Seven-year-old Maria and her mother live in their own loving world built on sorting through bins and collecting shiny rubbish. One night, their world falls apart, and we join Maria a decade later, living with her foster mother.
STARRING SAURA LIGHTFOOT-LEON, LILY-BEAU LEACH, DEBA HEKMAT, JOSEPH QUINN, HAYLEY SQUIRES, SAMANTHA SPIRO.
DIRECTED BY LUNA CARMOON - Debut as WRITER and DIRECTOR
PRODUCED BY LORAN DUNN, HELEN SIMMONS, ANDREW STARKE
Sunrise Films is pleased to announce the upcoming North American theatrical release of Luna Carmoon’s Venice Winner ‘Hoard’ on September 6, 2024.
Starring Saura Lightfoot-Leon, Lily-Beau Leach and Deba Hekmat alongside Joseph Quinn, Hayley Squires and Samantha Spiro, ‘Hoard’ film follows a young girl (Leach) living in London in 1984 as she navigates her mother’s obsessive hoarding. Flashing forward to the girl’s teenage years, she (Lightfoot-Leon) must confront the madness and trauma of her late mother when a stranger (Quinn) arrives on her doorstep.
‘Hoard’ debuted at Venice in 2023, where it won three prizes. It went on to an extended festival run including at the BFI London Film Festival, Athens, Mumbai and Goteborg.
Lily Beau Leach and Hailey Squires
Official Synopsis:
1984: There’s a landfill in our living room.
Mother and Maria’s world feels like sparkles down spines, Christmas is every day in their nidus of love; the two of them like silvery-catching magpies. The pair spend their evenings on pilgrimages in South East London, nights where fireworks crumble over them as they carefully collect their goods. Tin foil balls, chalk, paper, all things neglected, left for the foxes or bin men, they adopt for their nest. They Hoard infinite souvenirs from their night time walks, trolleys filled with sacks upon sacks of joy for their catalog of love that waits for them at the door.
At school, Maria is sleepy from the night voyages. Sometimes the stench sticks to her hair. If only they could smell the glee from it too. Her tiredness makes her forgetful. Night time is her and mothers time. Maria's teachers and classmates make her aware for the first time of the foreignness of her and mother's loving regime and she begins to question it entirely one lost afternoon. After one night of disrupting their routines that ends in an accident, Maria knows in her belly that she wouldn't want it any other way.
Christmas is coming, the tinfoil ball tree is mounted with glowing bulbs, a children's delight; the room glimmering of all things collected now shiny all still from the year before. Tin Drum plays. Maria goes to the corner shop and when she returns, something happens to Mother which changes her future forever.
1994: He handed her to me, its weight would come in waves.
Maria's last day of school she walks waved home with her best friend of ten years Laraib. As she arrives home, at the top stairs, waiting, are two bare feet. A tall odd man, a stranger who has a familiar scent of trauma, a childhood pain, a gemini of knowing stings. His name is Michael and he has come to stay. The following days are slow and strange, full of leavings and returnings. A homecoming. The two become intertwined as the present is ruptured. Michael with Maria, Maria with the past, pilgrims, but for Maria the Hoardings have just begun. Nighttime becomes hers once more, rowing in it endlessly, finding new objects to treasure. Maria descends into madness, and it's soon clear that she is hiding a much bigger
secret, one that is both inexplicable and shocking.
“Hoard” is produced by Delaval Film, Erebus Pictures and Anti-Worlds with financing from the BFI. BBC Film developed and co-financed the film. Sunrise Films will release ‘Hoard’ in select theaters in North America on September 6, 2024.
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REVIEW
Pamela PerryGoulardt
I enjoyed watching a screener of the emotionally powerful film “Hoard,” a debut feature by Writer/Director Luna Carmoon, to be released in US Theaters this Friday, September 6, 2024.
“Bleak reality meets gritty realism with a touch of madness.” Unconventional Mum (Hayley Squires) and her devoted young daughter Maria (Lily-Bean Leach)-Bring the Magic – Wow!
The first thing I will say is that Mum makes garbage-picking fun. Laugh, play, and ‘let it go,’ are the building blocks for Maria’s early life. That and a filthy, rat-infested, stuffed to the rafters with junk, hoarder’s living environment. It’s not pretty.
Mom gets crushed under the Christmas tree. Maria goes to Foster Care.
Lily Beau Leach is charmingly captivating and engages the audience immediately.
Ten years later. The undomesticated, untamed wild child, still in Foster Care but now seamlessly played by Saura Lightfoot Leon, (just as captivating as the young Maria) is ready to pull the lid off her garbage pail past life with disturbing memories of abuse, love, and buried trauma to become a flawed but authentic human being.
What spurs this fortuitous step into the unknown? A former crack baby and Foster Care child young man - Michael (played by Stranger Things star Joseph Quinn,) is the catalyst.
Michael falls for Maria, but does the right thing when Maria spurns him. He returns to his very pregnant wife!
I have to give a shout-out to the knock-out Cinematography by Nanu Segal, who creates a visual wonderland by using a camera as a paintbrush that pulls us deeply into this metaphoric universe. Well done!
Bravo to Luna Carmoon, writer and director of this wild woman story inspired by her own life.
The story is very YIN with vibes of deep compassion and tenderness despite the darkness.
It's moody, dark, sometimes gross, emotionally cathartic, disturbing, and filled with love.
IMHO - It’s a must-see. I’m telling all my friends!
ABOUT SUNRISE FILMS
Sunrise Films is a new, internationally focused production, distribution, and sales company launched by Rupert Preston and Nigel Williams. The company produced high-stakes thriller THE ACCUSED, directed by BOILING POINT’S Philip Barantini, which was sold internationally by XYZ Films and debuted on Netflix in the UK, ANZ, and Canada in 2023. Sunrise also produced George Amponsah’s GASSED UP, which released theatrically in the UK through Vertigo Releasing in early 2024 and debuted afterwards on Amazon Prime. On the distribution side, Sunrise released WWII submarine thriller BENEATH THE SURFACE and indie horror THE GIRL IN THE TRUNK in the U.S. this year, as well as BAFTA-winning drama AFTER LOVE and César-nominated Iranian crime drama LAW OF TEHRAN in 2023. Inaddition to HOARD, the company also recently announced they have picked up Julia Jackman’s coming of age queer rom-com BONUS TRACK for US distribution, which premiered at the London Film Festival in 2023 to wide acclaim and was released in the UK as a Sky Original Movie in June 2024. The company also picked up action thriller SUNRAY: FALLEN SOLDIER, which was created by and stars former Royal Marines Commandos. Rupert Preston is also the CEO of Vertigo Releasing and he has produced over 25 films including BRONSON, THE SWEENEY, PUSHER, HORRID HENRY: THE MOVIE, and MONSTERS. Nigel Williams is the Chairman of Vertigo Releasing and Protagonist Pictures.
PRESS ENQUIRIES
Sicily Cronin, Sicily Publicity
Sisi@sicilypublicity | 917-213-0254
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