Each year the dealmaking seems to take longer in this age of streaming and theatrical instability.
How will that impact the marketplace?
Indie execs will have to compartmentalize to get much done, and the deals might take longer than usual.
Meera Menon and her husband Paul Gleason with their daughterCourtesy
The2025 Sundance lineupis all over the map this time.
Diego Luna and a breakout turn by Tonatiuh also shine.
Matlin returns in a film about all the obstacles she overcame.
Kiran Deol in Meera Menon’s ‘Didn’t Die’ by Meera MenonCourtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Paul Gleason
I suggest that in reading Menons director statement, the word irony comes quickly to mind.
The parallels are intense, thematically with the film, she said.
It was eerie to watch the film after this had happened.
And we were fleeing our home with her two weeks ago.
Those sequences felt eerily close.
Its a strange universal schematic that were working through right now.
So to take it personally at all somehow feels silly.
But it was such a beautiful sunny day, and nothing burning.
So they were not that alarmed, until later that night.
We saw the fire from our home before there was any evacuation warning, she said.
So we immediately just grabbed … very little because the power was out and it was dark.
But immediately, as we always do, our first stop was Erica and Geoffs house across town.
They live across Altadena from us.
And we thought, thats far enough away.
Theres no way this fire is going to reach across all of Altadena.
We still had power, Fishman said.
All the Christmas presents were out in her room.
She loves Lakshmi and was just showing her around and we all opened a bottle wine.
It just felt like everything was fine.
So we took a couple of things and left.
And that was really all we took, along with a couple pairs of pants.
Both couples woke to discover the fire incinerated their homes, and those of their neighbors.
Its in black and white and we were deciding how dark it was going to be.
And so that was the day after we had evacuated our homes.
No one was really sure if wed be able to get over there.
This was before the National Guard was there and before things had been locked down.
And we were able to confirm both our homes and Erica and Geoffs homes were gone.
What we saw was just home after home after home, she said.
And there we were that night, thinking its never going to reach West Altadena.
But both couples are facing a future focused on the long process of rebuilding.
And they have to venture to help their young children absorb an unimaginable trauma.
It has been overwhelming and remarkable.
Its pretty inspiring in terms of what the community is capable of.
Menon is also leaning on the positives.
We feel like we have it so much better than so many, she said.
Climate change is everywhere.
Theres war and devastation everywhere.
I think we feel pretty lucky.
Our families are okay, and we have incredible communities supporting us.
