One of the most controversial and haunting films of last year’s Sundance Film Festival line-up was Tim Sutton‘s follow-up to Memphis, Dark Night. An impressionistic feature loosely based on the horrific 2012 shooting in Aurora, Colorado which left 12 people died, the first trailer has now arrived ahead of a release next month. Featuring a portrait of a suburban community before hinting at the terror to come, it looks to be one of the year’s essential films.
We said in our review, “In many ways, writer-director Tim Sutton‘s third feature, Dark Night, exists in the same world as his first two films, Pavilion and Memphis. As we follow a collection of young men and women drifting through a long day in the American suburbs, many of the themes from his earlier work shine through — boredom as punctuated by anger, lust, and artistic ambition, to name a few. Where the day will end we already know, thanks to the film’s blunt title, a not-so-subtle reference to the 2012 shooting at a showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado.”
Check out the trailer below.
A haunting, artfully understated critique of American gun culture, Tim Sutton’s third feature is loosely based around the 2012 massacre in Aurora, Colorado that took place during a multiplex screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.” Employing a mesmerizing documentary-style technique and a cast of non-professional actors, DARK NIGHT follows the activities of six strangers over the course of one day, from sunrise to midnight, the shooter among them. Shot in Sarasota, Florida and lensed by veteran French DP Hélène Louvart (PINA, THE BEACHES OF AGNES), the dream-like visuals articulate both Sutton’s carefully crafted landscapes and the characters’ sense of alienation and suburban malaise. Winner of the Lanterna Magica Award at the Venice Film Festival following its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, DARK NIGHT is essential viewing, not only for art-house filmgoers, but for anyone invested in the debate over gun violence in America as well.
Dark Night opens on February 3.