Reunion (2020)
Director: Jake Mahaffy Run Time: 95 min. Rating: NR
Starring: Emma Draper, John Bach, Julia Ormond, Nancy Brunning
Country: New Zealand
Language: English
Presented in the Virtual Screening Room in partnership with MPI Media.
“New Zealand director Jake Mahaffy handles time with deft sophistication…like warped pieces on a ruined puzzle board through flashbacks, nightmares, apparitions and conversations.”
– David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express
About the film:
Official Selection of Nightstream Film Festival 2020 and nominated for Best Narrative Feature at Indie Memphis Film Festival 2020. Reunion was selected by Montclair Film Festival to compete in the 2020 Future/Now Competition honoring emerging low-budget American independent filmmakers creating innovative and challenging films.
A pregnant woman returns to her recently-deceased grandparents’ old family home to spend time with her estranged mother. What begins as a tenuous reunion slowly turns terrifying.
A psychological thriller that preys upon perception, Reunion sees veteran actress Julia Ormond deliver a tour-de-force performance of threateningly quiet intensity and features a twisty narrative that will burrow itself into the darkest corners of your mind.
About the filmmaker:
Jake Mahaffy’s self-made, low-budget independent films have screened at festivals around the world. With his production company Burn Barrel Films, Mahaffy has produced award-winning shorts and features, including Wellness (2008) winner of the SXSW Grand Jury Award for Narrative Feature, and Free in Deed (2015), a twelve-year project which earned multiple Independent Spirit Awards nominations and won Best Film in the Horizons Section of 72nd Venice International Film Festival.
A student of fine art and film, he has also founded two filmmaking programs at universities in the United States and currently teaches Screen Production at Auckland University in New Zealand. Learn about the psychology behind his newest film Reunion in an interview with Howard Gorman for Scream Horror Magazine.
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