THE SONG OF SWAY LAKE
After the death of his father, young jazz collector Ollie Sway (Rory Culkin) recruits his only friend, a Russian drifter (Robert Sheehan), to help him steal the first recorded version of a World War 2 hit called “Sway Lake” from his own family’s lake estate. The plan is derailed when his accomplice falls in love with Ollie’s aristocratic grandmother, the glamorous Charlie Sway (Mary Beth Peil), who sees in the young Russian the glory of her youth.
Directed by
ARI GOLD
Written by
ARI GOLD & ELIZABETH BULL
Produced by
MICHAEL BEDERMAN, ZAK KILBERG, ALLISON ROSE CARTER, ARI GOLD
Executive Producers
ANNE BERNSTEIN, GARRETT FENNELLY
Co-Producers
ELIZABETH BULL, BRAD PAYNE
Cinematography by
ERIC LIN
Original Music and Songs by
ETHAN GOLD
Production Designer
ADA SMITH
Costume Designer
STACEY BERMAN
Edited by
TODD HOLMES, GABRIEL WRYE
Sound Design
ELI COHN
Casting
JESSICA KELLY
REVIEWS
“Offbeat, continually intriguing”
- New York Times
“A stunning film… Quiet, breathtaking”
- Independent Magazine
“A rare joy… Do yourselves a favor and plot a course for The Song of Sway Lake”
- Ain’t It Cool News
“An emotionally rich drama”
- The Plain Dealer
“An impeccably crafted creation from the mind of writer-director Ari Gold. Romances of the past and present, all intertwined in the melodies of lost time.”
- Vue Weekly
“A striking picture of romantic drama inspired by jazz-age New York aristocracy."
- Vancouver Culture
“Writer/director Ari Gold’s engaging new film The Song Of Sway Lake focuses on a young man (played by Rory Culkin) coming to terms with his father’s suicide. In the course of trying to find a rare, valuable record album his father kept at their old lake house, the young man encounters varying depths of nostalgia, family dysfunctions, romance, and embraces the power of letting go."
- Variety
“Tony Award nominated actress Mary Beth Peil... will break your heart. Her antagonistic relationship with Culkin’s character brings out the best performance I’ve seen from the actor. Ari Gold’s twin brother, Ethan, deserves praise for his musical contributions. Strong performances, music, and aesthetics all bring to life a wonderful film you won’t want to miss."
- Film Threat
"There is much here of the nostalgia for a vanished age… the darker side of the Jazz Age, a landscape of prejudice and loneliness behind all that dazzling privilege. Mary Beth Peil… dominates the film as Charlie [Sway], bringing dignity, humanity and sheer force of personality.”
- Eye for Film (UK)
“Robert Sheehan steals the show as a carefree Russian who eventually falls for Charlie. Viewers are in for a real treat. Ari Gold’s direction is a thing of absolute beauty. Singer-songwriter John Grant provides… authentic vocals, transporting the audience to the 1930s.”
- Unger the Radar
Critica en Español --> aquí
“Shimmers with American lore. Sheehan’s Nikolai feels like a star-making turn. Peil is as luminous as the landscapes.”
- Hollywood in Toto
"The Song of Sway Lake is the nostalgic lakeside romance you always wanted."
- Inqua Magazine
“The stand out film.”
- L.A. Lifestyle (L.A. Film Festival)
“Absolutely beautiful.”
- Talk Nerdy With Us
“Dreams and reality, desire and melancholy are all intertwined in a wonderfully impressionistic piece of film making.”
- Cultured Vultures
“The Song of Sway Lake is truly work of art. A must-see.”
- Fiction’s Mistress
“Outstanding performances, soundtrack, and cinematography... Excellent all-around.”
- Film Fed
“An artistic triumph. This film is a study of the classic American Ideal… Rory [Culkin] delivers his own tortured performance of a young man totally burdened by his family’s past. On the other hand you have the flamboyantly brilliant performance of Robert Sheehan as Nikolai. How beautiful the movie looked, the flawless acting, and the gorgeous music (written by… genius Ethan Gold). The Song of Sway Lake is a film about facing today, and tomorrow, with integrity and honesty.”
- T.G. Geeks
DIRECTOR
ARI GOLD
Ari Gold is an award-winning writer, director, installation artist and musician whose films, at first glance rather diverse, are strongly linked by themes of music and of self-discovery. His new film, the multi-generational family drama The Song of Sway Lake, featuring Rory Culkin, Robert Sheehan, Mary Beth Peil, Elizabeth Peña, Isabelle McNally, Jack Falahee, Brian Dennehy, John Grant, and The Staves, was selected as Opening Night Film at six international film festivals, and played 45 film festivals worldwide, winning numerous awards before its limited release in the US in ten cities in September 2018.
Previously, Ari directed the cult comedy Adventures of Power ("One of the funniest films in recent years" - NY Magazine), presented at Sundance and Karlovy-Vary. His student-Oscar-winning short Helicopter, about his mother’s death in the helicopter crash that killed rock music promoter Bill Graham, is expanding into a feature film with psychomagical mentoring from legendary filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Ari’s most unusual distinctions include winning High Times Magazine’s "Stoner of the Year" award, and holding a Guinness World Record for commanding the largest ever air-drum ensemble on earth.
His next major project, currently in development, is a game-changing action-adventure fiction TV series about ecology, war, shamanism, and the liberation of the human spirit. Follow: @AriGold on Instagram+Twitter.
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
Nostalgia and trauma are often linked. Two days into my first silent meditation retreat, the image of a sinking watch shot into my mind. I didn’t understand what it meant. When I emerged, I realized that this vision was both my life’s greatest challenge and the meaning of my film, which I was nearly finished editing after some financial and creative challenges.
I was linked to the three main characters not by biography, but by the struggle to let go of time. Charlie Sway, a glamorous matriarch in her seventies, seeks her own past; her burdened grandson Ollie seeks the past’s perfection only to destroy it; and the outsider, Nikolai, wants to steal someone else’s past as his own.
Spending summers in the Adirondacks as a kid, I was fascinated by this place that seemed to exist outside of time. On the lakes lived a declining American royalty. Along with their unfair privilege, its members were saddled with emotional paralysis. Still, I was jealous of those private lakes. For me, the real sway was always out of reach.
When Elizabeth Bull and I embarked on the screenplay, we had our own kind of nostalgia, for the intimate French and Swedish summer movies that made us want to write. We took on the subjects of nostalgia, projection, and longing through characters who cannot tolerate the present. For Ollie Sway, we needed an actor who carried the shock of recent loss on his face, and found it in the immensely sensitive Rory Culkin. For Nikolai, an immigrant whose adoration of a heroic fabled America meets reality in the Sway family, my Russian director friend helped us choose Robert Sheehan - recognizing in him a one-of-a-kind mix of charisma and clown. And for the role of Charlie, which demanded icy majesty, sensual beauty, and hidden layers of feeling, we were lucky to work with the magnificent Mary Beth Peil.
We filmed on Blue Mountain Lake, New York, pretending that it was once a glamorous private estate. Despite the intimate cast and crew, the schedule was in constant flux as we danced to the ever-changing weather, or to the piano when the power was knocked out for real. The Sways’ brooding maid Marlena, brought to life by Elizabeth Peña, gave me one of my greatest experiences as a director. I’ll never forget rowing across the lake for a secret midnight conversation with Elizabeth, where she asked me to consider a scandalous possibility about her character’s history with the deceased “Captain Sway.” I approved, and suggested adding dialog to hint her idea to the audience. “I’ll do it better without saying a word,” Elizabeth said - and her performance is a testament to that gutsy truth. What a rare actor to ask for less lines! Her loss is a huge one.
Scent and music are the strongest triggers of human memory, and because you can’t smell a movie (though I tried!), I counted on my gifted twin brother Ethan to weave brilliant original music with my vintage tunes, to catapult the audience through frozen time, like that watch. Music is a boobytrap that yanks us into the past, which can be intoxicating or toxic, depending how we process it. Ethan understood that the song - created for the film but suggesting history - had to dance with the imperfection of the present. That dance is the real sway.
PRODUCERS
MICHAEL BEDERMAN
Michael Bederman has worked alongside accomplished directors including Niels Arden Oplev, David Frankel, George Nolfi, Michael Cuesta, Drake Doremus, Ari Gold, Joel Schumacher, Ben Lewin, and Miguel Arteta. Michael was instrumental in the making of Tom McCarthy’s film SPOTLIGHT starring Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams,and Liev Schreiber, which was nominated for 6 Academy Awards and won Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture of the Year. He is a member of the PGA, DGA, and Directors Guild of Canada, and a frequent guest lecturer at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
ZAK KILBERG
Zak Kilberg is a Producer and founder of Social Construct Films, which handles the creative development, financing, production and worldwide sales for a slate of feature films and television series. Kilberg’s projects have won awards at major film festivals including Sundance and have been acquired by top distributors worldwide including Lionsgate, Universal, HBO, IFC, Tribeca and more. Zak is currently producing the Buena Vista Social Club follow up documentary w/ 2x Oscar nominated director Lucy Walker, set for theatrical release w/ Broad Green Pictures in summer 2017, and developing the NY Times best selling memoir Guantanamo Diary, w/ Benedict Cumberbatch and his company Sunny March on board to produce.
ALLISON ROSE CARTER
Allison Rose Carter has produced over 15 feature films including Eyad Zahra’s THE TAQWACORES, which took part in the inaugural NEXT category at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Ira Sachs’ LOVE IS STRANGE, Matt Ross’ FRANK & LOLA, and Dustin Guy Defa’s PERSON TO PERSON also had their premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to worldwide distribution. She works all over the world, but resides in Brooklyn, NY.
Co-Writer
ELIZABETH BULL
Elizabeth Bull is a fiction writer and screenwriter from Sebastopol, California now co-writing a pilot for Radical Media with Cary Fukunaga (“True Detective”, “Beasts of No Nation”). She co-produced the feature film “Adventures of Power” for Grack Films and wrote and produced a short for Conde Nast entertainment, “Self Stories.” She also worked in television development for the AMC network. Her fiction has appeared in numerous lit journals.
Cinematography
ERIC LIN
Eric Lin first started making films while studying sociology and film criticism at UC Berkeley before New York University's Graduate Film Program, where he earned his MFA in cinematography. His feature film work includes Bradley Rust Gray’ s, “The Exploding Girl”; William H. Macy’s directorial debut, "Rudderless"; and Adam Salky’ s “I Smile Back”. His recent projects include Meera Menon's "Equity," which premiered in competition at Sundance 2016 and was picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics; and Sophie Goodhart's "My Blind Brother," which premiered at SXSW 2016 and is distributed by Starz. His latest feature, "Aardvark", starring Zachary Quinto, Jenny Slate, and Jon Hamm, premiered in competition at Tribeca 2017.
Music
ETHAN GOLD
Ethan Gold is a songwriter, composer, music producer, performer, music video director, and multi-instrumentalist. He also scored his brother Ari Gold’s earlier films Helicopter and Adventures of Power. His own solo albums, both song-based and instrumental, have been praised in Pitchfork, The Sunday Times, and publications around the world. For The Song of Sway Lake Ethan created a “masterful minimalist score” (Ain’t it Cool News), and wrote original songs in a 1940s style for John Grant and the Staves to sing.
“Gold's bravura effort to create original music to both fit the jazz age theme as well as pushing the boundaries by blending elements of classical and new music and enlisting artists such Jon Hassell, John Grant, The Staves and Fred Frith, results in one of the most striking and extensive scores we've heard in a while.” - AMFM Magazine
“‘Sway Lake (Lost Record Version)’ sounds like it was ripped straight from a long-buried 78rpm record found in a grandparent's attic trunk and freshly cleaned of five-plus decades' worth of dust.” - Under the Radar
“The soundtrack appropriately captures the film's themes of longing to recapture better days. The reveal of the titular track is amazing.” - Film Threat
2018 HMMA Nominee, “Sway Lake (Lost Record Version)”
FESTIVALS & PRIZES
AND:
Winner - Best Picture, Best Female Actor (Mary Beth Peil) - Vancouver GPIFF
Winner - Sweep: Best Film, Best Director (Ari Gold), Best Female Actor (Mary Beth Peil), Best Male Actor (Robert Sheehan), Best Music (Ethan Gold) - SMR13 Festival (Association Française du Cinéma Indépendent) (France)
Kustendorf Presents (Only U.S. Feature Film) - Kusturica’s Kustendorf Film & Music Festival
Opening Night Gala Film - Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival
Winner - Best Feature Film Director (Ari Gold) - Arpa International Film Festival at the Hollywood Egyptian
Winner - Best Feature Film - Hobnobben Film Festival
Opening Night Gala Film - Tucson Film and Music Festival
Winner - Feature Film Prize - Flat Earth Festival, Iceland
Winner - Best Original Soundtrack - Realtime International Film Festival (Nigeria)
Winner - Special Jury Award - Montana International Film Festival
Winner - Best Director - Lake City International Film Festival (Mumbai)
Winner - Award of Excellence, Accolade Global Film Competition
Winner - Best Editing - Todd Holmes & Gabriel Wrye - Oil Valley Film Festival
Winner - Audience Award - Seneca Lake Film Festival
Winner - Best Actor (Robert Sheehan) - Laughlin International Film Festival
Opening Night Gala Film - Destiny City Film Festival
Winner - Carroll Raver Cinematography Award - Garden State Film Festival
Winner - Executive Director Award - Beloit Film Festival
Winner - Best Fiction Feature - Arthouse Asia Film Festival
Winner - Audience Spotlight - Idyllwild International Film Festival
Winner - Best Original Score & Best Light Design - Enginuity Film Festival
Official Selection - Munich International Film Festival
Official Selection - Niagara Falls International Film Festival
Official Selection - Los Angeles Film Festival
Official Selection - Woodstock Film Festival
Official Selection - Norwegian International Film Festival Film Festival Haugesund
Official Selection - Twin Cities Film Festival
Official Selection - Sidewalk Film Festival
Official Selection - Lake Placid Film Festival
Official Selection - Paralel (Serbia)
Official Selection - Lublin Film Festival (Poland)
Official Selection - Chandler Film Festival
Official Selection - Live at Heart Festival, Sweden
Official Selection - Sonoma Film Festival
Official Selection - Weyauwega International Film Festival
Official Selection - Adirondack Film Festival
Official Selection - Asheville Connect Beyond the Page Festival
Official Selection - Julien Dubuque International Film Festival
Official Selection - Roswell Film Festival
Official Selection - Mystic Film Festival
Official Selection - Jukebox International Film Festival
Official Selection - Prescott Film Festival
Official Selection - Global Film Festival (India)
Official Selection - Ischia FIlm Festival (Italy)
Official Selection - Vero Beach & Wine Festival
Official Summer Screening Selection - Vermont International Film Festival
Official Selection - Niagara Falls Film Festival
Official Selection - Covellite Film Festival
+ Special Selection at Cultural Centers throughout
Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Estonia, Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, and Romania
