If you've been looking for the next grainy, indie satire to fill the void, look no further than Sean Prince Williams' absurd American odyssey film The Sweet East.
Premiered at last years Cannes Film Festival (during the Directors’ Fortnight section), the film features both Euphoria heartthrob Jacob Elordi and The Bear's breakout star, Ayo Edebiri.
The film is Prince Williams' directorial debut, who also wrote the screenplay alongside Nick Pinkerton. Shot in his signature 16mm grain, it's saturated in a haze of nostalgia, while encroaching on dystopic subjects and themes of our time.
Is there a release date?
The Sweet East has finally got an Australian release date for May 2nd.
In selected cinemas, you can find screenings at cinemas like The Ritz and Golden Age across Sydney. There is also special preview screenings this weekend at The Ritz, where Nick Pinkerton, the writer of the film, will be hosting a Q&A after the screening.
Watch the trailer for The Sweet East below
What is The Sweet East about?
The film follows disaffected high school senior, Lillian Wade, whose school trip to Washington D.C. is suddenly derailed by gun-toting Pizzagate conspiracy theorist.
Escaping sudden chaos with emo-punk and self-identified ‘artivist’ Caleb, Lilian falls in with his travelling crew of trust-fund anarchists. From here she leapfrogs between a myriad of all-American caricatures and cults – from a delusional director-producer duo desperate to have her star in their bizarre, butter-themed film, As It Churned, to being taken in by a professor and Edgar Allen Poe fan, who happens to also be a white supremacist neo-Nazi.
Throughout, we see Lilian carve out her own kind of Americana narrative through a picaresque journey along the underbelly of the East Coast – a journey that sees her encounter many opportunities for reinvention.
Who's in the cast for The Sweet East?
The film's breakout star is Talia Ryder (who you may remember from Netflix's Do Revenge or her part in Steven Spielberg's West Side Story), in the starring role of Lilian. She acts alongside Jacob Elordi (who recently lead Sofia Coppola's A24 Priscilla film), Ayo Edebiri, actor and playwright Jeremy O. Harris, Earl Cave (son of Nick Cave, and lead of Days of the Bagnold Summer), Rish Shah, Simon Rex, Andy Milonakis, and more.
With a cast as gold as this one, and a plot this chaotic and promising, we see The Sweet East becoming an undercover favourite for the best films of 2024
Ayo & Jacob Elordi on the set of ‘The Sweet East’ opening in NYC on December 1. pic.twitter.com/Lb0EuatjTL
— Ayo Edebiri Updates (@ayosource) November 2, 2023
Image: Twitter
