Event

Uncle Kent

Seattle Premiere!

(Joe Swanberg, 2011, USA, Blu-ray, 72 min) Joe Swanberg made his first Sundance appearance with his most mature film, Uncle Kent, an achingly true-to-life modern comedy about aging, loneliness, desire and the awkward intimacies of online friendship. The film follows 40 year-old Kent (Kent Osborne) who is an unmarried children's-show writer living alone with his cat in Los Angeles. When one of Kent's online acquaintances, environmental journalist Kate (Jennifer Prediger), crashes at his house for the weekend, he finds himself attracted to her coquettish manner and frank emotional openness, but sexually frustrated by her fidelity to a distant boyfriend.

Shot on location in Los Angeles, Uncle Kent advances many themes and elements found in Swanberg's early films (Hannah Takes The Stairs, Nights and Weekends, Alexander the Last), including freely improvised dialogue, art-mirrors-life setups and a renewed emphasis on how technology and other social media enable (or disable) human connection.

"The prolific and daring independent filmmaker Joe Swanberg captures the loneliness of the long-term D.I.Y. artist in the age of social networking." Richard Brody, New Yorker