About
In this unflinchingly honest and refreshingly unsentimental coming-of-age story, 14-year-old Lila (Gina Piersanti, in a remarkable debut) spends a languid South Brooklyn summer playing third wheel to her promiscuous friend Chiara and Chiara’s boyfriend Patrick. Eager for her own sexual awakening, Lila gamely decides to pursue the older, thuggish Sammy, rumored to sleep with anyone. But as Lila’s overt advances unmask her inexperience and quiet desperation, she’s quickly pushed into frightening and unwelcome new territory.
Variance Films, Bay Bridge Productions and Infinitum Productions present:
A feature film written and directed by Eliza Hittman in association with The Group Entertainment and Versimilitude
Produced by Eliza Hittman, Shrihari Sathe and Laura Wagner
Executive Producers: Tyler Brodie, Hunter Gray, and Gill Holland
Casting by Henry Russell Bergstein
Cinematography by Sean Porter
Costume Design by Sarah Maiorino
Production Design by James Armstrong Boxer
Edited by Carlos Marques-Marcet and Scott Cummings
With
Gina Piersanti
Giovanna Salimeni
Ronen Rubinstein
Case Prime
Jesse Cordasco
Nicolas Jude Rosen
Richard Folio
Kevin Anthony Ryan
A feature film written and directed by Eliza Hittman in association with The Group Entertainment and Versimilitude
Produced by Eliza Hittman, Shrihari Sathe and Laura Wagner
Executive Producers: Tyler Brodie, Hunter Gray, and Gill Holland
Casting by Henry Russell Bergstein
Cinematography by Sean Porter
Costume Design by Sarah Maiorino
Production Design by James Armstrong Boxer
Edited by Carlos Marques-Marcet and Scott Cummings
With
Gina Piersanti
Giovanna Salimeni
Ronen Rubinstein
Case Prime
Jesse Cordasco
Nicolas Jude Rosen
Richard Folio
Kevin Anthony Ryan
Press
- "CRITICS' PICK: Insightful... a mood poem to summer love and sexual awakening."- The New York Times
- "CRITICS' PICK: Pitch-perfect... reclaims the word 'girls' for its rightful owners."- The Village Voice
- "Brave, heart-stopping... memoir-specific detail and striking perfomances."-The Wall Street Journal
- "Even as the movie delves deep into the characters’ complex emotional lives, it subtly and gradually—yet ineluctably—conjures a world that I was sorry to leave. I didn’t want the movie to end." - Richard Brody, The New Yorker
- "Love is a film of curious, furtive, longing close-ups, while the circuitous rhyming of images proves that there’s nothing haphazard about Hittman’s approach." - Nick Pinkerton, ArtForum
- "Among too many coming of age movies, It Felt Like Love is striking in the originality, the justness of its tone. " - Berenice Reynaud, Senses of Cinema
- "One of the most involving and sensually lush debuts in recent memory, and a striking afterimage for all of Sundance." - Michael Nordine, Cinema Scope
- "Hittman's a talent to watch." - Alissa Simon, Variety
- "A restrained, disturbing work that successfully turns the coming-of-age formula into a foreboding nightmare." - Eric Kohn, Indiewire
- "An assured feature debut set in unfashionable corners of Brooklyn. Sadly believable and benefiting from an unshowy performance by first-timer Gina Piersanti, it will have many viewers eager to see what Hittman does next." - John Defore, The Hollywood Reporter
- "It Felt Like Love grows into a magnificently bleak film." - Brandon Harris, Filmmaker Magazine
- "There is much to hang onto and identify with both for both a younger audience that would be Lila’s peers as well as any girl that grew up, ever.” - John Wildman, Film Comment
- "It Felt Like Love" beautifully captures burgeoning sexuality and the brevity of youth; it is like a reminiscence of the past that takes place in the present." - Don Simpson, Smells Like Screen Spirit
- "RECOMMENDED: At once delicate and scarily candid... atmospheric and almost painfully observant."- NPR
- "Thoughtful and original... gorgeously shot. Highly watchable."- The New York Post
- "[Hittman's] command over everything - performance, style, tone, imagery - announces her as a noteworthy new filmmaker." - Paste Magazine
- "It Felt Like Love," marks the arrival of a new crop of talent to watch, behind the camera and in front. " - Katie Walsh, The Playlist
- "Startlingly assured feature debut from Hittman, which has a voice all its own thanks to its being set in a part of Brooklyn that we rarely see on the big screen. This movie is dope." - Michael Tully, Hammer to Nail
- "Incredibly difficult to watch, but impossible to tear yourself away from" - Ryan Michael Painter, KUTV
- "One of the better American indie films of recent years." - Frank Witkam, Movie Scene
- "It Felt Like Love" is preoccupied with the sensual and the aesthetic, capturing lush moments which all but explode with sexual longing. " - Kiva Reardon, Young Film Critics
- "A painful, cringe-inducing reminder of adolescence." - Jamie Tipps, Film Threat
- "Hittman's unabashedly noncommercial spirit and attunement to the texture of blue-collar New York life would be reason enough to kvell about her debut feature. " - Joseph Pomp, Slant Magazine
- "Rich material here that understands how terrifying it can be to be on the cusp of womanhood, simultaneously afraid to become sexually experienced and afraid not to." - Scott Renshaw, City Weekly
- "A delicate mood piece that effectively captures the awkward realities of coming of age." - Kristopher Tapley, HotFix
- "The vulnerability of the protagonist is told perfectly by means of a subjective style" - Viola Pellegrini, Indie Eye