A standout at the 2024 Berlinale Film Festival, Canadian director Kazik Radwanski’s Matt and Mara reunited him with his Anne at 13,000 ft star Deragh Campbell, joined by Matt Johnson, director of BlackBerry. Picked up by Cinema Guild, who will release it beginning on September 13 at IFC Center in New York, the first trailer and poster have arrived.
Here’s the synopsis: “A chance encounter leads Mara (Deragh Campbell), a young creative writing professor, to reunite with Matt (Matt Johnson), a charismatic, free-spirited author from her past who wanders onto her university campus. Bonded by their shared interests, the two begin to grow closer as she contends with her strained marriage to an experimental musician. When her husband suddenly cancels plans to drive Mara to a conference out of town, Matt accompanies her on the road trip, where pressure slowly mounts against their undefined relationship.”
Savina Petkova said her Berlinale review, “Radwanski hones his intuitive directorial skills into crafting a narrative out of these paradoxes of intimacy that bind the two. What grounds the abstraction is the chemistry Campbell and Johnson share, and the safety they are both equally unwilling to abandon. Matt acts, Mara reacts; to a certain extent, he “activates” her in a way her roles of a tutor, wife, and mother cannot. In a string of minor events highlighting their compatibility and clashes, it becomes less about the “will-they-won’t-they” than about exploring the boundaries of oneself in a controlled environment. Not exactly an experiment, but certainly a testing ground.”
See the trailer below, along with the poster designed by F Ron Miller.
