Werner Herzog's Bucking Fastard is the only film this year to sneak into all four major fall film festivals.
It opens in Venice Film Festival, before proceeding to Telluride, Toronto and New York.
The film was denied a main competition slot at Venice.
Only one movie will be hitting all four major fall fests this year, including Venice, Toronto, Telluride and New York: Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard. Other titles were in the running for this neat record. Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care rejected a Venice out-of-competition slot at the last minute, while Andrew Haigh’s The Long Winter had to unfortunately skip a Venice competition slot due to a scheduling conflict with Telluride. Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut was not submitted to Venice.
Herzog’s film opens at the Venice Film Festival next month in main competition. It's also slated to play in the San Sebastian film festival. It was earlier supposed to premiere at Cannes, but Herzog pulled the film after it failed to secure the competition lineup.
Herzog had hoped that stars Rooney and Kate Mara, who are touted to give searing performances as twin sisters, would be eligible for awards, according to a source close to the filmmakers. It mirrors the instance with Jim Jarmusch's Father Mother Sister Brother that was pulled out after being refused a competition shot. The film went on to premiere in Venice, winning the Golden Lion.
Bucking Fastard Synopsis
The NYFF, where the film plays in Spotlight section, shared a synopsis for Bucking Fastard: "The oddball brilliance of Werner Herzog is in full effect in this tale of two sisters, Jean and Joan Holbrooke, who live entirely by their own social and emotional rules. They speak in unison, fall in love with the same man, and try to fulfill the same wild dreams and ambitions. As played by Kate and Rooney Mara, in total sync, the driven, single-minded Jean and Joan become classic Herzogian outsiders, like Kaspar Hauser or Fitzcarraldo, daring to transcend the limitations of everyday living and language. Shot across the teeming city streets and the majestic underground caves of Ireland, Bucking Fastard features operatic imagery from the director’s longtime cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger. It’s an uncanny, funny, properly eccentric film that moves from the comic to the grandly pastoral."
The 64th New York Film Festival runs from September 25 – October 12.
