New Jersey Spread: Lars Knudsen & Ari Aster Board Kantemir Balagov’s “Butterfly Jam”
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When life gives you lemons (or the president of your country begins a war with Ukraine) you make …. Butterfly Jam. THR are dropping the news rather late on Friday night, but we have a new working title and more producers are joining the fold in Square Peg’s producers Lars Knudsen and Ari Aster for Kantemir Balagov‘s third feature film. Formerly known as “Monica,” and originally set to shoot back home, the project also saw his producer AR Content’s Alexander Rodnyansky having to make adjustments. He is also working with Andrey Zvyagintsev on his next feature — an English language debut that may film in Los Angeles.
Balagov needs no introduction on this site (we were on-hand for the world preems (see vid) to both of his Un Certain Regard films and we’ve been keeping tabs on the filmmaker with his recent trip to Telluride as invited guests (with Kira Kovalenko) of the festival. No timeline was announced for Butterfly Jam, but we imagine that a thorough casting process will take place for an eventual production next year and maybe a 2024 Cannes premiere.
Set in a tight-knit New Jersey community of Kabardian immigrants, this portrays a complicated relationship between a father and son, in which the son imbues his father with qualities he doesn’t actually possess.
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).
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