Sundance Film Festival

Alfredo de Villa‘s new film, Adrift in Manhattan, will have its world premiere in competition at the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday, January 21. A poignant drama starring Heather Graham (Bobby), William Baldwin (The Squid and the Whale), Dominic Chianese (“The Sopranos”), Victor Rasuk (Lords of Dogtown) and Erika Michels (Yellow), Adrift in Manhattan is the third feature directed by de Villa, one of the fast-rising young directors raised in Mexico and working in the U.S.

“The spine of the story,” says de Villa, “is to seek connections, to reach out in the most unlikely of places. Geography affects the main action; the setting is a metropolis of the present. We contrast the idea of modernity, reflected through professional settings, public transit and the practical negotiation of any big city, with the protagonists‘ lack of spiritual fulfillment.”

Adrift in Manhattan is an attempt to look at the ways in which three urban individuals in the midst of spiritual crisis seek to establish, or as de Villa says, “are forced to establish by the pull of their respective psychic needs,” a link between their private and public selves.

Produced by Steven J. Brown, Joshua Blum, and Ian Jessel, Adrift in Manhattan, one of the eagerly anticipated films of this year‘s Sundance Festival, is based on an original screenplay by Nat Moss and de Villa and marks a return to New York, where de Villa shot his previous films Washington Heights and Yellow.

Adrift in Manhattan is a Cineglobe and Washington Square Films production and, in a year, which has heralded Award-winning films from Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Guillermo del Toro, de Villa is poised to follow in their illustrious footsteps in 2007.