Hal Hartley and David Gordon Green have together been selected to receive the 2015 American Film Festival Indie Star Award, which recognizes their outstanding contributions to the American indie film canon. Past winners include Todd Solondz, Jerry Schatzberg, Christine Vachon, and Whit Stillman. In addition to accepting their awards at AFF, both Harley and Green will present select screenings of their work in two dedicated programs.
Director, screenwriter, producer, and composer Hal Hartley has been a leading figure in American indie film since his first feature, The Unbelievable Truth, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival. Hartley garnered commercial success several years later with Henry Fool, a film that also earned him the Best Screenplay Award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. Since then, Harley made a series of successful shorts and features before making his most recent Kickstarter funded film, Ned Rifle, starring Liam Aiken, Aubrey Plaza, and Parker Posey. Posey is featured in all three of Hartley's trilogy films: Henry Fool, Fay Grim, and his latest, Ned Rifle. Hartley will screen his trilogy at AFF as an exclusive showcase.
David Gordon Green's Manglehorn, starring Al Pacino, Holly Hunter, and Harmony Korine, is the last in what critics have referred to as his "Texas trilogy." The other two Texas films, Prince Avalanche and Joe, have been hand-selected by Green himself to screen at the American Film Festival. He's also chosen to show his first feature film, George Washington, and his 2007 Sundance premiere, Snow Angels.
AFF is particularly proud to announce that Green's newest film, Our Brand Is Crisis, will make it to Wroclaw at AFF, following up its World premiere at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.
Green is an iconic Austin-based writer, producer, and director for TV and film. He first gained recognition with George Washington and All the Real Girls, and is also notable for his more recent hits including Pineapple Express and select episodes of HBO's Eastbound & Down. Green's work spans genre, as well as the commercial/indie landscape, and yet, he's consistently worked with many of the same collaborators from his college years at North Carolina School of the Arts. But his allegiance remains to Texas, where he was inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Austin Film Society at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival.
Hartley and Green will meet during the American Film Festival in Wrocław in a conversation (a double masterclass) about filmmaking and their careers on Saturday, October 24th.