“Buster’s Mal Heart” has secured a theatrical release. Deadline reports that Well Go USA has acquired rights in North America, as well as some other territories, for the surreal psychological thriller written and directed by Sarah Adina Smith. The film will hit theaters in early 2017 with a digital and home video release to follow later in the year.
“Mr. Robot” actor Rami Malek stars in the film. The Golden Globe winner plays “a mountain man who squats in empty vacation homes while on the run from the authorities. But in another life, he was a loving, stable family guy known as Jonah,” Deadline writes.
“From the first frame of the film, the talent on display in ‘Buster’s Mal Heart’ is immediately apparent,” said Dylan Marchetti, SVP Acquisitions and Theatrical Releasing at Well Go USA Entertainment. “We think audiences around the globe will respond the same way we did, which was to exit the theater with our jaws on the floor.”
“Buster’s Mal Heart” was financed by Gamechanger Films, which provides equity financing to narrative feature films directed by women. The film had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. Along with Malek, the cast includes Kate Lyn Sheil (“House of Cards”), DJ Qualls (“The Man in the High Castle”), Toby Huss (“Halt and Catch Fire”), and Lin Shaye (“Ouija”).
Smith described the film to Women and Hollywood as “the story of a man split in two. Each side demands a conversation with the unnameable forces of the Universe. I like to think of it as a comedy,” she explained, “because there’s nothing more absurd than screaming into the void!”
Smith made her feature directorial debut with 2014’s “The Midnight Swim,” a drama about three half-sisters who return home after their mother drowns in a nearby lake. The film won numerous prizes on the festival circuit, including the Audience Award at AFI Fest. Smith directed a segment in this year’s “Holidays,” a horror anthology.
When we asked Smith what she wants people to think after they watch the film, she answered, “I suspect there will be many different interpretations of the movie, but that’s not because I didn’t have my own very clear ideas about it: It’s because there are many different outlooks on the human condition, freedom, sanity, and God, or lack thereof,” she speculated. “My hope is that the audiences will leave with a feeling peace — a rare and special peace, however fragile or fleeting.”
