People may be going home and some may have already filed their festival recaps, but Sundance isn’t over yet. I’ve pretty much run out of real trailers to look at, though. There are technically some out there that I haven’t reviewed, but they’re for movies I really haven’t felt that inclined to highlight. So, on my last day of writing about the (disappointing) marketing of Sundance films, I’m taking a look at two of Sundance Channel’s “Meet the Filmmaker” videos, which kind of serve as unofficial trailers to the two films I’ve become most excited about.

The first (above) is for Ballast, which Karina has reviewed. I don’t know if it is her favorite dramatic film of the fest, but she and others have written favorably enough about it that I’m hoping to somehow see it in the “real world”. The little bit of footage doesn’t give us much and director Lance Hammer’s description is also not the best sell, but it hardly matters. This is one film that has garnered my attention through its reception, and so it’s best to leave it to the buzz to get us to see it. Unfortunately, the last scheduled Sundance screening for Ballast was this morning, but if it finds any awards success, it will receive more showtimes this weekend. Otherwise, we non-festival attendees will have to hope for at least some minor theatrical distributor to pick it up. For more of Spout’s coverage of this film, check out our interview with Hammer and the cast.

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Lance Hammer’s debut feature Ballast is garnering positive feedback here at Sundance (see Karina’s full review here). The film is a carefully paced drama about suicide, youth, and the emotional successes and failures that bind people together. Hammer’s influence was his setting, the Mississippi Delta. He cast only local actors, most of them with no professional experience. In this interview Hammer and stars Micheal Smith, Tarra Riggs and Johnny McPhail talk about working without a script, the bonds formed on set, and why throwing away the script is the first step toward truth in film.

Ballast interviews

Ballast is the kind of movie that I’m predisposed to enjoy––a slow, score-free and sometimes actually silent character study, offering the chance to spend some time watching real-ish people floating in and out of a crisis point, demanding that we engage by refusing to pander for that engagement––and yet its wonders still crept up on me. But falling for a movie is like falling for anything, I guess; you don’t really know it’s happening until the undeniable gut punch. For me, that moment came about two thirds of the way through Ballast, with a shot of a young boy lying on the floor, listening to adults speak off camera while absentmindedly stroking the belly of a giant dog. Like every shot in Lance Hammer’s feature directorial debut, it’s dead simple but beautifully composed, and it gets you by playing hard to get.

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