New York’s IFC Center played host Wednesday night to the NYC premiere of Todd Solondz’s latest, “Life During Wartime,” with stars Ally Sheedy, Dylan Riley Snyder and others among the attendees.
“When we first saw it at Telluride, we knew we wanted it but we tried not to get too excited,” IFC’s Ryan Werner said prior to the screening, introducing the feature along with colleague Arianna Bocco. Solondz himself waltzed up to the stage for a quick intro, dressed in a yellow plaid shirt. “Each film I make is always a puzzle,” he said. “The pieces may not look like they connect…[but] I like to think I have a sense of the characters…”
In the film, Solondz (“Welcome to the Dollhouse”) revisits the characters of his 1998 disturbing drama “Happiness.” Billed as a sequel of sorts to the Cannes winner, the film takes place ten years after the events that transpired in “Happiness.” Three sisters, Joy (Shirley Henderson), Trish (Allison Janney), and Helen (Ally Sheedy) struggle to find their places in a volatile world. Intersecting stories of the sisters, and the loves in their lives, overlap to create a searing portrait of a family’s quest for forgiveness.
Following the screening, guests headed down Sixth Avenue to Italian restaurant Scuderia.
IFC Films opens the film, which won a screenwriting award last year at the Venice Film Festival, on July 23rd.
[Nigel Smith contributed to this article.]
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