Closing Presentation | Lead Actor Brady Jandreau Attending!
Admission includes entrance to the Closing Night Party at the A-Mill Club Room following the film screening.
In Chloé Zhao’s resoundingly human film The Rider, the narrative is framed as both documentary and drama focused on 20-year-old rising rodeo star Brady Blackburn (played by Brady Jandreau) as he undergoes a crisis of identity. In America’s heartland, Brady suffers a head injury that almost kills him; forcing him to pick up the pieces of a life that has forever changed. A truly unique feature, the characters in The Rider, including Brady, are members of the actual Jandreau family, who have experienced events identical to many in the film.
Both a meditation on the meaning of masculinity in America and an exercise in healing broken dreams, Zhao’s film is a one-of-a-kind work of cinema that relies on the strength of the Jandreaus, particularly Brady himself. At the film’s heart is the story of the titular young rider facing a crossroads—to build back his identity, or create something new.
Director Biography
Chinese filmmaker Chloé Zhao studied film at Mount Holyroke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. 2015 saw Zhao’s feature-film debut with Songs My Brother Taught Me, a work that screened at Sundance and as part of the Director’s Fortnight selection at Cannes.
Press
"The Rider is a rare gem, a small, acutely observed portrait of a few lives on what used to be the frontier but is now a desolate backwater." - Hollywood Reporter
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