David and Nathan Zellner (Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, Damsel) have established a reputation over the years for their quirky, imaginative indie films that combine humour, heart and stunning visuals. Their latest effort, Sasquatch Sunset – out this Friday and already hailed as a “unicorn of a film” and the greatest Bigfoot story ever told – is shaping up to be their most ambitious and potentially memorable work yet.
Loosely inspired by their 2011 short film “Sasquatch Birth Journal No. 2”, the filmmaking duo’s latest feature stars Riley Keough (Mad Max: Fury Road, “Daisy Jones & The Six”), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Vivarium), Christophe Zajac-Denek (Twin Peaks) and Nathan Zellner. Blending myth and reality, this modern fable unfolds over the course of a year in the misty forests of North America as a family of ape-like forest dwellers embark on an epic, hilarious and ultimately poignant journey. But rather than simply captivate us with the antics of these notoriously elusive man beasts of the wild, it also invites us to reflect on our own animal origins and question whether our alleged evolution has brought true progress.
In anticipation of the film’s imminent release in select theaters April 12 and nationwide April 19, 2024, CinemaChords’ Howard Gorman interviewed the Zellner brothers, together with cast members Keough, Eisenberg and Zajac-Denek. They discussed the ways in which the film resonates on a deeply human level, exposes our over-reliance on technology, and cleverly blends poignancy with humour. We also invited them to suggest any classic films they thought could be improved on by replacing the human characters with sasquatches.
