Set to premiere in a matter of days at the Sundance Film Festival, all we’ve seen from Shane Carruth‘s highly-anticipated follow-up to his complex sci-fi film Primer is a few perplexing, but gorgeous, teasers. Titled Upstream Color, if that is all you want to know going forward, I suggest turning back now, as a few more details from the project have been revealed thanks to an interview with the filmmaker over at LA Times.
They provide the short, but more expansive logline, which finds Amy Seimetz playing a young woman who is “abducted and seemingly brainwashed via an organic material harvested from a specific flower.” The story finds her linking up with a man, played by Carruth, and they fall in love, only “they come to realize he may also have been subjected to the same process.” While still barely telling us anything, it certainly ups the intrigue for what is described as a “densely layered,” but “thematically rich” example of storytelling, diving into “the mutual psychosis that can be an essential part of romance, the agreement of a shared madness.”
The LA Times writer also says Upstream is “intense and hypnotically powerful, and a more intimate and moving film” than his last project, proving to be more “emotionally direct,” yet “narratively abstract.” Carruth, who is currently guiding the marketing himself, as to sell the film exactly how he wants to audiences, also revealed some brief release plans for the film. Following its Sundance bow, he plans to open the project in New York City on April 5th and Los Angeles a few weeks after, with some “surprise pop-up screenings” around the US (not unlike how Paul Thomas Anderson toured The Master), before recently digitally and on VOD “soon after.”
As for what to expect next, another trailer is in store before the premiere in less than week (update: which can be watched here), but Carruth confirmed his plans to continue with this method of self-distribution and marketing on future project. He admits that his much-rumored sci-fi film A Topiary is an unrealized project and something “he basically wasted [his] whole life on.” Moving forward, he aims to shoot a new secretive project titled The Modern Ocean this summer, so it’s nice to know Upstream Color won’t be the last we see of Carruth for awhile.
Are you looking forward to Upstream Color? What do you think of its distribution method?