Sundance Film Festival presented the world premiere of a BFF fiscal sponsored film, The Tale, as part of its US Dramatic Competition. Directed by Jennifer Fox (My Reincarnation), the film features Laura Dern, Ellen Burstyn, Common, and Jason Ritter, and is based on Fox’s memoir of a teenage affair with a riding instructor. Premium cablecaster HBO secured the rights to the film at the festival, and will begin airing it on May 26, 2018.
The Sundance program says, “Seamlessly toggling between past and present, writer/director Jennifer Fox forges a fresh and uncompromising cinematic language to penetrate the heightened internal worlds of her character at two pivotal stages. Shocking, emotionally raw, and destabilizing, this investigative thriller punctures the insidious workings of unchecked power and lays bare the mechanisms of memory—refashioned over time by a growing girl in order to not only survive, but to prevail.” Variety‘s review says in part, ‘[The Tale is] a landmark advance in the field of cinematic memoir, Jennifer Fox’s years-in-the-making #MeToo movie could hardly have arrived at a better time.”
The Tale is a Gamechanger Films, A Luminous Mind, Untitled Entertainment, Blackbird, One Two Films, Fork Films production, in co-production with ZDF, in collaboration with Arte. HBO Films has purchased North American and overseas rights, and will premiere the film on its cable network.
Director Jennifer Fox previously created the noted documentary My Reincarnation, about her Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche and his son. Her other works include the PBS series An American Love Story, and the Sundance Channel series, Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman. Buddhist Film Foundation served as the fiscal sponsor for My Reincarnation and The Tale.
A specially designed global educational outreach and social impact program is being developed and deployed in connection with the HBO release of the film. Contributions are being sought to fund this campaign to enable the film and its themes and issues of sexual abuse, memory, and trauma to reach and engage audiences and communities around the world.
