What a week! With all the madness at Sundance, we hardly got a chance to update and let you know how things were going with our screenings. Well, now we have a little breathing room before Berlin and can change all that. The long and the short of it is – Keep The Lights On definitely made it’s mark at the Sundance Film Festival. We were one of the most buzzed about films at the festival, and also one of the best reviewed. Salon.com‘s Andrew O’Hehir described the film as “an instant landmark in gay cinema, and easily the finest dramatic film I saw at Sundance this year”, while LA Weekly‘s Karina Longworth called it “a richly textured, sad and beautiful autobiographical love story.” David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter said of the film, “Breaking new ground in contemporary American gay cinema, Ira Sachs’ deeply personal drama Keep the Lights On examines a volatile 10-year relationship between two divergently addictive personalities, observed in a style that is loose and impressionistic while at the same time microscopic in its intimate detail.”
Other reviews compared Sachs’ work favorably to films like Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage and Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, last year’s groundbreaking gay English romance film. The lead performances of KTLO actors Thure Lindhardt, Zachary Booth, and Julianne Nicholson were also praised by critics across the board. Around the festival, word of mouth built steadily over the week, with straight audiences and gay alike finding common spaces to appreciate the film’s unique take on a fractured relationship story. For a full rundown of all the reviews and press mentions KTLO accumulated over the week, click below. We’ll be updating the list as more reviews roll in. Next stop – Berlin!
Justin Chang & Peter DeBruge, Variety
Ray Greene, Box Office Magazine
Mike Vilensky, Wall St. Journal
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