FLORA AND SON
Section: Gala Presentations
Director-screenwriter: John Carney
Logline: Irish director John Carney reinvents the musical with Flora and Son, swapping ornately choreographed razzamatazz for disarmingly earnest indie simplicity. The film features a revelatory performance from Eve Hewson (Robin Hood) as a young mother trying to connect with her son through their shared love of music. The film also stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jack Reynor and Orén Kinlan, in his first major role.
Distributor: Apple TV+
Premiere Date: September 7, 2023
Panelist: John Carney
Key Quotes: “The character of Flora grew organically. … I had a name and a visual of her, and the second she was on the dumpster pulling the guitar out, I kinda felt like I knew what kind of world she was going to inhabit. She’s a little bit nuts to be up there. She’s a little bit broke to be up there, and she finds the guitar, but it’s not for her; she brings it home and gives it to her son.” — John Carney
“I make these musical films because I felt that music was a big thing for me when I was a teenager, kinda like somebody threw me a lifeline. I was not a good student … [I was] getting into trouble, and I discovered music and it was a real hand up for me in my life. And my mother was the woman who facilitated that, financially; she bought me my first guitar and I wanted to honor that, but I didn’t want it to be a big sentimental, wordy drama, so I felt that music was an interesting way to say those things without saying them.” — John Carney
“[The final scene] has to really be about Flora from the flats. She got a guitar, and she’s playing her songs down at the pub. And that’s it, that’s the movie. She doesn’t get to go to Broadway, win Grammys or whatever — she plays a little gig in a small pub. … Hollywood tells us it has to be the moon, like we have to go and win everything when, in fact, the human stories that we recognize, they don’t seem to have to be huge, but they’re huge to us.” — John Carney
