Louis C.K. to debut first feature film in 16 years

The first feature film Louis C.K. has directed since 2001’s Pootie Tang will be part of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Announced Tuesday as part of the prestigious fest’s ever-expanding lineup, I Love You, Daddy was filmed “entirely in secret,” per the Toronto International Film Festival, and stars C.K., Chloe Grace Moretz, John Malkovich, Helen Hunt, Rose Byrne, and C.K.’s frequent collaborator Pamela Aldon (Lucky Louie, Louie). C.K. shot the film in 35mm and in black and white.

Per the Los Angeles Times, C.K. will play “Glen Topher, a successful television producer and writer” in the film, with Moretz costarring as his character’s daughter.

C.K. has directed numerous television episodes and stand-up comedy specials since 2001’s Pootie Tang, which starred Chris Rock, Wanda Sykes, and Lance Crouther as the title character, but never returned to feature filmmaking. “There’s a lot in that movie I love,” C.K. told The AV Club in 2004. “It makes me happy that a world I created and wrote and shot made people happy and then lived on. After all, there aren’t many other movies from that year that people still want to see now. But still, there’s some regret as to how it came out, and things like that. It was worth it, though, because it was probably the most significant education of all the surviving-failure lessons I’ve gotten. Also, I think the success it’s had proves that there’s a little more to what I was saying than they thought. I think that if they had let me have even a little more freedom, it could have been more of a success.”

Speaking in 2012, however, C.K. called the film “a huge mistake” and claimed “it should have never have been made.”

“That experience was very painful, I was sucking at making the movie and got fired off of it, and they put my name on it anyway,” C.K. said at that year’s Television Critics Association winter press tour. “But failing at Pootie Tang is one of the reasons for why this show is good. The army of failures I’ve had are the reasons that I’m good at what I’m doing now.”