A scene from Braden King’s 2011 Sundance US Dramatic Competition film,
“HERE.” Will (Ben Foster) is a satellite-mapping engineer conducting a survey of Armenia.
One morning at his hotel, he meets Gadarine (Lubna Azabal), an Armenian expatriate and photographer, who has recently returned home. The pair impulsively decides to drive across the country together. An unlikely love story, “HERE” is also a cerebral, self-reflexive road movie that arrives at a fascinating intersection of forms. The film was born from a non-narrative multimedia piece (2008 Sundance Film Festival, New Frontier); it was collaboration among director Braden King, a composer, and a video artist, parts of which migrated into this script (developed through the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program). King’s atmospheric, contemplative aesthetic encourages us to examine the personal relationship we all form to both physical space and story space. Because of his work (called ground-truthing), Will comes to view the land as a source of faulty data, while Gadarine sees it as a way to redefine her relationship with home. As HERE suggests, “Truth is conjecture.” [Description courtesy of Sundance Institute].
“HERE”
U.S. Dramatic Competition
Director: Braden King
Screenwriter: Braden King, Dani Valent
Cast: Ben Foster, Lubna Azabal, Narek Nersisyan, Yuri Kostanyan, Sofik Sarkisyan
Executive Producer: Julia King
Producer: Braden King, Lars Knudsen, Jay Van Hoy
Composer: Michael Krassner, Boxhead Ensemble
Cinematographer: Lol Crawley
Editor: Andrew Hafitz, Paul Zucker, David Barker
Sound Designer: Kent Sparling
