Hello Palm Beach!
Allow me to introduce myself – I’m Barbara Scharres, the new artistic director for the 2024 edition of the Donald M. Ephraim Sun & Stars International Film Festival presented by MorseLife. I hope to have the pleasure of meeting you in person when the festival is held February 27 – March 5 at the Rinker Playhouse at the Kravis Center and March 8 – 10 at the Paragon Theaters in Delray Beach.
Attending a film festival is a thrilling adventure in discovery. It can be about celebrating a new film by a world-famous director or star, discovering new talent, being surprised by a hit from an emerging nation, or all of those things in the course of a few exciting days.
I’m a longtime veteran of film curating and festival programming, as well as a film journalist who has traveled the world writing festival coverage for outlets including RogerEbert.com. Pre-production preparation is the key to any successful film, and the same is true with your enjoyment of the Donald M. Ephraim Sun & Stars International Film Festival.
Please enjoy our monthly newsletter as we begin the countdown. Themes and recommendations will vary from month to month and we’d love to hear your feedback.
While nothing beats the shared experience of discovery we will enjoy at the Festival, I invite you to join me on a meandering journey through some interesting home streaming possibilities available from online platforms. Aside from the industry strikes, the biggest film news this summer is the runaway success of Christopher Nolan’s OPPENHEIMER and Greta Gerwig’s BARBIE, both currently breaking box office records in theaters and bringing their respective stars, Cillian Murphy and Margot Robbie a career-high bonanza of publicity. Let’s take a look at a few of their past roles.
PEAKY BLINDERS
Prior to OPPENHEIMER, the talents of versatile Irish actor Cillian Murphy (59 roles and counting) came to wide international notice with his starring role over six seasons (2013-2022) of the evocative and obsessively watchable streaming series PEAKY BLINDERS. As the ambitious, charismatic and dangerously volatile Thomas Shelby, he is a WWI veteran returning home to grimy Birmingham, England in 1918, jobless and shunned by society for his Irish Gypsy heritage. Over three decades, by force of will, cunning and violence he builds a formidable underworld crime empire with his close-knit Irish-Romani family at the core, as he connives his way to wealth and political power.
THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY
In 2006, Murphy walked the Cannes Film Festival red carpet as the star of THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY by multi-award-winning UK director Ken Loach. In this sweeping historical saga set in 1920 during the Irish war for independence, Murphy portrays one of two brothers caught up in the perilous guerrilla struggle against occupying British forces. The film brought Loach his first Cannes Palme d’Or, the festival’s prestigious first prize, and brought Murphy to a new level of name recognition.
GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING
Three years earlier, in 2003, Murphy played a supporting role opposite Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth in the international hit GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING. This fictional 17th-century-set tale goes behind the scenes in the household of Dutch Master painter Johannes Vermeer to portray the artist’s obsession with the teenage serving girl who became the model for one of his most beloved works. In his first historical period role, Murphy is cast as Johansson’s clandestine young love interest. The film debuted at a host of international film festivals including Toronto, before opening theatrically and going on to garner three Oscar nominations.
I,TONYA
Australian native Margot Robbie is an exquisite real-life doll, but BARBIE is not her first turn at portraying a real-world figure. She received the first of her two Oscar nominations for her role as notorious bad-girl competitive figure skater Tonya Harding in I, TONYA.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
In 2019, Robbie was featured in the supporting but very pivotal role of Sharon Tate in the huge all-star ensemble cast of Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar and Golden Globe-winning ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD. The film had it’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival amid enormous hoopla, and triggered that year’s most brutal knock-down drag ‘em-out fights for a seat among the thousands of industry delegates attending.
Tarantino’s wickedly hilarious, overheated, over-the-top revisionist history of a cataclysmic year in Hollywood takes the excess for which the director is known into the stratosphere, and incidentally renders the Manson family a bumbling pack of buffoons. Fear not, because in a Tarantino film only the bad guys die (and do they ever!)
Next month, get ready for a satirical and sometimes snarky look at the world of celebrity via some notable contemporary films available via streaming.
Think film, and think Sun & Stars,
