöysti, who was recently Golden Globe-nominated for Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves,” will also star in the film, being directed by Vladimir de Fontenay, marking the French filmmaker’s first feature since his Cannes-bowing “Mobile Homes” in 2017.
Set to start shooting in Norway in the coming weeks, “Sukkwan Island” is based on the semi-autobiographical novella by American author David Vann, part of his 2010 collection “Legend of a Suicide.” The story follows a haunted young man’s travels to a wild and secluded Island to reconnect with his father. Ten years before, they shared a harrowing and life...
Ruaridh Mollica, who turned heads in this year’s Sundance following his lead turn in “Sebastian,” and Alma Pöysti, who was recently Golden Globe-nominated for Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves,” will also star in the film, being directed by Vladimir de Fontenay, marking the French filmmaker’s first feature since his Cannes-bowing “Mobile Homes” in 2017.
Set to start shooting in Norway in the coming weeks, “Sukkwan Island” is based on the semi-autobiographical novella by American author David Vann, part of his 2010 collection “Legend of a Suicide.” The story follows a haunted young man’s travels to a wild and secluded Island to reconnect with his father. Ten years before, they shared a harrowing and life...
- 1/31/2024
- by Alex Ritman
- Variety Film + TV
Finnish filmmaker Mikko Mäkelä takes us into the shadow worlds of niche sexuality and queer sex work in London’s most sterile apartments and grayly desolate hotels in his new film “Sebastian.” This provocative, explicit, and ultimately tender drama stars newcomer Ruaridh Mollica as Max, a 25-year-old literary journalist writing a novel about a sex worker named Sebastian — and to get to the root of the thing, Max decides that he, too, must submerge himself in that very underworld.
As a psychological portrait of an aspiring writer who gets too immersed in his own project, “Sebastian” is never as piercing as star Mollica’s eyes and chiseled face. But the performance is affecting, and Mäkelä brandishes an ambient, lulling sense of style that evokes the loneliness at Max’s core. Internationally savvy gay film fans with a taste for the kinky and sad will want to check out this understated...
As a psychological portrait of an aspiring writer who gets too immersed in his own project, “Sebastian” is never as piercing as star Mollica’s eyes and chiseled face. But the performance is affecting, and Mäkelä brandishes an ambient, lulling sense of style that evokes the loneliness at Max’s core. Internationally savvy gay film fans with a taste for the kinky and sad will want to check out this understated...
- 1/22/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
It’s notoriously difficult to make films about writers. Writing — literally sitting down at a keyboard and banging out words — is about as fun to watch as paint drying. So filmmakers make much of the research process, the uneven economics, the epic highs and lows of creative life. “Sebastian,” the second feature from Mikko Mäkelä (“A Moment in the Reeds”), takes these liberties to new, bizarre heights, as its scribe protagonist turns to sex work to gin up inspiration for his forthcoming novel
Read More: Sundance 2024: The 23 Most Anticipated Movies To Watch
Our author is Max (Ruaridh Mollica), a navel-gazing 25-year-old who escorts online under the name Sebastian.
Continue reading ‘Sebastian’ Review: A Nakedly Solipsistic Quarter-Life Crisis About A Sex Worker [Sundance] at The Playlist.
Read More: Sundance 2024: The 23 Most Anticipated Movies To Watch
Our author is Max (Ruaridh Mollica), a navel-gazing 25-year-old who escorts online under the name Sebastian.
Continue reading ‘Sebastian’ Review: A Nakedly Solipsistic Quarter-Life Crisis About A Sex Worker [Sundance] at The Playlist.
- 1/22/2024
- by Lena Wilson
- The Playlist
There is plenty in Sebastian, written and directed by Mikko Mäkelä, that is provocative. It’s a focused, often handsome piece of work. It’s also never entirely convincing as a character study. Max (Ruaridh Mollica) is a young, aspiring writer in London. He’s got a plum gig writing for a respected magazine and a short-story collection set to be published. Next up is his debut novel, and Max is determined to examine the inner life of the sex worker. To do this, he begins a double life: writer by day, escort by night.
Mäkelä is confronting questions of license here. To what degree does one need to embody that which they are writing about? If at all? Max––whose nocturnal pseudonym is Sebastian––clearly believes that in order to understand the subject you’re writing about your must immerse yourself. This decision will of course come with sacrifices...
Mäkelä is confronting questions of license here. To what degree does one need to embody that which they are writing about? If at all? Max––whose nocturnal pseudonym is Sebastian––clearly believes that in order to understand the subject you’re writing about your must immerse yourself. This decision will of course come with sacrifices...
- 1/22/2024
- by Dan Mecca
- The Film Stage
Exclusive: Ruaridh Mollica says he had a year to prepare for his “role of a lifetime — so far” in Finnish filmmaker Mikko Makela’s powerful new film Sebastian, which premieres at Sundance on Sunday.
The film follows a culture journalist who goes undercover and leads a double life as a sex worker to research a debut novel. The 24-year-old Mollica, born to a Scottish mother and an Italian father, gives a superlative performance in his first feature film lead role, as he assumes the split personalities of Max, a young wannabe literary sensation, and Sebastian, who hires himself out to desirous older male clients.
The intimate moments, though at times full-on, actually serve the narrative to reflect Max/Sebastian’s state of mind.
Between his initial self-tape, first audition and screen tests, Mollica had 12 months to enter into full character research mode before officially being handed the part, and the...
The film follows a culture journalist who goes undercover and leads a double life as a sex worker to research a debut novel. The 24-year-old Mollica, born to a Scottish mother and an Italian father, gives a superlative performance in his first feature film lead role, as he assumes the split personalities of Max, a young wannabe literary sensation, and Sebastian, who hires himself out to desirous older male clients.
The intimate moments, though at times full-on, actually serve the narrative to reflect Max/Sebastian’s state of mind.
Between his initial self-tape, first audition and screen tests, Mollica had 12 months to enter into full character research mode before officially being handed the part, and the...
- 1/19/2024
- by Baz Bamigboye
- Deadline Film + TV
Finnish-British director Mikko Mäkelä isn’t shying away from sexual content in “Sebastian,” which has its world premiere on Sunday at Sundance Film Festival.
“As was already the case with ‘A Moment in the Reeds,’ I wanted to provide a very frank and honest portrayal of queer sexuality,” he tells Variety, referencing his 2017 debut.
“For so long, queer sexuality has been shied away from and censored. It has been such a balancing act for queer filmmakers and a very unfair one, because we want to provide representation for ourselves, but we also don’t want to alienate audiences and people who finance our films. Luckily, things have improved a great deal.”
In Mäkelä’s sophomore film – competing in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition – aspiring writer Max (Ruaridh Mollica) leads a double life as sex worker Sebastian, hoping to use his experiences in a novel. But while Max tries to...
“As was already the case with ‘A Moment in the Reeds,’ I wanted to provide a very frank and honest portrayal of queer sexuality,” he tells Variety, referencing his 2017 debut.
“For so long, queer sexuality has been shied away from and censored. It has been such a balancing act for queer filmmakers and a very unfair one, because we want to provide representation for ourselves, but we also don’t want to alienate audiences and people who finance our films. Luckily, things have improved a great deal.”
In Mäkelä’s sophomore film – competing in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition – aspiring writer Max (Ruaridh Mollica) leads a double life as sex worker Sebastian, hoping to use his experiences in a novel. But while Max tries to...
- 1/19/2024
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
The queer drama is directed by UK-Finnish director Mikko Makela.
LevelK has boarded international sales rights to UK feature Sebastian ahead of its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance Film Festival this month.
The film is the second feature from UK-Finnish director Mikko Makela. It follows a freelance writer rising through London’s cultural world who finds exhilaration at night as a sex worker under the pseudonym Sebastian.
Ruaridh Mollica leads the cast, alongside Screen Rising Stars Scotland talent Hiftu Quasem and Jonathan Hyde.
September Films will distribute the film in the Netherlands, with Aurora handling distribution for Finland.
LevelK has boarded international sales rights to UK feature Sebastian ahead of its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance Film Festival this month.
The film is the second feature from UK-Finnish director Mikko Makela. It follows a freelance writer rising through London’s cultural world who finds exhilaration at night as a sex worker under the pseudonym Sebastian.
Ruaridh Mollica leads the cast, alongside Screen Rising Stars Scotland talent Hiftu Quasem and Jonathan Hyde.
September Films will distribute the film in the Netherlands, with Aurora handling distribution for Finland.
- 1/15/2024
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Joshua Griffin and Ruaridh Mollica in Too Rough
A short film which really punches above its weight, Sean Lionadh’s Too Rough has been on our radar here at Eye For Film since the Glasgow Short Film Festival in March, where it won the Audience Award. It has since won a Scottish BAFTA and is now qualified to enter the Oscar race – a big deal for a small scale project about life in a Glasgow council flat. When we met, however, Sean was upfront about his feelings on its success. “Filmmaking is always so hard that you feel you’re owed awards. So I have a sense of entitlement after the suffering of actually making it. It hasn’t really clicked that it actually all paid off. But yes, it’s a lovely feeling.”
It tells the story of Nick (Ruaridh Mollica), who, after a drunken party, impulsively takes his...
A short film which really punches above its weight, Sean Lionadh’s Too Rough has been on our radar here at Eye For Film since the Glasgow Short Film Festival in March, where it won the Audience Award. It has since won a Scottish BAFTA and is now qualified to enter the Oscar race – a big deal for a small scale project about life in a Glasgow council flat. When we met, however, Sean was upfront about his feelings on its success. “Filmmaking is always so hard that you feel you’re owed awards. So I have a sense of entitlement after the suffering of actually making it. It hasn’t really clicked that it actually all paid off. But yes, it’s a lovely feeling.”
It tells the story of Nick (Ruaridh Mollica), who, after a drunken party, impulsively takes his...
- 11/26/2022
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Bodyguard star Nina Toussaint-White is to lead a Channel 5 thriller from Deceit producer Story Films.
Toussaint-White will play Jodie in Witness No.3, a single mum who runs a hairdressing salon. One day at work, Jodie momentarily glances out of the window and in a split second her life descends into freefall. What she notices seems innocuous – two men walking on the opposite side of the road – but she’s actually witnessed a killer and his victim moments before a murder.
Joining the ensemble cast are Sion Daniel Young, Clare Dunne Ruaridh Mollica and Sue Johnston.
Filming in Ireland, the thriller from up-and-coming writer Thomas Eccleshare is the latest from the Viacom-owned UK broadcaster, which has been ramping up its drama offering following the success of the All Creatures Great and Small reboot and thrillers like The Drowning...
Toussaint-White will play Jodie in Witness No.3, a single mum who runs a hairdressing salon. One day at work, Jodie momentarily glances out of the window and in a split second her life descends into freefall. What she notices seems innocuous – two men walking on the opposite side of the road – but she’s actually witnessed a killer and his victim moments before a murder.
Joining the ensemble cast are Sion Daniel Young, Clare Dunne Ruaridh Mollica and Sue Johnston.
Filming in Ireland, the thriller from up-and-coming writer Thomas Eccleshare is the latest from the Viacom-owned UK broadcaster, which has been ramping up its drama offering following the success of the All Creatures Great and Small reboot and thrillers like The Drowning...
- 11/4/2021
- by Max Goldbart
- Deadline Film + TV
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