LOVING HIGHSMITH, A Film by Eva Vitija
Loving Highsmith Takes an Intimate Look at the Life and Lovers of the Carol, Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley Novelist
Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones) Voices Patricia Highsmith in the Doc Opening Theatrically via Zeitgeist Films in Association with Kino Lorber:
Begins Sept. 2, 2022 at Film Forum in New York City
Begins Sept. 9, 2022 at Landmark’s NuArt Theatre in Los Angeles
Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber, two of the leading distribution companies for art-house and international films in the U.S., is proud to release theatrically Eva Vitija’s Loving Highsmith, an intimate documentary portrait of the novelist Patricia Highsmith that casts new light on her life and oeuvre. The film opens Sept. 2 at Film Forum in New York City and Sept. 9 at Landmark’s NuArt Theatre in Los Angeles.
Based on Patricia Highsmith’s personal writings and accounts of her family and lovers, including newly published diaries and notebooks, Loving Highsmith made its world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival and bowed at the Frameline Film Festival in June. Written and directed by Eva Vitija, the film is produced by Franziska Sonder and Maurizius Staerkle Drux, and co-produced by Carl-Ludwig Rettinger in co-production with Lichtblick Film, SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen, RSI Radio Televisione Svizzera and ZDF/Arte.
Loving Highsmith is a unique look at the life of celebrated American author Patricia Highsmith, focusing on Highsmith’s quest for love and her troubled identity through her personal diaries and the intimate reflections of her lovers, friends and family. The film sheds new light on her life and writing, the best known of which were adapted for the big screen: Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Carol, a partially autobiographical novel and the first lesbian story with a happy ending in 1950s America. But Highsmith herself was forced to lead a double life and had to hide her vibrant love affairs from her family and the public, reflecting on the ever-present subject only in her unpublished writings. Beautifully interweaving archival material of Highsmith and her most famous adaptations with excerpts from her unpublished writing voiced by actress Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones), Loving Highsmith is a vivid, touching portrait of one of our most fascinating and complex writers.
“Patricia Highsmith made a lasting impression upon me even as a small child,” said Loving Highsmith director Eva Vitija. “My curious fascination only became stronger since I began to examine Highsmith’s life more closely. This mysterious attraction is also something that many of her readers are unable to escape from. Her image is determined to a great extent by the last years of her life in Switzerland, and by her reputation as a grim, misanthropic crime writer. When I began to study Highsmith’s notebooks and diaries and met with her former friends in various countries, I was extremely moved and surprised to discover a completely different person. It became clear to me during the course of my research and the filming of this work how powerfully the themes of her writing are determined by love. I wanted to bring her “ever-present subject,” as she refers to her thoughts about homosexuality in her diaries, into the foreground in LOVING HIGHSMITH.”
About the Director
Eva Vitija was born 1973 in Basel. She received her diploma in screenwriting from the DFFB (German Film and Television Academy Berlin) in 2002. She has been working as a screenwriter in Switzerland and Germany since her screenplay training. She has written many feature film scripts for cinema and television, including MEIER, MARILYN, MADLY IN LOVE as well as SOMMERVÖGEL. In 2015, as part of her Master’s degree at the ZHdK (Zurich University of the Arts), she made her first feature-length documentary film as a director: DAS LEBEN DREHEN. It was nominated as best documentary for the Swiss Film prize and for an award from the International Documentary Association, Los Angeles and won various prizes, including the Prix de Soleure, the Basel film Prize and the Zurich Film Prize. Eva currently lives in Zurich.
Credits
Writer & Director - Eva Vitija
Voice of Patricia Highsmith - Gwendoline Christie
Narrator - Annina Butterworth
Cinematographer - Siri Klug
Editing - Rebecca Trösch
Music - Noël Akchoté
Producers - Franziska Sonder, Maurizius Staerkle Drux
Co-Producer - Carl-Ludwig Rettinger
Switzerland/Germany, 83 Minutes, 2022
Shooting Format: 2K
Screening Format: 2K DCP
Languages: English and German & French with English Subtitles
https://zeitgeistfilms.com/film/loving-highsmith
About Zeitgeist Films
Zeitgeist Films is a New York-based distribution company founded in 1988, which acquires and distributes the finest independent films from the U.S. and around the world. In 2017, Zeitgeist entered into a multi-year strategic alliance with renowned film distributor Kino Lorber.
Zeitgeist has distributed early films by such notable directors as Todd Haynes, Christopher Nolan, Francois Ozon, Olivier Assayas, Laura Poitras, Atom Egoyan and the Quay Brothers. Their catalog includes films from the world's most outstanding filmmakers including Margerethe Von Trotta, Ken Loach, Guy Maddin, Derek Jarman, Peter Greenaway, Yvonne Rainer, Andrei Zyvagintsev, Astra Taylor and Raoul Peck. Previous Zeitgeist Films releases in association with Kino Lorber include Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, Connie Hochman’s In Balanchine’s Classroom, Blerta Basholli’s Hive and most recently Daniel Raim’s Fiddler’s Journey To The Big Screen.
Five Zeitgeist films have been nominated for Academy Awards and one, Nowhere in Africa, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Their films have been honored by festivals throughout the world with Grand Prizes at Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, Tribeca, and IDFA in Amsterdam. The Museum of Modern Art honored Zeitgeist with a month-long, 20th anniversary retrospective of their films in 2008.
About Kino Lorber
With a library of over 4,000 titles, Kino Lorber Inc. has been a leader in independent art house distribution for 35 years, releasing 30 films per year theatrically under its Kino Lorber, Kino Repertory and Alive Mind Cinema banners, garnering seven Academy Award® nominations in nine years. In addition, the company brings over 350 titles yearly to the home entertainment and educational markets through physical and digital media releases. With an expanding family of distributed labels, Kino Lorber handles releases in ancillary media for Zeitgeist Films, Milestone Films, Cohen Media Group, Greenwich Entertainment, Artsploitation, Palisades Tartan, Menemsha Films, Raro Video, and others, placing physical titles through all wholesale, retail, and direct-to-consumer channels, as well as direct digital distribution through over 40 OTT services including all major TVOD and SVOD platforms. In 2019, the company launched its new art house digital channel Kino Now which features over 1300 titles from the acclaimed Kino Lorber library. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Kino Marquee initiative was launched pioneering "virtual cinema" releases of art house films with revenue shares that allow audiences to support almost 500 local independent theaters. Kino Lorber was honored with a Special Award from the New York Film Critics Circle for this effort. In 2021, the company launched Kino Cult, an AVOD channel specializing in new and rare, acclaimed genre films.
###
PRESS HIGHLIGHTS: