Kiwi’s movie makes major film festival cut

It has just been voted audience favourite again at another European film festival and now New York
audiences are about to have the chance to vote on it at one of the United States’ most prestigious film
festivals. It will also be available simultaneously to millions of Americans in their own homes.
Anthony McCarten’s movie DEATH OF A SUPERHERO, based on his book of the same title
published by Random House NZ, has made this year’s cut for New York’s Tribeca Film Festival (TFF),
which runs April 18-29.
Tribeca Film will release the movie nationwide and also make it available to more than 40 million
homes via video-on-demand during the Festival.

Taranaki born, the internationally successful novelist, playwright and
director, who lives in London these days, will be back in New Zealand
to take part in May’s Auckland Writers & Readers Festival. He says having a U.S. cinema release is an extremely important stepping stone for his film. “I’m obviously delighted that Mr De Niro’s company should be its champion there. My fingers are crossed that a distributor in New Zealand might now be encouraged to do the same, so the film can be seen in the country where the story was originally set,” says McCarten.

Directed by Ian Fitzgibbon (Irish) and written by Anthony McCarten, the movie will premiere in TFF’s ‘Viewpoints’ section. Starring Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Andy Serkis and Aisling Loftus, the story has been described as a powerful and exceptionally honest drama about discovering life, love, and death.
Teenager Donald Delpe has extraordinary talents, wild daydreams, and a bright future as an artist of fantastical graphic novels. But when Donny discovers that a very real enemy (leukemia) is trying to kill him, an unorthodox psychologist tries to help him find the light in an otherwise dark world.

 Superhero trailer link…… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO2Ja6X09Sg

Random House has also just published McCarten’s heart-aching, critically-acclaimed sequel to A Death of a Superhero. Called In the Absence of Heroes, McCarten revisits the Delpe family, lost in their grief a year after Donny’s death. McCarten continues to explore how we live our increasingly complex modern lives and, most specifically, the impact of the internet and fantasy gaming on the breakdown of family relationships.

McCarten will appear at three Auckland Writers &Readers Festival events (www.writersfestival.co.nz), including the ‘Schools’ Programme’.



About the Trifebeca Film Festival

*The TFF 2012 film slate was chosen from a total of 5950 submissions, a record number
for the Festival.
• The 2012 film selection includes feature films from 32 different countries, including 53
World Premieres, 5 International Premieres, 16 North American Premieres, 10 U.S.
Premieres and six New York Premieres.
• A total of 107 directors will be presenting feature works at the Festival, with 33 of these
filmmakers presenting their feature directorial debuts. Among these directors, 25 are
women.
• Twenty-six feature film directors are returning TFF filmmakers.
• The TFF was founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff
in a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the
consequent loss of vitality in the TriBeCa neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.
• The mission of the festival is "to enable the international film community and the
general public to experience the power of film by redefining the film festival experience"
and it was founded to celebrate New York City as a major filmmaking center and to
contribute to the long-term recovery of lower Manhattan