Owen Kline Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Home to films like “Lady Bird,” “Eighth Grade” and “Mid90s,” A24 is synonymous with a certain brand of indie, auteur-driven coming-of-age story. The company’s latest is “Funny Pages,” the debut feature film from writer-director Owen Kline (who you might recognize as Frank from “The Squid and the Whale”). Set in the suburbs of New Jersey, “Funny Pages” follows Robert (Daniel Zolghadri), a talented high schooler determined to make his way as a cartoonist.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The Match Factory has boarded Sean Price Williams’s “The Sweet East,” which has its world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar of the Cannes Film Festival in May. It is the first feature film directed by Price Williams, the cinematographer of Owen Kline’s “Funny Pages” (2022), Abel Ferrara’s “Zeros and Ones” (2021), Michael Almereyda’s “Tesla” (2020), Alex Ross Perry’s “Her Smell” (2018) and the Safdies’ “Good Time” (2017). The screenplay is by film critic and programmer Nick Pinkerton. “The Sweet East” is a picaresque journey through the cities and woods of the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. undertaken by Lillian, a high school senior from South Carolina, who gets her first glimpse of the wider world on a class trip to Washington, D.C.

The Match Factory has acquired international sales rights on U.S. cinematographer and filmmaker Sean Price Williams’s feature directorial debut The Sweet East ahead of its world premiere in Directors’ Fortnight in May.

EXCLUSIVE: Hercules Film Fund and Rhea Films have closed a deal to finance and produce a feature-length version of Power Signal — the sci-fi short from Oscar Boyson that had its world premiere in Sundance’s Midnight Shorts section last Friday.

Best Feature“Aftersun”“The Cathedral”“Dos Estaciones”“Everything Everywhere All at Once”“Tár”Best Documentary Feature“All That Breathes” * WINNER“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” “I Didn’t See You There”“The Territory”“What We Leave Behind”Best International Feature: “Athena”“The Banshees of Inisherin”“Corsage”“Decision to Leave”“Happening” *WINNER“Saint Omer”Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director AwardCharlotte Wells for “Aftersun” Owen Kline for “Funny Pages” Elegance Bratton for “The Inspection” Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic for “Murina” Beth de Araújo for “Soft & Quiet” Jane Schoenbrun for “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair “Best Screenplay: “After Yang,” Kogonada“Armageddon Time,” James Gray“Catherine Called Birdy,” Lena Dunham“Tár,” Todd Field *WINNER“Women Talking,” Sarah Polley, based upon the book by Miriam ToewsOutstanding Lead PerformanceCate Blanchett in “Tár” Danielle Deadwyler in “Till”Dale Dickey in “A Love Song”Colin Farrell in “After Yang” Brendan Fraser in “The Whale” Paul Mescal in “Aftersun”Thandiwe Newton in “God’s Country” Aubrey Plaza in “Emily the Criminal” Taylor Russell in “Bones and All “Michelle Yeoh in “Everything Everywhere All At Once” Outstanding Supporting PerformanceJessie Buckley in “Women Talking” Raúl Castillo in “The Inspection” Hong Chau in “The Whale” Brian Tyree Henry in “Causeway” Nina Hoss in “Tár” Noémie Merlant in “Tár” Ke Huy Quan in “Everything Everywhere All At Once”Mark Rylance in “Bones and All “Gabrielle Union in “The Inspection” Ben Whishaw in “Women Talking”Breakthrough Performer: Anna Cobb in “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair”Frankie Corio in “Aftersun”Anna Diop in “Nanny” Gracija Filipovic in “Murina” *WINNERKalie Reis in “Catch the Fair One”Breakthrough Series –

Canadian distributor Sphere Film has signed a multi-picture deal with A24 under which it will handle the release of nine of its titles in Canada.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Canada’s Sphere Films has signed a multi-picture deal with A24 that will cover nine of the U.S. studio’s films in the Canadian market. Under the deal, Sphere Films will theatrically release pics including Charlotte Wells’ Cannes breakout “Aftersun,” which is currently screening as part of TIFF, and Ari Aster’s “Disappointment Blvd.” starring Joaquin Phoenix. The latter is believed to be A24’s biggest production to date. The A24 deal comes off the back of Sphere Films’ acquisition of MK2 Mile End in April. Charles Tremblay, former boss of MK2 Mile End and now the president of Sphere Films, said: “We felt that by joining a larger media company like Sphere that would help our chances of being a larger distributor than on our own.”

Cohen Media Group hopes a Spanish film can dent the tough market for foreign language fare, Bleecker Street is out with a hostage drama and A24 presents Owen Kline’s directorial debut about a teenage cartoonist as the arthouse market flexes more muscle than it has in weeks.

Rambunctious and rough-textured in ways reminiscent of the independent filmmaking boom that had fully erupted out of New York City by the mid-late 2000s, “Funny Pages” is the debut directorial feature by Owen Kline, previously best known for co-starring in one such film from that era.  In Noah Baumbach’s painfully semi-autobiographical “The Squid and the Whale,” about a middle-class New York family torn asunder by divorce, Kline played the 12-year-old brother of Jesse Eisenberg’s neurotic teen; his character’s compulsive habit of masturbating in public added to the film’s already-laudable cringe factor.

Naman Ramachandran Ana de Armas will be honored with the Hollywood Rising-Star Award at the Deauville American Film Festival (Sept. 2-11).

If you don’t remember Owen Kline, well, that’s ok, you probably don’t have that much reason to, he didn’t start in that many films. But if you’re an indie cinephile, you might remember him playing the little boy in Noah Baumbach‘s coming of age film, “The Squid In The Whale,” playing the younger brother of Jesse Eisenberg.

It’s the plight of the plightless: a kid from a comfortable, upper-middle-class background wants to be some manner of artist, except that he’s (and it does seem to be a he more often than not) bereft of the experience, grit, or outsider credibility that define the role models he hopes he could one-day call influences. He ventures out into the big bad world in search of something to put a bit of hair on his creative chest, only to face the spiny question of whether this effort to get real is just class tourism, a jaunt in the gutter that one phone call to Dad could prevent.

It’s the plight of the plightless: a kid from a comfortable, upper-middle-class background wants to be some manner of artist, except that he’s (and it does seem to be a he more often than not) bereft of the experience, grit, or outsider credibility that define the role models he hopes he could one-day call influences. He ventures out into the big bad world in search of something to put a bit of hair on his creative chest, only to face the spiny question of whether this effort to get real is just class tourism, a jaunt in the gutter that one phone call to Dad could prevent.

Talk about multiverses. In a parallel cosmos that is apparently just around the corner from you right now, a bunch of boys — and grown men — are living a life so different from yours that they might as well be aliens. You can see them in Owen Kline’s Directors’ Fortnight title Funny Pages, hanging out all day in a store that sells old comics, arguing about the finer plot points in the first superhero comics and the originality or otherwise of their own homemade zines.

“1976,” Manuela Martelli“El Agua” (“The Water”), Elena Lopez Riera“The Dam,” Ali Cherri“The Super 8 Years,” Annie Ernaux and David Ernaux-Briot“Ashkal,” Youssef Chebbi“The Five Devils,” Lea Mysius“De Humani Corporis Fabrica,” Verena Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor“Continental Drift,” Lionel Baier“Enys Men,” Mark Jenkin“Falcon Lake,” Charlotte Le Bon“Will-o’-the-Wisp,” Joao Pedro Rodrigues“Funny Pages,” Owen Kline“God’s Creatures,” Anna Rose Holmer & Saela Davis“Harkis,” Philippe Faucon“Men,” Alex Garland (special screening)“The Mountain,” Thomas Salvador“Pamfir,” Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk“The Green Perfume,” Nicholas Pariser (closing film)“Paris Memories,” Alice Winocour“Under the Fig Trees,” Erige Sehiri“One Fine Morning,” Mia-Hansen Love“A Male,” Fabian Hernandez