The 13th ZFF main program features two completely different coming-of-age films: Me, Earl and the Dying Girl and The New Kid.
Me, Earl and the Dying Girl, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s heart-warming and entertaining work, follows – as the title suggests – an anti-social teenager named Greg, his only friend Earl and their classmate Rachel, their new friend who was diagnosed with cancer. The film thrilled both the audience and the jury at Sundance, garnering both awards. This intelligent and original cinematic mixture of humour and sentimentality successfully avoids the (teen) comedy genre clichés. Made in only 25 days, the entire filmmaking process included making as many as 21 accompanying short films! Greg spends most of his free time filming parodies of (or homages to) film classics with his ‘co-worker’ Earl (Greg doesn’t like to call people friends), giving them names by parodying their original titles, such as Eyes Wide Butt, A Sockwork Orange etc. Interestingly, Gomez-Rejon, while choosing the films Greg and Earl will pay tribute to, decided to take the films by his favourite directors like Martin Scorsese. Incidentally, he started his career as Scorsese’s assistant (followed by Robert De Niro and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu).
The New Kid, the feature debut by former actor Rudi Rosenberg, portrays not so simple daily life of young teenagers: 14-year-old Benoit is the new kid in class, and on the way to acceptance and fitting in a new environment he will have to solve many doubts. Nevertheless, Rosenberg sprinkled this story with a lot of freshness and humour, similar to many cinematic predecessors like Rebel Without a Cause or Karate Kid. At San Sebastian International Film Festival the film won the main award in a section introducing emerging directors.