Anthony Chen’s first English-language film will premiere at Sundance Film Festival

Anthony Chen, a 38-year-old Singaporean film director, screenwriter, and film producer, first English-language film will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023. 

In an Instagram post, the director shared the exciting news.

“Been working on this since 2019, so thrilled to share that my new film DRIFT will premiere at the 2023 #Sundance Film Festival in January” he said.

 

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A post shared by Anthony Chen 陳哲藝 (@antchen)

Drift, is the third feature film of Anthony Chen. It stars Oscar-nominated actresses Cynthia Erivo and Alia Shawket, and portrays a story of a penniless woman who gets away from her country battered by war to a Greek island. There she will try to forget the unfortunate circumstances of her past. She will meet a tour guide and the two will establish connection and find hope from one another. 

Other cast members include Amanda Drew, Honor Swinton Byrne, James Paxton, Dorotea Mercuri, Vincent Vermignon, Jonathan Rhodes, Suzy Bemba, Abigail Boyd and Ibrahima Ba. 

The movie is adapted from Alexander Maksik’s 2013 novel, A Marker To Measure Drift. With screenwriter Susanne Farrell, the film is expected to be finished and premiered next year. 

According to the director, Drift is one of the projects he worked on that was not based on something he wrote. Other works of Anthony Chen – the drama Ilo Ilo last 2013 which won Camera d-Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and Wet Season last 2019 with Golden Horse Best Leading Actress Yeo Yann Yann – were mainly done in Chinese and other regional languages. 

More so, Anthony Chen will direct the drama Secret Daughter for Amazon Studios – based on a bestselling 2010 novel by Shilpi Somaya Gowda. The cast includes Priyanka Chopra Jonas and British American actress Sienna Miller, and the story will be about the life of an adoptee form India. 

The 2023 Sundance Film Festival is bound to happen on January 19-29. This festival aims to celebrate independent storytelling and can be attended via in-person or online viewing. Tickets prices range from $20.00 to $750.00, depending on the platform’s choice of the audience. 

For more details about the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, you may visit https://festival.sundance.org/program/