THE SWEET EAST
a film by Sean Price Williams
FEATURE PRESENTATION
MAY 31, 2024 • 6:30 PM
@ THE BUS STOP THEATRE
(2203 GOTTINGEN STREET, HALIFAX)
2023 / USA / 104 mins
The Sweet East is the directorial debut from Sean Price Williams, a cinematographer (Good Time, Her Smell, Funny Pages) whose oft-emulated gift for capturing grime in motion has largely defined the aesthetics of modern independent filmmaking.
Midway through a school trip from South Carolina to Washington, D.C., a violent outburst sets a fleeing Lillian on a directionless trek across the Eastern Seaboard. With a lead performance from Talia Ryder (Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always) and an ensemble featuring Ayo Edebiri (Bottoms, The Bear) and Jacob Elordi (Saltburn, Priscilla), the film serves as a chaotic meeting point for some of the next generation’s most promising talent.
Scripted by film critic and essayist Nick Pinkerton, the story functions as a road trip through the American imagination, encountering grifters and grotesqueries far beyond anything Alice found through the looking glass. Detached yet political, amoral yet deeply principled, The Sweet East is a film smart enough to accept its contradictions, and in them it finds something like an ethic for living in a time of perpetual calamity.
—Evan Bower
TRAILER
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Sean Price Williams
Sean Price Williams is a director and cinematographer whose work behind the camera includes Funny Pages (2022), Her Smell (2018) and Good Time (2017). The Sweet East premiered at Cannes’ Quinzaine des cinéastes and is his directorial debut.