Vertigo Releasing revealed the official trailer for ‘Hoard’, the feature film directorial debut of writer/director Luna Carmoon. The drama/thriller film tells the life of a woman struggling to live under her mother’s obsession with hoarding.
Starring in the film are Saura Lightfoot-Leon, Lily-beau Leach, Deba Hekmat, Joseph Quinn, Hayley Squires, and Samantha Spiro.
Release Date
Directed by Luna Carmoon, ‘Hoard’ opens in US theaters on September 6, 2024.
Synopsis
1984: There’s a landfill in our living room.
Mother and Maria’s world feels like sparkles down spines, Christmas is every day in their nidus of love; the two of them like silvery-catching magpies. The pair spend their evenings on pilgrimages in South East London, nights where fireworks crumble over them as they carefully collect their goods. Tin foil balls, chalk, paper, all things neglected, left for the foxes or bin men, they adopt for their nest. They Hoard infinite souvenirs from their night time walks, trolleys filled with sacks upon sacks of joy for their catalog of love that waits for them at the door.
At school, Maria is sleepy from the night voyages. Sometimes the stench sticks to her hair. If only they could smell the glee from it too. Her tiredness makes her forgetful. Night time is her and mothers time. Maria’s teachers and classmates make her aware for the first time of the foreignness of her and mother’s loving regime and she begins to question it entirely one lost afternoon. After one night of disrupting their routines that ends in an accident, Maria knows in her belly that she wouldn’t want it any other way.
Christmas is coming, the tinfoil ball tree is mounted with glowing bulbs, a children’s delight; the room glimmering of all things collected now shiny all still from the year before. Tin Drum plays. Maria goes to the corner shop and when she returns, something happens to Mother which changes her future forever.
1994: He handed her to me, its weight would come in waves.
Maria’s last day of school she walks waved home with her best friend of ten years Laraib. As she arrives home, at the top stairs, waiting, are two bare feet. A tall odd man, a stranger who has a familiar scent of trauma, a childhood pain, a gemini of knowing stings. His name is Michael and he has come to stay. The following days are slow and strange, full of leavings and returnings. A homecoming. The two become intertwined as the present is ruptured. Michael with Maria, Maria with the past, pilgrims, but for Maria the Hoardings have just begun. Nighttime becomes hers once more, rowing in it endlessly, finding new objects to treasure. Maria descends into madness, and it’s soon clear that she is hiding a much bigger secret, one that is both inexplicable and shocking.
In an interview with The Italian Reve, director Luna Carmoon shared the significance of the story to her life, saying, “These characters really helped me survive during hard times, it was them I would come home to from work, they were my housemates. No one was ever meant to see this story. Then I got angry, sadness turns in grief, which turns to anger, as these are the stages of grief, and I thought, “I don’t care if people are going to hate me if this story goes into the world, I want it to be out there” because I know people were going to relate to it.” She continues with, “There’s nothing more universal than love and grief, those are the two things that we don’t need language to understand, it doesn’t need translating.”
Reviews
Josh Slater-Williams in an IndieWire review praised lead actress Saura Lightfoot-Leon’s performance in the film, writing “The sometimes-rapid shifts in tone, even within the same scene, are aided to tremendous effect by the magnetic, fearless performance from Saura Lightfoot Leon.”
Kat Hughes in a The Hollywood News review gave the film a 4/5 score, writing, “Hoard is a film that feels deeply personal throughout, to the point where it almost feels wrong to be watching. This level of connection between viewer and material usually takes filmmakers years to achieve, and yet Carmoon has managed it with her debut.”
Official Trailer
Watch the official trailer for ‘Hoard’.