July 4 weekend is a quiet one for new indie releases, leaving the field to Angel Studios’ PG-13 wide release Young Washington on 2,700 screens.
From Angel and Wonder Project, the film, timed to the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S., stars British actor William Franklyn-Miller as the young man who would go on to become the nation’s first president.
Directed by Jon Erwin (I Can Only Imagine, Jesus Revolution), with Mary-Louise Parker as George’s mother, Ben Kingsley as Virginia Gov. Robert Dinwiddie, and Kelsey Grammer as wealthy nobleman Lord Fairfax. See Deadline review.
Synopsis: “Before he was the Father of a Nation, he was a soldier fighting to survive. A single misstep thrusts young George Washington into the center of a global conflict, testing his honor, loyalty, and courage. As alliances crumble and the frontier erupts into war, he must confront not only his enemies but the man he’s becoming.”
The action is set in the 1750s with Washington as a young man eager to fight, initially as a British officer in a period of complex loyalties. He enlists at 23 and leads a disastrous campaign against the French in Ohio but fights brilliantly and his career takes off.
Elsewhere this frame, Music Box Films is out with a 4K restoration of Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March July 3-9 at Film Forum. It will lead into Venice award-winning Remake, McElwee’s new documentary, which premieres at the NYC art house July 10.
Sherman’s March, which won the Grand Jury prize at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival, was ranked as one of the highest-grossing documentary films of all time until the mid-1990s. In it, McElwee sets out to make a movie about Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea towards the end of the American Civil War, but keeps getting sidetracked by his own love life. He’ll appear in-person for post-screening Q&As on July 8-9.
Kino Lorber opens Sasha Waters’ Mary Oliver: Saved By the Beauty of the World, on the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, at the IFC Center in New York today, expanding to select theaters nationwide in the coming weeks. The documentary includes new recitations of her work by fans as varied as Stephen Colbert, Lucy Dacus, Steve Buscemi and Oprah Winfrey and Helena Bonham Carter alongside stories from longtime friends like John Waters.
World premiered in March at the True/False festival in Columbia, MO, screened at DOC NYC Spring Selects, the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival and the Miami Film Festival. Waters gained access to Oliver’s personal archives to make the film.
Citizen Kane is also back via Fathom Entertainment at about 900 theaters on July 5 and July 8. It’s for the 85th anniversary of the 1941 classic directed by and starring Orson Welles as publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane. The rerelease includes exclusive insight from Leonard Maltin.