After Sin nombre and his haunting version of Jane Eyre, director Cary Fukunaga counts as a filmmaker who we’d follow virtually anywhere. That even means East Africa, where Fukunaga took musician/actress Haley Bennett to shoot the short film Sleepwalking in the Rift, a clip commissioned by the high-end fashion brand Maiyet.
The short film was posted over on Nowness.com, and it’s well worth a look:
Sleepwalking in the Rift on Nowness.com.
“What’s your favorite thing about living in here in Africa,” Bennett’s character asks the man (Swedish actor Fares Fares) she’s romancing against gorgeous natural landscapes. And the clip basically answers for him. The imagery Fukunaga captured is so breathtaking, you wish that it would lead to something. Yet, as is explained in the virtual liner notes for the clip, this is “a trailer with no feature attached. Instead, Fukunaga created a 30-minute series of short vignettes featuring the Maiyet Resort 2013 collection, to premiere in London this week.” So they are creative exercises in favor of a resort. Slightly disappointing, even though it features new music from Dan Romer, one of the co-composers behind the stirring score for Sundance hit Beasts of the Southern Wild.
While I love the clip, I’d prefer Fukunaga could move on to his next feature-length film. We reported months ago that he was attached to direct an adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal horror novel It for Warner Bros., though we haven’t heard anything new on that front when it comes to casting or location scouting. Several filmmakers are circling King projects at the moment, though It is one that we’d love to see made, and with the moodiness Fukunaga can bring to any project … as Rift proves.
