Directed by Kelly Reichardt
2013
Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard star as radical environmental activists whose act of eco-terror plunges them into a moral maelstrom, in the highly anticipated film from acclaimed American auteur Kelly Reichardt.
FAILURE FACTS
In September 2012, in the midst of the Toronto Film Festival, as producers of Night Moves looked for buyers, the yet-to-be-developed film received an allegation of plagiarism because its plot was considered too similar to story of the popular Edward Abbey novel The Monkey Wrench Gang. The novel, also focused on eco-terrorism, was about to be turned into an authorized film directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman and produced by Edward R. Pressman. Negotiations behind the scenes have resolved the matter and the action was dismissed in February 2013. The psychological thriller, co-written by independent filmmaker Kelly Reichardt and her regular collaborator Jonathan Raymond, was able to debut in competition at the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival in 2013, obtaining a very positive reception. According to The Guardian’s film critic Peter Bradshaw, “Night Moves is like a suspense movie held in suspense: a thriller that behaves as if it is a gentle, indie-arthouse film concerned only with evoking the static beauty of nature.”
Kelly Reichardt (1964) is an American screenwriter and film director, known for her sensitive and minimalist style. Her first feature film debut was River of Grass (1994) followed by the dramas Old Joy (2006), Wendy and Lucy (2008) and the Western Meek’s Cutoff (2010). In 2016, Reichardt wrote and directed the acclaimed work Certain Women. In 2017 the MoMA devoted a mid-career retrospective to this original figure of American independent cinema, presenting the six feature films she has made since 1994.