Cast

John Hawkes, Miranda July, Miles Thompson, Brandon Ratcliff, Carlie Westerman, Hector Elias, Brad William Henke, Natasha Slayton, Najarra Townsend

awards

Cannes IFF 2005 – Golden Camera, Critics Week grand prize, best feature film, young critics award, Sundance FF 2005 – special jury prize, Newport IFF 2005 – audience award, San Fransisco IFF 2005 – audience award, Philadelphia FF 2005 – best first time director, Stockholm FF 2005 – best directorial debut

Film description

Me and You and Everyone We Know is the directorial debut of Miranda July, one of the most original figures of independent American cinema. July wrote, directed, and starred in the film, which garnered four awards at Cannes, the Sundance Festival special jury prize, and numerous other prizes around the world, while American film critic Roger Ebert ranked it one of the top five films of the decade. Most directors would be willing to donate a kidney for such a debut and then leverage the film’s success to raise money for their next production. Most, but not July. The director unhurriedly working on other non-film projects. It remains to be seen if the production is the first for a new towering figure of auteur cinema.

The film is about communication and the role played by our imaginings of others. The plot is filled with encounters where people try to come to terms. Sounds simple, but July manages in a virtuosic style to present situations that are difficult to present and describe. Ebert describes the film as, constantly skating on thin ice, because July enters risky and controversial areas, but does it with such freshness that it discharges them. She is unpretentious, resulting in acceptance of human nature and the pleasure of observing what flows from it. He goes on to write, July’s film fits no genre, fulfills no expectations, creates its own rules, and seeks only to share a strange, lovable mind with us.

Michał Chaciński