The Big One

by Beth Pinsker, Senior Producer (see more from this contributor)

At the Sundance Film Festival, it's hard not to find unique new voices ‑- that's the whole premise of the event. So for Miranda July's debut feature film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, to be singled out by the celebrity jury for a special prize for "originality of vision" is some kind of honor. She also shared the Caméra d'Or prize for best first filmmaker at the Cannes Film Festival. Of all the fresh ideas on the slate this year, July's work is standing out as something completely new.


The film isn't exactly experimental, though, at least not in the usual sense of being impenetrable to a mainstream audience. It has dialogue, a fairly linear plot, accessible characters and straightforward imagery. But it certainly isn't something anyone has seen before. The story focuses on a lonely young experimental filmmaker and performance artist ‑- played by July ‑- and the depressed shoe salesman (John Hawkes) she gets a crush on, and it also follows his two children and their friends.


"People who know my work will recognize it in the film," says the 29-year-old July. "There are characters that are the same, and the whole story deals with themes I've been working on, like, all my movies have children in them with a certain kind of power you don't always see."

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