THE KING

Director: Eugene Jarecki

Institute History

  • 2018 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Forty years after the death of Elvis Presley, the new film from two-time Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize winner Eugene Jarecki takes the King’s 1963 Rolls-Royce on a musical road trip across the country Presley left behind. From the deep south to New York, Las Vegas, and beyond, a tapestry of luminaries and unknown Americans join the journey, expressing themselves in words and song.

With his singular cinematic brilliance, Jarecki paints a penetrating portrait of a nation in crisis and a metaphoric connection between Elvis and America. For just as a country boy lost his authenticity and became a king, so too his country lost her democracy and became an empire. One died on the toilet; the other now faces an uncertain future under the closest thing she’s ever had to a monarch.

The Sundance Film Festival is proud to be presenting THE KING’s North American premiere. An earlier version of the film premiered internationally at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Following the screening, executive producer Steven Soderbergh will join Jarecki to discuss innovative strategies for the film’s 2018 release.

— D.C.

Screening Details

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