Jamie Marks Is Dead

Director: Carter Smith
Screenwriters: Carter Smith

Institute History

Description

In a wintry small town, the body of a teenager named Jamie Marks is found by the river. Adam, the star of his cross-country team, becomes fascinated with Jamie—a boy nobody really knew or interacted with, except occasionally to bully him. When Jamie’s ghost begins to appear both to Adam and Gracie, the classmate who discovered the body, Adam is caught between two worlds. He has a budding romance with Gracie, but he also feels a deep connection to Jamie, who brings him closer to the world of the undead.

Based on the novel One for Sorrow by Christopher Barzak, Jamie Marks Is Dead is a love story, infused with elements of horror and the supernatural. Sundance Film Festival alumnus Carter Smith (his short film, Bugcrush, won the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking in 2006) creates an atmosphere that is both gentle and creepy amid the stark, snowy wasteland of dilapidated barns and rusted iron bridges. A poetic, metaphoric tale of sexuality and difference, Jamie Marks Is Dead is about the choices one boy must make to help another free himself and accept his fate.

— Kim Yutani

Screening Details

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