FALLING directed by Viggo Mortensen
FALLING directed by Viggo Mortensen

The new trailer debuted for Actor Viggo Mortensen’s directorial debut, Falling, an intense intimate drama about a son’s relationship with his aging father. The film, also starring Viggo Mortensen, along with Lance Henriksen, Terry Chen, Sverrir Gudnason, Hannah Gross, Laura Linney, and Grady McKenzie explores the fractures and contrasts that make up a modern family.

Falling will have its European premiere at the 68th San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain where Viggo Mortensen will be presented with a Donostia Award, followed by the Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film originally world premiered at Sundance Film Festival and was also an official selection of Cannes Film Festival.

John Petersen (Mortensen) lives with his partner Eric (Chan) and their adopted daughter Monica in Southern California. His father Willis (Henriksen/Gudnason) is a farmer whose attitudes and behaviour belong to a far more traditional era and family model. When Willis travels to Los Angeles for an indefinite stay with John’s family in order to search for a place to retire, these two very different worlds collide.

Willis’ behaviour can be both caustic and funny – with outbursts that shock his liberal family. This endears him to grand-daughter Monica, but it almost proves too much for John, and his sister Sarah (Linney), bringing old wounds back to the surface and creating new ones along the way. With Willis’ memory in rapid decline, his thoughts turn back to his first wife Gwen (Gross), a love that still consumes him a lifetime later. As father and son confront the events that have torn them apart, we see the gamut of their relationship over 40 years, and their differing recollections of John’s mother, Gwen: from dark to light, from rage and jealousy through to acceptance, laughter, and hard-won grace.

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