This weekend was the first in some time without a specialty film in the top ten as wide releases ramp up from Civil War to Abigail and hang in theaters as per Kung Fu Panda 4 and Dune: Part Two — in weeks 7 and 8, respectively. One distributor calls late April a bit of a dumping ground for indies – no judgement on the films but in the sense that there are a bunch of them and they can sometimes struggle to find audiences — calling this an anomalous weekend after a spring dotted with breakout titles. Neon’s Immaculate ($15.6 million cume); IFC’s Late Night With The Devil ($9.7 million); A24’s Love Lives Bleeding ($7.8 million); Bleecker Street’s One Life ($5.4 million); Sony Pictures Classics’ Wicked Little Letters ($3.6 million) all did great and indies overall are taking bigger swings – with Civil War (A24) one of the biggest.
Comscore’s April sked shows a flood...
Comscore’s April sked shows a flood...
- 4/21/2024
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
Nathan Zellner and David Zellner’s Sasquatch Sunset is stomping into circa 850 theaters this weekend after debuting in 9 with a solid opening for a film many could find weird. A tribe of Sasquatch, possibly the last of their kind, live and love in the woods of northern California, where it was shot.
“We are taking Bigfoot to America. We have high hopes that the broader market will embrace the movie,” says Kyle Davies of distributor Bleecker Street, calling it “a very different” kind of movie and “a bit of an unknown.”
“It’s a wildcard.”
Marketing was mainly through social activations. “I wouldn’t call it traditional marketing. It doesn’t really fit in that box,” Davies adds. The Sasquatch standees in theaters are fun. And Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar is displaying a baby Sasquatch sitting in a glass case with umbilical cord and placenta.
This is “a polarizing film.
“We are taking Bigfoot to America. We have high hopes that the broader market will embrace the movie,” says Kyle Davies of distributor Bleecker Street, calling it “a very different” kind of movie and “a bit of an unknown.”
“It’s a wildcard.”
Marketing was mainly through social activations. “I wouldn’t call it traditional marketing. It doesn’t really fit in that box,” Davies adds. The Sasquatch standees in theaters are fun. And Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar is displaying a baby Sasquatch sitting in a glass case with umbilical cord and placenta.
This is “a polarizing film.
- 4/19/2024
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
First-time feature director Theda Hammel looks straight into the sun of the Covid summer of 2020 — PPE, GrubHub, lazy liberal gesturing, and all — with “Stress Positions.”
The Brooklyn screwball comedy, set around the Fourth of July weekend that year, asks us to relive the days of sheltering in place and banging pots and pans in solidarity with healthcare workers while doing little else but navel-gazing at our own misfortune indoors. With a chatty ensemble led by John Early as Terry, a gaping wound of an idler reeling from a herniated disc and an ongoing breakup with his husband, “Stress Positions” sounds on paper like the coronavirus indie we’d like to ignore so as not to re-traumatize ourselves. But where many of the Covid-reacting films we saw spin out of 2020 were tethered to Zoom, “Stress Positions” goes straight into the “hell mouth” of the moments lived off Zoom.
IndieWire spoke with Early and Thammel over,...
The Brooklyn screwball comedy, set around the Fourth of July weekend that year, asks us to relive the days of sheltering in place and banging pots and pans in solidarity with healthcare workers while doing little else but navel-gazing at our own misfortune indoors. With a chatty ensemble led by John Early as Terry, a gaping wound of an idler reeling from a herniated disc and an ongoing breakup with his husband, “Stress Positions” sounds on paper like the coronavirus indie we’d like to ignore so as not to re-traumatize ourselves. But where many of the Covid-reacting films we saw spin out of 2020 were tethered to Zoom, “Stress Positions” goes straight into the “hell mouth” of the moments lived off Zoom.
IndieWire spoke with Early and Thammel over,...
- 4/17/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Theda Hammel and John Early on the set of Stress PositionsImage: Photos courtesy of Neon
Do you remember the summer of 2020? You might not want to, but unless you’re particularly gifted at repressing memories, you mostly likely do. It was a season of fear, of paranoia, of guilt. It...
Do you remember the summer of 2020? You might not want to, but unless you’re particularly gifted at repressing memories, you mostly likely do. It was a season of fear, of paranoia, of guilt. It...
- 4/17/2024
- by Drew Gillis
- avclub.com
Looking for bold new work from first- and second-time feature filmmakers? Look no further than New Directors/New Films, the premier New York City festival that annually highlights them.
Now in its 53rd edition, New Directors/New Films returns to New York April 3 through 14 from Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, bringing the best of the fests so far to audiences eager for discovery. This year’s festival is bookended by Aaron Schimberg’s opening night entry “A Different Man,” starring Sebastian Stan as an actor who unravels after a facial reconstruction surgery, and Theda Hammel’s “Stress Positions,” an anxiety-inducing Covid lockdown comedy starring John Early. Both films premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, whose Dramatic Competition gem “Good One,” a coming-of-age drama set around a derailed camping trip and directed by India Donaldson, also features at New Directors.
Also premiering at the festival is Sundance favorite “Exhibiting Forgiveness,...
Now in its 53rd edition, New Directors/New Films returns to New York April 3 through 14 from Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, bringing the best of the fests so far to audiences eager for discovery. This year’s festival is bookended by Aaron Schimberg’s opening night entry “A Different Man,” starring Sebastian Stan as an actor who unravels after a facial reconstruction surgery, and Theda Hammel’s “Stress Positions,” an anxiety-inducing Covid lockdown comedy starring John Early. Both films premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, whose Dramatic Competition gem “Good One,” a coming-of-age drama set around a derailed camping trip and directed by India Donaldson, also features at New Directors.
Also premiering at the festival is Sundance favorite “Exhibiting Forgiveness,...
- 4/2/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
“Stress Positions” is a new live-action comedy feature, directed by Theda Hammel, starring John Early, Hammel, Qaher Harhash, Amy Zimmer, Faheem Ali, Rebecca F. Wright, Davidson Obennebo and John Roberts, releasing April 19, 2024 in theaters:
“…during the early months of the pandemic in Brooklyn, a young man named ‘Bahlul’ (Qaher Harhash) recovers from a broken leg while quarantining with his uncle ‘Terry’ …”
Click the images to enlarge…...
“…during the early months of the pandemic in Brooklyn, a young man named ‘Bahlul’ (Qaher Harhash) recovers from a broken leg while quarantining with his uncle ‘Terry’ …”
Click the images to enlarge…...
- 3/28/2024
- by Unknown
- SneakPeek
"Be free! Fiction is freedom!" Neon has revealed an official trailer for a totally bonkers indie comedy titled Stress Positions, marking the feature directorial debut of trans filmmaker Theda Hammel (also of the series "My Trip to Spain"). This premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in the Dramatic Competition section, and it's also playing at New Directors/New Films in NYC in April before it opens in select theaters later in April as well. Terry Goon is keeping very strict quarantine in his ex-husband’s Brooklyn brownstone while caring for his nephew — a 19-year-old model from Morocco named Bahlul — bedridden in a full leg cast after an electric scooter accident. Unfortunately for Terry, everyone in his life wants to meet the model – hilarity ensues. Starring John Early, Qaher Harhash, Theda Hammel, Amy Zimmer, Faheem Ali, and John Roberts. This awkward comedy is about a hodgepodge of queer people from NYC...
- 3/26/2024
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
After delivering one of the best stand-ups of the last few years with John Early: Now More Than Ever, the comedian is now back on the big screen, this time leading his own project. Theda Hammel’s Stress Positions, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival and closes New Directors/New Films next month, will now get a U.S. release from Neon on April 19 and the first trailer has arrived.
Lena Wilson said in her Sundance review, “Between The Sweet East and, to some extent, American Fiction, cinephiles seem to be increasing their appetite for politically incorrect commentary. Even if you are not one such moviegoer, Stress Positions, the feature debut from Theda Hammel, does not fucking care. That’s an asset before it’s a problem, but its aimless narrative and discordant visual styles undercut this film’s sharpness.”
See the trailer below for the film also starring Qaher Harhash and Theda Hammel.
Lena Wilson said in her Sundance review, “Between The Sweet East and, to some extent, American Fiction, cinephiles seem to be increasing their appetite for politically incorrect commentary. Even if you are not one such moviegoer, Stress Positions, the feature debut from Theda Hammel, does not fucking care. That’s an asset before it’s a problem, but its aimless narrative and discordant visual styles undercut this film’s sharpness.”
See the trailer below for the film also starring Qaher Harhash and Theda Hammel.
- 3/26/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Everyone is falling apart in “Stress Positions,” the Sundance premiere now opening in U.S. theaters from Neon on April 19.
The anxiety-inducing comedy directed by Theda Hammel, which she co-wrote with Faheem Ali, centers on a cluster of Brooklyn-dwelling New Yorkers spiraling during the first Covid summer of 2020 and also reeling from their own hang-ups, breakdowns, and break-ups. There’s Terry (John Early), a politically numbed basket case in the midst of a divorce, now spinning his wheels in the Brooklyn brownstone owned by the husband who’s left him. There’s his Moroccan nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash), a beautiful model badly injured with a broken leg and convalescing at said brownstone, with nowhere else to go and identity questions of his own. Then there’s Terry’s best friend, Karla (also played by director Hammel), a trans massage therapist in a shitty relationship with a writer (Amy Zimmer), reaping...
The anxiety-inducing comedy directed by Theda Hammel, which she co-wrote with Faheem Ali, centers on a cluster of Brooklyn-dwelling New Yorkers spiraling during the first Covid summer of 2020 and also reeling from their own hang-ups, breakdowns, and break-ups. There’s Terry (John Early), a politically numbed basket case in the midst of a divorce, now spinning his wheels in the Brooklyn brownstone owned by the husband who’s left him. There’s his Moroccan nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash), a beautiful model badly injured with a broken leg and convalescing at said brownstone, with nowhere else to go and identity questions of his own. Then there’s Terry’s best friend, Karla (also played by director Hammel), a trans massage therapist in a shitty relationship with a writer (Amy Zimmer), reaping...
- 3/26/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
A yearly spotlight glancing into the future of cinema, Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art have now announced the 53rd edition of New Directors/New Films (Nd/Nf), taking place from April 3 through April 14, 2024. Bookending the festival are a pair of Sundance hits, Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man and Theda Hammel’s Stress Positions, while also including another major favorite from the Park City festival: India Donaldson’s Good One. Featuring prize-winners from Berlin, Cannes, Locarno, Sarajevo, and Sundance, including the revelatory Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, it’s a robust lineup of new voices.
Dan Sullivan, Programmer, Film at Lincoln Center, and 2024 Nd/Nf Co-Chair says, “It just feels right for us to bookend this year’s edition of Nd/Nf with two exciting new features by local filmmakers, as a reminder of what Nd/Nf has always been about: early encounters between the most cutting-edge...
Dan Sullivan, Programmer, Film at Lincoln Center, and 2024 Nd/Nf Co-Chair says, “It just feels right for us to bookend this year’s edition of Nd/Nf with two exciting new features by local filmmakers, as a reminder of what Nd/Nf has always been about: early encounters between the most cutting-edge...
- 2/29/2024
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Between The Sweet East and, to some extent, American Fiction, cinephiles seem to be increasing their appetite for politically incorrect commentary. Even if you are not one such moviegoer, Stress Positions, the feature debut from Theda Hammel, does not fucking care. That’s an asset before it’s a problem, but its aimless narrative and discordant visual styles undercut this film’s sharpness.
Hammel also stars as Karla, a narcissistic trans woman in a resentment-ridden relationship with a lesbian novelist. The film primarily takes place in the brownstone where Karla’s friend Terry (John Early) is riding out the early stages of Covid with his nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash). Bahlul is a 19-year-old Moroccan model, and Terry’s gay circle––including his slutty ex-husband Leo (John Roberts)––is all atwitter at the news. Everyone is desperate to lay eyes on this model, who’s likewise eager to meet people besides Terry.
Hammel also stars as Karla, a narcissistic trans woman in a resentment-ridden relationship with a lesbian novelist. The film primarily takes place in the brownstone where Karla’s friend Terry (John Early) is riding out the early stages of Covid with his nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash). Bahlul is a 19-year-old Moroccan model, and Terry’s gay circle––including his slutty ex-husband Leo (John Roberts)––is all atwitter at the news. Everyone is desperate to lay eyes on this model, who’s likewise eager to meet people besides Terry.
- 1/29/2024
- by Lena Wilson
- The Film Stage
Everybody in writer-director Theda Hammel’s comedy Stress Positions wants to know about Bahlul (Qaher Harhash), the 19-year-old Moroccan model. Bahlul’s leg is broken, and he’s being nursed back to health by his white uncle, Terry Goon (John Early), who’s living in the Brooklyn “party house” of his soon-to-be-ex-husband, Leo (John Roberts). Terry shelters Bahlul like a wounded bird, vacating all evidence of whatever debauchery took place within the house and insisting that his nephew is too grievously injured for visitors. But the more that Terry tries to keep people away, the greater the mystique is attached to Bahlul.
Of course, as it’s the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, anything that breaks the monotony of self-isolation gains a grand allure—especially if it happens to be a person whose job is to be hot for a living. Right out of the gate, Hammel’s threading...
Of course, as it’s the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, anything that breaks the monotony of self-isolation gains a grand allure—especially if it happens to be a person whose job is to be hot for a living. Right out of the gate, Hammel’s threading...
- 1/28/2024
- by Steven Scaife
- Slant Magazine
By Abe Friedtanzer
John Early in "Stress Positions"
Since March 2020, a number of films and TV series have addressed the life-altering Covid-19 pandemic in their storylines. Often it’s fodder for comedy, since looking back at people furiously wiping down groceries and staying far, far apart from each other can be humorous in retrospect. In some cases, it’s just an extra obstacle to make life a little bit harder and more complicated. In filmmaker Theda Hammel’s feature debut, Stress Positions, staying afloat in a chaotic and isolating time is a considerable challenge for its memorable characters.
John Early stars as Terry, a recently divorced Brooklyn resident watching over his nineteen-year-old nephew from Morocco, Bahlul (Qaher Harhash), as he recovers from an accident...
John Early in "Stress Positions"
Since March 2020, a number of films and TV series have addressed the life-altering Covid-19 pandemic in their storylines. Often it’s fodder for comedy, since looking back at people furiously wiping down groceries and staying far, far apart from each other can be humorous in retrospect. In some cases, it’s just an extra obstacle to make life a little bit harder and more complicated. In filmmaker Theda Hammel’s feature debut, Stress Positions, staying afloat in a chaotic and isolating time is a considerable challenge for its memorable characters.
John Early stars as Terry, a recently divorced Brooklyn resident watching over his nineteen-year-old nephew from Morocco, Bahlul (Qaher Harhash), as he recovers from an accident...
- 1/28/2024
- by Abe Friedtanzer
- FilmExperience
At its heart, Sundance is about discovery. Some of our brightest, biggest filmmaking stars — we’re talking Steven Soderbergh, Richard Linklater, Ava DuVernay, Paul Thomas Anderson, Lulu Wang, Ryan Coogler, Aubrey Plaza, Catherine Hardwicke, Todd Haynes, Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Eggers, the Duplass brothers, Michael B. Jordan, Amy Adams, Elizabeth Olsen, Brie Larson, Lakeith Stanfield, Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, and many, many more — first rose to acclaim by bringing their work to Sundance.
Some of the biggest films at this year’s festivals came to us through creators and stars we already know and love — it’s no surprise that Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin are so wonderful in Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain” or that “Worst Person in the World” star Renate Reinsve finds new dimension in both pitch-black comedy “A Different Man” and the off-kilter zombie drama “Handling the Undead” or that Kristen Stewart is riveting in...
Some of the biggest films at this year’s festivals came to us through creators and stars we already know and love — it’s no surprise that Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin are so wonderful in Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain” or that “Worst Person in the World” star Renate Reinsve finds new dimension in both pitch-black comedy “A Different Man” and the off-kilter zombie drama “Handling the Undead” or that Kristen Stewart is riveting in...
- 1/26/2024
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
‘Stress Positions’ Review: Where So Many Have Failed, This Team Delivers a Hilarious Pandemic Comedy
Building on the promise of her short film “My Trip to Spain,” which played Sundance in 2022, filmmaker Theda Hammel returns to the festival with her feature debut, “Stress Positions.” Joined by favorite collaborator and lead actor John Early, she brings along the same wry sharp humor and the same incisive parody of her generation, only this time, Hammel is playing on a bigger canvas, directing a larger cast and tackling more topics and themes. Among other things, the film might be the first genuinely enjoyable film made about the pandemic.
Set entirely within a few days in the summer of 2020, “Stress Positions” follows Terry Goon (Early) as he navigates a rather stressful few weeks. Recently divorced and unemployed, he’s living in his ex-husband’s Brooklyn brownstone, scared out of his mind about getting infected with Covid. At the same time, he’s caring for 19-year-old nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash...
Set entirely within a few days in the summer of 2020, “Stress Positions” follows Terry Goon (Early) as he navigates a rather stressful few weeks. Recently divorced and unemployed, he’s living in his ex-husband’s Brooklyn brownstone, scared out of his mind about getting infected with Covid. At the same time, he’s caring for 19-year-old nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash...
- 1/23/2024
- by Murtada Elfadl
- Variety Film + TV
Theda Hammel’s latest dramedy at Neon, Stress Positions, stars Hammel, John Early, Qaher Harhash, Amy Zimmer, Faheem Ali and Rebecca F. Wright. It follows Bahlul, a queer Moroccan-American model that everyone wants to meet. While moments emerge showing the glimmer of an insightful character study, the film quickly dissolves into an endurance test drowned out by superficial noise. One must tip the cap to Hammel’s sheer feat of micro-budget production, but her organic style choices bewilder more than enlighten.
The film follows Bahlul (Harhash), a 20-year old spending his time in recovery from a broken leg with his uncle Terry (Early) in Brooklyn. Terry is not Moroccan but American and white, and they are family by marriage. The injured Bahlul meets a cast of eccentric characters including Terry’s best friend Karla (Hammel); Karla‘s girlfriend Vanessa (Zimmer); Terry’s husband Leo (John Roberts); Ronald (Ali), the local...
The film follows Bahlul (Harhash), a 20-year old spending his time in recovery from a broken leg with his uncle Terry (Early) in Brooklyn. Terry is not Moroccan but American and white, and they are family by marriage. The injured Bahlul meets a cast of eccentric characters including Terry’s best friend Karla (Hammel); Karla‘s girlfriend Vanessa (Zimmer); Terry’s husband Leo (John Roberts); Ronald (Ali), the local...
- 1/19/2024
- by Valerie Complex
- Deadline Film + TV
The summer of 2020 shouldn’t project beautiful memories onto the brain maps of those who endured it, but Theda Hammel’s anxiety-addled screwball feature debut “Stress Positions,” set around that Covid Fourth of July in New York, asks you to relive the scary days of sheltering in place, banging pots and pans in solidarity with health care workers, and social distancing whenever it was convenient or made you look like you stood for something.
“Stress Positions” mines the gap between the dark bookend of events that shaped millennial lives — September 11 and the pandemic — and that between liberal-posturing millennials and a Gen Z with a less fussy, more hopeful worldview. Hammel’s muses and emissaries on either side of the dichotomy in a comedy swirling with ideas are comedian John Early as a gay soon-to-be-divorcee and Qaher Harhash as his nephew, a 19-year-old Moroccan model with identity-shifting questions of his own.
“Stress Positions” mines the gap between the dark bookend of events that shaped millennial lives — September 11 and the pandemic — and that between liberal-posturing millennials and a Gen Z with a less fussy, more hopeful worldview. Hammel’s muses and emissaries on either side of the dichotomy in a comedy swirling with ideas are comedian John Early as a gay soon-to-be-divorcee and Qaher Harhash as his nephew, a 19-year-old Moroccan model with identity-shifting questions of his own.
- 1/19/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Not much is funny about those terrifying early days of Covid, when the world was cloaked in an apocalyptic doom and the president was telling us to inject bleach. But in “Stress Positions,” Theda Hammel miraculously finds the funny side of lockdown, mining the masks, Purell and social distancing that defined that unhappy era for physical comedy.
“Those gestures are like balloons, and they’re filled with the sense of danger and a sense of peril,” Hammel says of the Sundance-bound film that she directed and co-wrote. “And as soon as the urgency drains away, these behaviors seem ridiculous.”
“Stress Positions,” which follows a 30-something gay man named Terry (John Early) who is trying — and largely failing — to look after his injured Moroccan nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash) when the pandemic hits, also wants to use the all-too-recent past to skewer millennial mores. In Early, her friend and frequent collaborator, Hammel found the perfect muse.
“Those gestures are like balloons, and they’re filled with the sense of danger and a sense of peril,” Hammel says of the Sundance-bound film that she directed and co-wrote. “And as soon as the urgency drains away, these behaviors seem ridiculous.”
“Stress Positions,” which follows a 30-something gay man named Terry (John Early) who is trying — and largely failing — to look after his injured Moroccan nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash) when the pandemic hits, also wants to use the all-too-recent past to skewer millennial mores. In Early, her friend and frequent collaborator, Hammel found the perfect muse.
- 1/18/2024
- by Brent Lang
- Variety Film + TV
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