Available Friday, May 8 via Virtual Screening Room
A complex portrait of a city and its inhabitants, director Brett Story’s The Hottest August presents a window into the collective consciousness of the American present, through the lens of one city over one month: New York City, including the outer boroughs, during August 2017. It’s a month heavy with the tension over a new President, growing anxiety about everything from rising rents to marching white nationalists, and unrelenting news of either wildfires or hurricanes on every coast. Registering the anxieties, distractions, and survival strategies that preoccupy ordinary lives, The Hottest August asks: what does the future look like from where we are standing, and what if we are not all standing in the same place?
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“No movie can encompass everything that’s on the minds of Americans at the moment, but Story’s modest but wide-ranging cine-essay comes closest, constructed in such a way that no two audiences will see it the same way.” — Peter Debruge, Variety
“This collection of interactions with ordinary people is a cinematic gift both simple and multilayered, an intellectual challenge and an emotional adventure.” — Glenn Kenny, New York Times
“Even face to face with a bleak future, The Hottest August is steeped in delight, the kind that reminds us that there’s beauty in the world, and a future that’s worth fighting for.” — Sam Adams, Slate
Brett Story
Clare Coulter
Canada, USA
Grasshopper Film