THE LUCKIEST MAN IN AMERICA
2024 | Fiction | 83 mins. | Post- Production
This stranger-than-fiction drama resurrects a hugely popular 1980s game show and the “luckiest man in America” who broke it. Directed by Samir Oliveros (Bad Lucky Goat) and featuring performances from Paul Walter Hauser (Richard Jewell), Walton Goggins, and David Strathairn, The Luckiest Man in America illuminates a forgotten turning point in television history, when a network executive took a gamble and inadvertently made an obsessive eccentric into a folk hero.
Michael Larson (Hauser) shouldn’t even be there. An unemployed ice cream truck driver from Lebanon, Ohio, Michael only made it into auditions for Press Your Luck because he stole someone else’s appointment. The show’s casting director (an excellent Shamier Anderson) thinks Michael is a creep, but co-creator Bill Carruthers (Strathairn) likes Michael’s chutzpah and sees him as a Middle-American everyman the audience can cheer for — the dark horse is in.
Michael fumbles through the first several minutes of play, but once host Peter Tomarken (Goggins) moves onto the second “spin” section of Press Your Luck, where contestants try to get a randomly lit electronic game board to stop on a winning tile, Michael suddenly can’t lose. In fact, he quickly breaks the show’s record — before breaking its savings account. Is Michael cheating? Or does he understand something about Press Your Luck that no one has seen before?
Written by Oliveros and Maggie Briggs (TIFF ’22’s Joyland), the film ushers us behind the scenes of Press Your Luck’s most infamous episode and speculates on Larson’s motives. With his unruly mane and beard, and his thrift-store blazer and khaki shorts, Hauser’s Michael is the embodiment of nerdy desperation, a man who’s banked everything on the chance to win the American Dream as millions watch.
ROBYN CITIZEN
Directed by Samir Oliveros
Produced by PLENTY GOOD | FABULA
Post Producer Juan Manuel Betancourt
PostProduction Supervisor by Daniela Echeverri
Edited by Sebastián Hernández
TRANSITION
2023 | Documentary | 83 mins. | Post- Production
Conflict documentarian Jordan Bryon is invited by a Taliban Commander to film the daily life of a Taliban unit after the fall of Kabul for the New York Times. A stressful assignment for any documentarian, but this assignment proves to be particularly tumultuous because Bryon is in the process of a gender transition. Undergoing gender transition is stressful in the best of times, but doing so in Afghanistan during the Taliban’s takeover puts it on a whole other level. Bryon takes us through his transition from starting hormones to undergoing top surgery in Iran. And ultimately, through the complicated relationship he develops with the Taliban fighters he is embedded with.
Transition features extraordinary footage of Bryon hanging out with armed men when increasing friendliness creates unbearable tension. However, the film, directed by Monica Villamizar and Bryon himself, tempers any appetite for spectacle with a reflective tone about Bryon’s ethical duty, his awareness of the safety concerns of his friends and colleagues, Kiana, a female photojournalist, and Teddy, his cameraman, and his growing acceptance that his adopted home will never be the same. All this comes together for a knotty, achingly personal film that is grand in scope.––Faridah Gbadamosi
Directed by Jordan Bryon | Mónica Villamizar
Produced by AGC | OUR TIMES PROJECTS | TIKKAL | RUVRIKA
Post Producers Juan Manuel Betancourt | Sebastián Hernández
PostProduction Supervisor by Daniela Echeverri
Edited by Eduardo Resing | Maria Alejandra Briganti
A GRITO HERIDO
2022 | Series | 10x50 | PostProduction
Cinco entrañables amigas de la infancia intentan dejar los problemas que las separaron durante 7 años y retomar un viejo sueño musical, mientras que se acompañan en la búsqueda del amor, de su vocación y de una muy esquiva felicidad.
Four friends and their singing teacher start a promising cover band until a quarrel separates them. 7 Years later, they have the chance of getting the band together, but first they will have to solve their complicated and chaotic lives.
Directed by Klych López | Mónica Botero
Produced by Amazon | Caracol
Post Producers Juan Manuel Betancourt | Sebastián Hernández
PostProduction Supervision by Daniela Echeverri
Edited by Sandra Rodríguez | Maria Alejandra Briganti
RUIDO CAPITAL
2022 | Series | 10x50 | PostProduction
A group of misfit teenagers battle to form a rock band during the fraught period of 1990s Bogotá, Colombia.
Esta serie de origen colombiano, dirigida por la argentina Ana Katz y el uruguayo Pablo Stoll, se centra en un grupo de adolescentes que, en la complicada Bogotá de los años ’90, intentan armar una banda de rock.
Directed by Pablo Stoll | Ana Katz | Mauricio Leiva-Cock
Produced by Movistar+ | Fidelio
Post Producer Juan Manuel Betancourt
Edited by Sebastián Hernández | Gustavo Vasco