UP AGAINST IT
Director: Trudie Styler
Screenwriters: Camille Griffin and Chloe King
Logline: Post-marital acrimony and parental devotion make strange bedfellows in Trudie Styler’s comedy, starring Oscar nominee Antonio Banderas and Eva Birthistle as co-parenting divorcees faced with an indecent proposal.
Sales agents: CAA (domestic), Beta Cinema (international)
Panelists: Trudie Styler, Director/Producer; Antonio Banderas, Actor; Eva Birthistle, Actor; Mickey Sumner, Actor; Selena Tan, Actor; Eden Hamilton, Actor
First screening: Saturday, September 12, TIFF Lightbox
Key quote: “I’m very proud of our healthcare system in the UK, and I’ve met many oncologists on this journey that I’ve been on with Up Against It. So I brought [the setting] over to the U.K. Tammy Griffin took on the reins from Chloe King, the original writer, and we went through like nine drafts before we came to one that actually landed. And then it was time to think about the casting. And Antonio Banderas has been in my life since the ’90s and we were great friends when he was living in Los Angeles. And then time went by, and we didn’t see each other for a long time. But when we rewrote the part of the male lead, I thought that really Antonio would knock this part out of the park.” – Trudie Styler
“I think very early I understood that there was not only our daughter having a cancer; there were many different cancers going on in the movie. There is a cancer in the relationship between Saffron [Eva Birthistle] and Alvaro, the character I play, and then as a consequence of something, an event that happens that I am not gonna reveal, other cancers come… So there are a lot of things to cure in the movie. We have to go through a process that is sometimes painful, sometimes funny, like life… I think it’s a movie about life, basically, and that was the thing that actually popped up to me from the beginning, from the moment that I read the script.” – Antonio Banderas
Watch the video above.
The Deadline Studio at TIFF is hosted at Bisha Hotel and presented by Volvo, Columbia, Patrón and Schwarzkopf.
