The film screened in Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and the Berlinale Special screening was its international premiere. As the film is without dialogue the visuals assume paramount importance and the work of cinematographer Michael Gioulakis is one of the most important elements of the film.
The Zellner brothers were born in Greeley, Colorado, in the 1970s and the have been writing, directing, producing and appearing in films for more than a decade. Their film Western Damsel premiered in the Berlinale Competition in 2018.
Their work includes a whole string of award-winning shorts and feature films including Goliath, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008 and Kid-Thing, which had its international premiere in the Berlinale Forum in 2012. Their Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter also screened in the Berlinale Forum in 2014 and starred Rinko Kikuchi. The film was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards.
The past films of the Zellner brothers have created a very special kind of surreal stories but with Sasquatch Sunset they push the boundaries of imagination further than before. They take us into the life of a family that has remained hidden from humanity, immersed in the North American wilderness.
Sasquatch Sunset imagines the life of what might be the mythic Bigfoot. Actors Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Christophe Zajac-Denek, Nathan Zellner tell the story of a year in the life of a mythic Bigfoot family without dialogue relying on visuals to evoke compassion, laughter and tears. The actors are completely covered in fur and prosthetics and convey their life in the wilderness with grunts and screams. The film follows the four seasons of the year, Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter and captures the beauty of the Northern California forest wilderness. In a world of rapidly vanishing nature the setting of this film is bound to be poignant and though our Bigfoot family is comic and somewhat slapstick in its primitive behaviour you cannot but think real birds and animals are rapidly vanishing as the Bigfoot might have done if it had ever existed.
A unique work that is both realistic and completely surreal, the film introduces a new style to the cinema screen.
The film obviously pays homage to the Zellner brothers fascination with the legend of Bigfoot, a mythical creature that was supposed to have lived in the wilds of Northern California and might have been captured on film in 1967.
Sasquatch Sunset (USA)
Directed by David and Nathan Zellner
Cast: Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Christophe Zajac-Denek, Nathan Zellner
