Laggies

Lynn Shelton's LAGGIES premiered last night at Sundance and it felt like a graduation, which is appropriate if you see the film.

I've always been an admirer of Lynn Shelton’s work. Her films are singular, effortless feeling and she gets them made - scraping them together for micro-budgets if she has to. She is also fiercely loyal to her crew whom she uses on each project.

LAGGIES stars Keira Knightley and Chloe Moretz. Without giving too much away, it's about being stuck in the past after high school and temporarily kidding yourself that you can run off, be inappropriate and do it all over again. It's a female-driven film that's funny, Indie and smart. The writing is sharp and original and Andrea Seigel (the screenwriter) got a nearly forty second applause at the end, which she later confessed to being embarrassed about - a humble talent to keep an eye on.

In her introduction last night, she credited the Sundance Film Festival with starting her career, saying: (I'm paraphrasing here) they showed her small Indies she scraped together for pennies and always believed in her when they didn’t have to. Trevor Groth and John Cooper have now shown four of her films. People often scratch their heads, wondering how to help advance the position of women in this industry, but one answer seems abundantly clear: give the Lynn Shelton's of the world an opportunity to show their work and grow. It will be interesting to see who emerges at this year’s festival.