SXSWORLD

Over the Moon: Understated Weekend Earns Unexpected Success by Eric Kohn Pete, but most of his previous credits were as an assistant editor on Hollywood projects such as Hannibal Rising and Kingdom of Heaven. Th ese accomplishments did not appear to set the stage for the sweet drama he brought to SXSW. British fi nanciers had considered the movie too risky, forcing Haigh and producer Tristan Goligher to seek fi nancing from two small regional funds to even make the fi lm. To make matters worse, Weekend premiered on SXSW Film's fi rst day, at the same time as the highly anticipated opening night fi lm, Source Code. ome movies arrive at fi lm festivals riding a wave of healthy buzz, which can lead to packed screenings and distributors eager to release them. When Weekend arrived at SXSW in March, it was not one of those. An understated romantic two-hander about a pair of young men who spend a couple of days together talking about life, Weekend was not an obvious breakout contender. Writer-director Andrew Haigh had made one other feature, Greek S a publicist (Jim Dobson, who also repped the award-winning Natural Selection) that year, as well as a sales agent from the company Film Collaborative. Th e gamble paid off . "As soon as distributors material- ized, we had meetings with our sales agent three times a day as new off ers came in," Goligher says. He was ultimately happy with IFC's Sundance Selects, which adopted a strategy for releasing the fi lm similar to the one the company used for Tiny Furniture, the SXSW breakout Sundance Selects had picked up a year earlier. Instead of holding out for another major festival like Toronto, the fall season heavyweight, Weekend played a number of smaller festivals over the next several months, bridging the gap between its obvious gay audience and larger art house crowds. At the same time, the movie maintained its momentum at three of the United States' most signifi cant gay fi lm festivals: Frameline, Newfest and Outfest. "We never expected a fi lm with modest resources from the U.K. to get this kind of response," Goligher said. Haigh, who has cited SXSW-branded From left: Cinematographer Urszula Pontikos, producer Tristan Goligher, and director Andrew Haigh at the 2011 SXSW Film Q&A of Weekend. Weekend turned out to be the right one, as representatives from Sundance Selects were in the audience and snapped up the movie for U.S. theatrical release before the festival had even ended. Positive word-of-mouth about Haigh's bittersweet tale led to packed houses at subsequent SXSW screenings, which culminated with Weekend landing the Audience Award for its category a few days later. "We were nervous about how a fi lm about two men, a very quiet, simple drama, would fi t in," said Goligher. "But at a fi lmmaker party after the screening, people were immediately saying they had heard about it. Others wanted to take us under their wings as a discovery." Th at is not to say that the team showed up unprepared. Th ey hired Fortunately, the small crowd that attended the screening of 22 SXSW ORLD / N OVEMBER 2011 "and the support that everyone has given us was undoubtedly a key reason it has built to what we all feel is a great success." Th e duo already has begun pre-production on a new project and hopes to make the festival rounds with it by early 2012. Haigh felt that the popularity of Weekend at SXSW demonstrated that it could hold appeal around the country. "It showed that there was an audience for the fi lm outside the obvious niche," he said. "Th is is something we never took for granted. SXSW gave us enor- mous confi dence." ■ when Goligher called him with the news. "Suddenly, the doors were open for this fi lm," he said. "We had made this fi lm quite off the radar," according to Goligher, fi lmmakers like Joe Swanberg as infl u- ences on his work, said he always felt that SXSW was the right place to premiere the movie. "Andrew has been inspired by an awful lot of fi lms that have come out of the burgeoning American microbudget scene," said Goligher. "It seemed apt that we would follow in their footsteps and put ourselves into that world." Added Haigh: "I'd loved so many movies that came out of the festival. We hurtled through the edit so we could hit the dead- line. We made it by about one day." While some fi lmmakers rely on having existing contacts with festival program- mers when submitting their fi lms, Haigh sent Weekend to SXSW as a cold submis- sion. When Goligher received a call from SXSW Film producer Janet Pierson inviting Weekend to premiere at the SXSW, it took him by surprise. "We fi gured the chances of it being selected were very slim," he said. "We were over the moon." Haigh was wandering around London NAM CHAU

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