PIPPA BIANCO
“Share”
How many feature debutantes can boast slots in two of the world’s top film festivals with the same film? New York-born writer-director Bianco’s “Share” will world premiere in Sundance’s U.S. dramatic competition en route to domestic release through A24.
The edgy drama, about a teenager who must deal with the fallout from a viral video shot during a night she can’t remember, was expanded from a short of the same name. That short nabbed first prize in Cannes’ Cinéfondation competition in 2015, which means the feature-length “Share” will also screen in official selection of the upcoming Cannes.
Bianco attended Yale to study fine arts, particularly painting and photography, but, she says, “It didn’t take long for me to feel like those were lonely art forms, and I wanted to work more collaboratively.”
While still in college, she explored film production with PA work on several indie features. She notes, “I had incredible experiences working on Vera Farmiga’s ‘Higher Ground,’ Braden King’s ‘Here’ and Leslye Headland’s ‘Bachelorette,’ and that changed my course of study senior year so that I was making films.” Several of the producers who hired her back then would go on to be the ones who eventually produced “Share,” in both short and feature form.
Bianco has a number of projects on the horizon, but nothing that she can discuss publicly. She is more forthcoming about the type of films she would like to make: “I love fear, I like the unknown, I like films that reconcile us to the darker or more unacceptable parts of being alive and make it easier to find ways to go on living,” she says. “For me, that defies genre — I love war movies and violence and ghost stories in particular — and it doesn’t mean happy or easy endings either. I think it just means creating empathy for other lives and an acceptance for things that are unknowable or unresolvable.” Influences: “A lot of my peers: Nuotaka Frances Bodomo, Kibwe Tavares, Qiu Yang and Annie Silverstein” Agency: WME
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