Orlando, FL – – Today the Florida Film Festival announced that it would also be welcoming Academy Award®-winning actress Ellen Burstyn with a special screening of Requiem for a Dream (2000) on Friday, April 13^th from 7:30-11PM at Enzian Theater.

The program lineup for the 27th Annual Festival, April 6-15, 2018, was announced on March 14^th. The Festival will screen 183 films representing 38 countries, along with celebrity guest appearances, forums, and parties. Of the films selected, 152 have premiere status, including 23 world premieres. Full lineup, film descriptions, trailers, stills, and schedule available at: http://www.floridafilmfestival.com/

The Florida Film Festival is excited and honored to welcome the following special guests. All celebrity guests will be in attendance for a Q&A with our audience after their films. Pam Grier will also be available for a Meet & Greet after her Q&A for patrons who buy a Backstage Pass. The Backstage Pass includes the event, along with a meet & greet and photo opportunity afterwards. Patrons must supply their own camera for the photo opportunity.

To guarantee admission to all celebrity events and Backstage Pass access to Pam Grier’s event, as well as an opportunity to meet Ellen Burstyn, please purchase a Producer Pass. Film Lover Passholders will be granted early access to each celebrity event, but must purchase a ticket to attend.

CELEBRITY EVENTS AND APPEARANCES:

Opening Night Film & Party
Sponsored by Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor & Reed, P.A.

Friday, April 6, 6PM–1AM at Enzian & Eden Bar

6PM: Champagne reception for film guests
6:45PM: Welcome
7PM: American Animals followed by a Q&A with Blake Jenner
8:30PM: Party starts for “Party Only” ticket holders

Celebrate opening night of the 2018 Florida Film Festival with a thrilling premiere of American Animals and meet the film’s star, Blake Jenner. After the movie, sample food and cocktails from your favorite local spots—a moveable feast where you can mingle and celebrate with all the folks who will be your new best friends for the next ten days. Eat, drink, be merry, and discuss all the films you cannot wait to see at the festival ahead. This legendary party launches a non-stop, fun-filled, ten-day celebration of Film, Food, and Friends.

Participating restaurants, bars, and select vendors include:
Arthur’s Catering, Bubbalou’s Bodacious BBQ, Cuisiniers, Diageo, Eden Bar, Enzian Theater, Firefly Restaurant & Bar, Hawkers, Hourglass Brewing, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Rosen Shingle Creek, Roque Pub, The Sausage Shack, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, Terrapin Beer Co., Ten10 Brewing Company, and Tito’s Vodka

Opening Night Film: American Animals
Directed by Bart Layton
USA, 2018, 116 MIN
East Coast Premiere

Truth is almost always stranger than fiction. This true story of four middle-class suburban college students in Lexington, Kentucky, who decide to rob Transylvania University of millions of dollars in rare books is a heist movie for the ages. Director Bart Layton, whose previous film, the 2012 documentary The Imposter, hinged on a near disbelief that that the “true” events could have ever possibly occurred, flips the script on that idea by dramatizing a real event and casting a stellar group of actors, including Evan Peters (American Horror Story), Barry Keoghan (Dunkirk), Blake Jenner (Everybody Wants Some!!), and Jared Abrahamson (Netflix’s Travelers) to tell the tale. But in a Machiavellian twist, Layton intercutsAmerican Animals with footage of the real Spencer Reinhard, Warren Lipka, Eric Borsuk, and Chas Allen—who don’t agree on the narrative at hand but are willing to comment on it and sow seeds of doubt that the film is even getting it right. It’s a masterstroke of storytelling chicanery that will leave audiences amused, enthralled, and shocked at the tall tale.

Florida Film Festival Welcomes Blake Jenner

Rising star Blake Jenner is one of Hollywood’s most exciting and versatile young actors working today. Audiences can next see Jenner in the indie heist film American Animals starring alongside Evan Peters, Ann Dowd, and Barry Keoghan.

Jenner’s writing debut, the independent feature Juvenile in which he also stars, is a coming-of-age film about the nature of violence and the search for redemption. The film is directed and executive produced by Bradley Buecker (Glee and American Horror Story) and premiered at Austin’s Fantastic Fest earlier this year and was awarded the Rising Star Award at the San Diego Film Festival.

Jenner starred in the critically-acclaimed feature The Edge of Seventeen opposite Hailee Steinfeld and Woody Harrelson for legendary producer Jim Brooks. He also appeared alongside Logan Lerman and Elle Fanning in Sidney Hall for Academy Award®-winning director Shawn Christensen. Jenner was the lead in Richard Linklater’s (Boyhood, Dazed and Confused) nostalgia comedy feature Everybody Wants Some!![Note: Two exclamation points is correct. Peg] Television credits include playing series regular Ryder Lynn on the FOX hit comedy Glee and a recurring role on the CBS hit Supergirl. Jenner first broke out on the second season of The Glee Project where he was selected as one of fourteen contestants to compete and ultimately won the competition, landing him a role on Glee.

Jenner is from Miami and currently resides in Los Angeles.

Mr. Jenner will be in an attendance for a Q&A following the Opening Night Film.

An Evening with Pam Grier featuring Jackie Brown
Sunday, April 8, 7-11PM at Enzian

Pam Grier was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, one of four children of Gwendolyn Sylvia (Samuels), a nurse, and Clarence Ransom Grier Jr., an Air Force mechanic. Pam has been a major African-American star from the early 1970s. Her career started in 1971, when Roger Corman of New World Pictures launched her with The Big Doll House, about a women’s penitentiary, and The Big Bird Cage. Her strong performances put her into a five-year contract with Samuel Z. Arkoff of American-International Pictures, and she became a leading lady in action films such as Jack Hill’s Coffy and Foxy Brown, the comic strip character Friday Foster, and William Girdler’s Sheba, Baby. She continued working with American-International, where she portrayed William Marshall’s vampire victim in the Blacula sequel, Scream Blacula Scream.

During the 1980s she became a regular on Miami Vice and played a supporting role as an evil witch in Ray Bradbury’s and Walt Disney Pictures’ Something Wicked This Way Comes, then returned to action as Steven Seagal’s partner in Above the Law. Her most famous role of the 1990s was probably Jackie Brown, directed by Quentin Tarantino, which was an homage to her earlier 1970s action roles, She occasionally did supporting roles, as in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks!, In Too Deep, and a funny performance in Jawbreaker. She also appeared in John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars and co-starred with Snoop Dogg in Bones. Her entire career of over 40 years has brought only success for this beautiful and talented actress.

Jackie Brown

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

USA, 1997, 154 MIN

“Shut your raggedy-ass up and sit the fuck down!” For his third film, Quentin Tarantino adapted the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch, switching the action from Miami to LA and changing the central character from white to black (thank heavens!). A witty homage to both Leonard’s crime fiction and the blaxploitation genre of the 1970s, it tells the story of Jackie Brown (Pam Grier), a desperate flight attendant who has been running cash for Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), a small-time Los Angeles arms dealer. Ordell lives with perpetually stoned beach bunny Melanie (Bridget Fonda) and teams with his old buddy Louis (Robert DeNiro), just out of prison. When Jackie is busted by an earnest ATF agent (Michael Keaton), she figures that the only way out of her dilemma is to double-cross both parties. She joins forces with a chivalrous bail bondsman (Robert Forster) and crafts a plan to steal half-a-million dollars in cash from Ordell even as she nails him for the Feds. An Oscar® nominee for Best Supporting Actor (Forster) and double Golden Globe® nominee for Best Actress (Grier) and Best Actor (Jackson), the wildly entertaining Jackie Brown is an explosive mix of edgy humor and intense action that gets better with each viewing.

Ms. Grier will be in attendance for a Q&A following the film. A Meet & Greet is also available after her Q&A for patrons who buy a Backstage Pass. The Backstage Pass includes the event, along with a meet & greet and photo opportunity afterwards. Patrons must supply their own camera for the photo opportunity.

An Evening with Ellen Burstyn, featuring Requiem for a Dream
Friday, April 13, 7:30-11PM at Enzian

Ellen Burstyn’s sixty-year acting career encompasses film, stage, and television. In 1975 she became the third woman in history to win both a Tony Award and an Academy Award® in the same year, for her work in Same Time, Next Year on Broadway and the film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. She has received five other Academy Award nominations. She has been nominated for seven Golden Globe awards, winning in 1979 for Same Time, Next Year. She became a “triple crown winner” when she received her first Emmy for a guest appearance in Law & Order: SVU (2009), and won again in 2013 for her role in the miniseries Political Animals. She has been nominated for an Emmy six additional times. In 2014 she was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. Her films includeThe Last Picture Show (1971-Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations), The Exorcist (1974), Resurrection (1981), and Requiem for a Dream (2000). Her recent films include Draft Day (2014), The Calling (2014), Interstellar (2014), The Age of Adaline(2015), Custody (2016), and Wiener Dog (2016). Soon to be released are The Tale, Nostalgia, A Little Something For Your Birthday, and House of Tomorrow. She made her Broadway debut in Fair Game (1957). Other Broadway credits include 84 Charing Cross Road (1982), Shirley Valentine (1989), Shimada (1991), and Sacrilege (1995). She recently played the role of Jaques in As You Like It off-Broadway at the Classic Stage Company. Other off-Broadway performances include The Little Flower of East Orange (2008) and The Atmosphere of Memory (2011). In London, she starred in The Children’s Hour (2011). In 2001, she received the Genesis Award as an Executive Producer of the made-for-TV movie Within These Walls. She was the first woman elected president of Actors Equity Association (1982–1985). She is co-president with Al Pacino and Alec Baldwin of the Actors Studio and has also served as artistic director. In 2006, she published her memoir Lessons in Becoming Myself.

Requiem for a Dream

USA, 2000, 102 min, Rated R

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Ellen Burstyn delivers one of her greatest performances in this gritty, emotionally charged film set amidst the abandoned beaches and faded glory of Coney Island, Brooklyn, from director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Wrestler). Based on the novel by celebrated author Hubert Selby Jr., this powerful fable about love and addiction intricately links the lives of a lonely widowed mother (Burstyn), her son Harry (Jared Leto), his beautiful girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly), and his best friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans). A Best Actress nominee for Burstyn at the Oscars®, Golden Globes, and the SAG Awards, Requiem for a Dream is a chilling tale of four human beings pursuing their own individual vision of happiness. Even as everything begins to fall apart, they refuse to let go, plummeting with their dreams into a nightmarish gut-wrenching freefall.

Ms. Burstyn will be in attendance for a Q&A following the film.