The Film Society of Lincoln Center, the organization that presents the annual New York Film Festival, and Jaeger-LeCoultre has named writer-director Athina Rachel Tsangari as their 2015 filmmaker in residence.
Tsangari, whose upcoming comedy “Chevalier” is due to premiere at the Locarno Film Festival later this year, will use her residency to work on her newest project, “White Knuckles,” a screwball action thriller about two criminal sisters. Tsangari is the third recipient of the residency that has partnered FSLC with Jaeger-LeCoultre since the program launched in 2013.
The first filmmaker selected for the program, Andrea Arnold (“Wuthering Heights”), used the residency for script development and pre-production of “American Honey,” which will star Shia LaBeouf. The 2014 resident, Lisandro Alonso (“Jauja”), began work on an in-development project that aims to begin shooting soon in the U.S.
Tsangari, who served as co-producer on Richard Linklater’s “Before Midnight” and also has worked as a producer on Greek films including “Dogtooth,” made her first movie in 2001, a lo-fi science fiction road movie called “The Slow Business of Going.” More recently she gained attention for her second feature, “Attenberg,” which screened as part of the 2011 New Directors/New Films program, the annual festival presented by FSLC and the Museum of Modern Art. The film, about a 23-year-old woman’s first sexual relationship with a man, also was Greece’s submission to the Academy Awards in 2012.
Her latest movie, “Chevalier,” is a buddy comedy set on a luxury yacht in the Aegean Sea. Other projects have included 2012 outing “The Capsule,” which premiered at art exhibition dOCUMENTA(13) and also screened at Locarno, Toronto and Sundance.
The FSLC residency program is timed to coincide with the New York Film Festival, which allows residents to mix with the filmmaking community that gathers every year for the fest. This year’s NYFF will open with Robert Zemeckis’ “The Walk,” in which Joseph Gordon Levitt stars as the high-wire walker Philippe Petit.
