Justin Lerner wins at Festroia Festival

"I'm a European filmmaker born in America," alumnus Justin Lerner MFA '07 said recently, speaking to an interviewer in Setubal, Portugal. Only a few days later, Lerner's 2007 Director's Spotlight-winning film "The Replacement Child" won the top prize at Setubal’s Festroia Festival, a leading showcase for world cinema.

Lerner noted happily that the June 12 screening date at Festroia marked the one-year anniversary of the film's first public showing, during TFT's Festival of New Creative Work 2007.

According to Lerner's plot description in the TFT Creative Directory, the film’s title character “returns to his backwoods hometown to find his best friend deathly ill, his family refusing to seek medical attention in favor of allowing God to heal him.”

Lerner shared the stage in Setubal with fellow grad Chris Eska MFA '03, whose "August Evening" (winner of the top prize at the 2007 LA Film Festival, and of the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirits) was also shown in competition.

The interviewer asked Lerner to explain his film's intriguing title:

When I was writing the script I was also reading a biography of Van Gogh and one of the chapters was called The replacement child. It went off about how he was never loved by his mother because he was born to fill the gap that was left by his older brother, who they also named Vincent and who died at very early infancy. So he was always living in the shadow of someone that he can never be. I thought it was a beautiful metaphor for my main character.

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Keywords

"justin lerner" "chris eska" "the replacement child" "august evening" "festroia festival" "setubal" 

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