Damsel

Director: David Zellner, Nathan Zellner
Screenwriters: David Zellner, Nathan Zellner

Institute History

  • 2018 Sundance Film Festival

Description

It’s a classic tale of the Old West: Samuel Alabaster is a man searching for his true love. Parson Henry is another, much drunker man, searching for a new start. Penelope is a woman who has found her own path. And Rufus Cornell is just a mean bastard with a taste for buckskin. There’s rotgut, rawhide, rootin’, tootin’, and hootin’. Plus, a little tiny horse.

Damsel finds Sundance Film Festival stalwarts David and Nathan Zellner (Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter) reinventing a dusty genre and wearing many hats, several of which are quite silly. The brothers write, produce, and direct the film, while also starring alongside Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, and Robert Forster. The Zellners’ off-kilter enthusiasm must be infectious, as the whole cast joyfully embraces the loopy rhythms and bonkers logic of this unfamiliar frontier.

So saddle up and prepare to git along—just don’t be surprised if you end up somewheres you never expected.

— J.K.

Screening Details

Credits

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