UPLOAD FILMS PRESS SHEET

In 2006, Todd Williams, John Portnoy and Nick Thurlow founded Upload Films in order to provide a new home for filmmaker-based projects that expand the vocabulary of independent film. Combining production, finishing funds, and post-production services under one roof, we develop our own projects and team up with other producers to bring engaging films with strong visions to the screen.

Shotgun Stories, the first film completed by Upload Films had its world premier at the Berlin International film festival on February 14th 2007. It has since screened at Tribeca, Newport, Seattle, Sydney, Vancouver, Chicago and Austin. It won the “Student Jury” prize in Newport, the “New American Cinema” award from Seattle and took home the Grand Jury Prize in the Narrative Competition at the Austin Film Festival. Daily Variety hailed the film as “A point-blank buckshot blast of inarticulate American rage, played with the disarmingly placid inevitability of Greek tragedy… [a] precisely modulated yet cumulatively forceful story of a rural family feud turned deadly.” (Eddie Cockrell, Daily Variety, Feb 12th 2007). Angsar Vogt of the Berlin Film Festival said “…simultaneously gentle and violent. Shotgun Stories is certainly one of the most impressive independent American productions of the year.” (Ansgar Vogt, Berlinale Festival Program)

Most recently, The Babysitters, starring John Leguizamo, Cynthia Nixon, and Katherine Waterston, premiered at The Toronto International Film Festival. The directorial debut of David Ross, The Babysitters is a slow burn film about ambition and deception in middle-class suburbia. Sarah Gopaul of Canada’s PopJournalism.ca, calls The Babysitters “…a dark situational comedy that leaves audiences laughing uneasily and grappling with [the] moral discomfort resultant of their enjoyment.” (Sarah Gopaul, PopJournalism.com, September 17th 2007) The Babysitters is being released domestically by Peace Arch Entertainment in the spring of 2008.

Upload Films is currently developing a number of other features for both the theatrical and DVD markets.

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