WILDCAT
Section: Special Presentation
Director: Ethan Hawke
Screenwriters: Shelby Gaines, Ethan Hawke
Logline: Ethan Hawke directs his daughter Maya Hawke in a film that explores the life and art of American author Flannery O’Connor. The film focuses on a key period in the author’s life, imagining the young writer as she perfects her process and commits to her unique and deeply personal fiction at the cost of her own comfort and contentment. The pic also stars Laura Linney and Philip Ettinger.
Sales: UTA, CAA
Premiere Date: September 11, 2023
Panelists: Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke
Key Quotes: “My dad and I have always loved talking about faith and imagination, and we sort of saw a way to make a movie about our own relationship to the creative act and a spiritual act through the guise of Flannery O’Connor, who is a deeply creative and deeply faithful person.” — Maya Hawke
“She said it. Flannery O’Connor was a springboard for a chance for us to disguise something really personal to us in the framework of a biopic.” — Ethan Hawke
“I knew I wanted to play this character, but I had no Idea what Dad was talking about — how you could make a movie about her that was interesting but didn’t artificially create plot in her life where there wasn’t one, where you didn’t make a romantic relationship much more important than it ever was?” — Maya Hawke
“We don’t now Flannery O’Connor, we didn’t know her and what she was really like, but she shared with us her dreams, and they’re beautiful dreams in these short stories that she wrote. You can study these dreams and you can see her in the Jim Crow South, you start to see her in the soil she grew in. So different things start to appear that are very complex and interesting if you let it evolve.” — Ethan Hawke
