Janet Planet, the directorial debut of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of 2014’s The Flick, Annie Baker, will make its streaming debut on Max and its broadcast debut on HBO.
Set in Western Massachusetts, Janet Planet follows a young girl and her single-mother. Director Annie Baker described her debut feature as a story “about falling out of love with your mother.” The film stars Julianne Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler, Elias Koteas, Will Patton, and Sophie Okonedo.
Janet Planet will make its streaming debut on Max on November 1, 2024. The film will debut on HBO linear on November 2, 2024 at 8:00 p.m. ET.
The official synopsis of the film reads: 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. As the months pass, three visitors enter their orbit, all captivated by Janet and her spellbinding nature. In her solitary moments, Lacy inhabits an inner world so extraordinarily detailed that it begins to seep into the outside world. 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.
“There’s a certain feeling I used to have at 11, this feeling that a part of my brain was very powerful. I wanted to explore that moment just before 12 when you’re on the outskirts of the adult world, and you feel like a little wizard, because I felt like I hadn’t ever quite seen that captured on film the way I experienced it,” says Baker about the film. “I was thinking about how the child of a single parent can experience a person as a major part of their life, partly because of how slowly time can move for kids, and then one day literally never see that person again. I wanted to capture the sweet sadness of that, of not knowing that day was the last day you’d ever spend with that person.”
Janet Planet had its world premiere last year at the 50th Telluride Film Festival, The film was also screened at the 2023 New York Film Festival, the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, the 50th Seattle International Film Festival, and the 2024 Melbourne International Film Festival.
Watch the official trailer for Janet Planet.
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