TITLE: Suncoast
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
Director: Laura Chinn
Screenwriter: Laura Chinn
Logline: Inspired by the semi-autobiographical story of a teenager, Doris (Nico Parker), who while caring for her brother along with her audacious mother (Laura Linney), strikes up an unlikely friendship with an eccentric activist (Woody Harrelson) who is protesting one of the most landmark medical cases of all time — that surrounding Florida’s Terri Schiavo.
Distributor: Searchlight Pictures/Hulu
Panelists: Laura Chinn, Laura Linney
First screening: January 18
Key quotes: On sharing the film, based on the loss of her brother as a teenager, with her parents, Chinn said, “They definitely were like, ‘Wow, that was extremely cathartic.’ I mean, there’s so many invented details that they’re able to see it as a separate story, but also it definitely is bringing up everything they went through, as well.”
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On takeaways from the family drama, Chinn told Deadline, “For me, it was just kind of a study on grief and how people grieve in different ways, and hopefully without putting any judgment on that, hopefully not walking away being like, ‘I should grieve this way.’ I think that death and losing someone is so deeply personal that everyone has a wildly different reaction to it, and my point of view is, every reaction’s okay. I really wanted that to come through in the movie, that all of these people who have such wildly different reactions to grief, and none of them are doing it wrong, because we’re all just doing the best we can.”
Watch on Deadline
The Deadline Studio at Sundance runs January 19-23 at Montgomery-Lee Fine Art on Main Street, when the cast and creatives behind the best and buzziest titles in this year’s lineup sit down with Deadline’s festival team to discuss their movies and the paths they took to get to Park City.
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