Title: Last Days
Section: Premieres
Director: Justin Lin
Screenwriter: Ben Ripley
Logline: Determined to fulfill his life’s mission, 26-year-old John Allen Chau (Sky Yang) embarks on a dangerous adventure to convert the uncontacted tribe of North Sentinel Island to Christianity, while a detective from the Andaman Islands races to stop him before he does harm to himself or the tribe. Based on the tragic true story of a doomed missionary, the film examines an idealistic dreamer driven by overzealous faith and a reckless desire for adventure.
Sales agent: Cinetic
Panelists: Justin Lin (director-producer), Sky Yang (actor), Toby Wallace (actor), Marny Kennedy (actor)
Key quotes:
Justin Lin on returning to the indie scene for the first time since his Sundance-premiering debut feature, 2002’s Better Luck Tomorrow: It’s interesting. After Better Luck Tomorrow, I literally didn’t have a break for 20 years. Even when my son was born, two weeks into it, Joe Russo called me and I ended up doing Community. So it’s been this amazing journey for me of starting off, not having any opportunities, and this one film creating this amazing journey. I was lucky enough to be with people to really kind of grow and explore, and I felt like 20 years in, something like an independent film, which is not supposed to exist — it’s 10,000 reasons why you don’t make it…I realized that I’m happy I get to keep growing, but I felt like it was time for me to try. It really kind of energized me because ultimately, having done all the tentpoles and stuff like that, you definitely have a thousand problems also, but you have a backing of a studio, the financing to help break through. Indie film, you have none of that. And this one is so ambitious. We’re going around the world, there’s monsoon season hitting us, and believe me, we’ve had instances where sets would be washed away in 20 minutes. And nobody — cast, crew — even flinched. That’s something that really brought me back to Better Luck Tomorrow and the spirit of independent films, is that we all got together because we wanted to bring this film to life. And there’s no logical reason why we should be doing it, except the fact that we were all connected and we’re all in it together.
On whether he has optimism for film’s future amid the industry contraction: I think we have to. I mean, I feel like in many ways, we’re in this kind of algorithm loop of whatever’s successful, how do you make that again? I’ve been in that loop too, and it’s not easy. It is a challenge. I’m not saying that that shouldn’t exist, but I also think that it does present an opportunity for people who have different points of view. And I think that’s why Sundance is so incredible and so important, is to be able to hopefully create a platform to showcase stories that otherwise in mainstream, you’d have a hard time finding distribution or even viewership.
Deadline Studio at Sundance presented by Casamigos
