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Winter's Bone

United States

2010

100 Min

Color

1.85:1

English

Currently 3.7/5 Stars.
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EXEC Jonathan Scheuer, Shawn Simon

PROD Alix Madigan Yorkin, Anne Rosellini

SCR Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini, Daniel Woodrell

CAST Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Kevin Breznahan, Dale Dickey, Garret Dillahunt, Sheryl Lee, Lauren Sweetser, Tate Taylor, Isaiah Stone, Ashlee Thompson, Brandon Gray

Sundance (US Dramatic Competition): Grand Jury Prize, Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, SXSW (Festival Favorites), San Francisco (New Directors): Audience Award, Melbourne (International Panorama), Berlinale (Forum): C.I.C.A.E. Award, Ghent (Out of Competition), Stockholm (Competition): Bronze Horse, Best Actress, FIPRESCI Prize, !F Istanbul (Hit Films), Transilvania (Supernova), Edinburgh (Rosebud), Helsinki (Finnkino-kilpailu)

Synopsis

Deep in the Ozark Mountains, clans live by an almost medieval code of conduct that no one dares defy—until an intrepid teenage girl has no other choice. When Rhee Jessup’s crystal-meth-making father skips bail and goes missing, her family home is on the line. Unless she finds him, she and her young siblings and disabled mother face destitution. In a heroic quest, Rhee traverses the county to confront her kin, break their silent collusion, and bring her father home.

With thrilling tension, Winter’s Bone depicts an archetypal rite of passage. Only this time, the young warrior is a girl. As our heroine braves a nearly impossible task, she redefines the notion of fealty and, in the process, redefines herself, too. The spare precision of Debra Granik’s direction is effortlessly profound. Stunningly genuine performances and exquisite visual details capture the textures and rhythms of a world where the mythic and the naturalistic intermingle. —Sundance Film Festival

Director

Debra Granik

Debra Granik (born the 6th of February, 1963) is an American independent filmmaker. She has won a series of awards at the Sundance Film Festival, including Best Short in 1998 for Snake Feed (her first film, made while a student at New York University), the Dramatic Directing Award in 2004 for her first feature-length film, Down to the Bone (a tale of addiction she co-scripted with Richard Lieske), and the Grand Jury Prize for Drama in 2010 and Prix du jury at Deauville American Film Festival 2010 for her second feature, Winter’s Bone.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Granik grew up in the suburbs of Washington D.C. She received her B.A. from Brandeis University in 1985, where she majored in politics. She later earned an MFA from the graduate film program at New York University (Tisch School of the Arts). Granik is the granddaughter of broadcast pioneer Theodore Granik (1907–1970), founder-moderator of radio-TV’s long-run panel discussion program, The American Forum of the Air… read more

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Norman1706

24Jan12

Really liked that one.

runfromfire

22Jan12

I can't remember the last time that a film managed to depress me with scenery alone. Top notch cast, direction and cinematography. I'm not surprised that it was nominated for Best Picture.

Lorna Singh

18Jan12

Unsentimental look at an isolated community,with its own rules,making us feel like intruders.There could have been more elements to the script,showing more about the father.Well acted.

Michael Harbour

16Jan12

Astonishingly good film. A mystery/odyssey which looks uncompromisingly yet respectfully at a subculture filled with despair and danger where even the closest relationships involve caution and suspicion with great care taken to never give up an advantage or reveal anything which could ever possibly be used against you. One of the most genuinely human films I have seen.

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Articles

Our roundup of essays and articles on this film.

Awards. Spirits and Césars

By David Hudson on February 26, 2011

Black Swan, lost in the media fray over what was supposed to have been a two-horse race to Oscar Night, is back, having just won four Film

read article

Jerry Schatzberg and a Few Lists

By David Hudson on December 6, 2010

Jerry Schatzberg will be at New York's Film Forum this evening for a one-off screening of his 1969 debut feature, Puzzle of a Downfall Child

read article

Indie Spirits, Gotham Awards, DVDs

By David Hudson on November 30, 2010

Having won Best Feature and Best Ensemble Performance at the Gotham Awards last night, Debra Granik's Winter's Bone now scores seven nominations

read article

"Winter's Bone," Joan, Coco & Igor and "Black Death"

By David Hudson on June 11, 2010

"Winter's Bone, warmly embraced at this year's Sundance Film Festival, belongs, at least at first glance, to one of that festival's familiar

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Summer 2010. Previews

By David Hudson on May 1, 2010

Mash-up by Screen Rant's Mike Eisenberg This is the weekend that the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times unload their

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Sundance. Awards and "Winter's Bone"

By David Hudson on January 31, 2010

So the awards were presented at Sundance last night, and as Eugene Hernandez writes in his full report at indieWIRE, "Debra Granik's Winter

read article

WINTER'S BONE Review

By Twitchfilm.com on May 17, 2011

Tucked way in the outback of the Ozarks, where the soundtrack consists of random rifle pops and the ceaseless barking of dogs, Debra Granik’s bleak and sturdy film explores family, honour and (of all things

→ read on Twitchfilm.com