A24 unveiled the official trailer for Janet Planet, the coming-of-age film starring Julianne Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler, Elias Koteas, Will Patton, and Sophie Okonedo.
The film is described as an “honest, endearing and occasionally “owie” portrait of how an 11-year-old girl’s clingy relationship to her single mom evolves over the course of the summer between fifth and sixth grades.”
Release Date
Directed by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker, Janet Planet world premiered at the 50th Telluride Film Festival, then screened at the New York Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival in the Panorama section; and will be released in theaters on June 21, 2024.
Synopsis
In rural Western Massachusetts, 11-year-old Lacy spends the summer of 1991 at home, enthralled by her own imagination and the attention of her mother, Janet. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker captures a child’s experience of time passing, and the ineffability of a daughter falling out of love with her mother, in this singularly sublime film debut.
“I don’t want to universalize it but there’s a very deep sensual love children have for mothers at an early age. I was interested in capturing the period, when that begins to change, and possibly rupture, as it inevitably does,” says Baker.
“I did not want to be overly nostalgic. I wanted to convey the feeling I remember ’91 having, of things being very detailed and specific when you’re a kid. Time moves very quickly or glacially — I wanted to convey some of that elliptic quality time can have.”
Review
Guardian review gave the film a ‘delicate’ 4 out of 5 stars, writing, “Childhood boredom, loneliness, homesickness, the arduously languid days of summer – these are the opening notes of Baker’s nostalgic, suffusive film, which chooses the formative ordinary over dramatic convention at every turn.”
BFI Sight and Sound review called the film ‘warm and understated’ saying, “Debut screenwriter-director Annie Baker’s Janet Planet is a careful, mostly quiet late-summer tale that’s rich in character and nuance, set in 1991. There’s no notable action, beyond the occasionally stormy everyday woes of single mum Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and her 11-year-old daughter Lacy (an auspicious first screen appearance from Zoe Ziegler), so the film bears an unmistakable ring of truth.”
Official Trailer
Watch the official trailer for Janet Planet