Driveways (2019)

Directed by

Andrew Ahn

Genre

drama film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 23m

Rated

NR

Rating

7.0 of 10 from 82 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A woman travels to her late sister's house to clean it out and get it ready to sell. While there, her young son becomes friends with an elderly man who lives next door.

gentletenderquietbittersweetslow-pacedintimatereflectivepoignant

What happens

Driveways is a 2019 American drama film directed by Andrew Ahn and starring Hong Chau, Lucas Jaye, and Brian Dennehy, from an original screenplay by playwrights Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen. The film had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 10, and its American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival April 30. FilmRise released it via video-on-demand in the United States on May 7, 2020, in lieu of a theatrical release due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It tells the story of a woman who has come to the house of her late sister to pack it up and prepare it for sale. While there, her young son strikes up a friendship with an elderly widower living next door. Met with critical acclaim, the film was nominated for Best First Screenplay and Best Female Lead at the 2020 Film Independent Spirit Awards. Praise focused primarily on two aspects of the film: its depiction of the connections among neighbors, something many people had come to miss due to the social distancing measures taken to control the pandemic, and Dennehy's performance. He had died a month prior to release, and critics said it was an excellent final film for him. Ahn chose Bos and Thureen's script, derived from their childhoods in the Midwest, for his second feature out of a desire to direct something that was an intimate family drama, not written by him. He also wanted to get away from the gay Korean American milieu in which his debut, Spa Night, was set, although he did later change two main characters from white to Asian for artistic reasons. Maven Pictures backed the production, and filming took place in summer 2018 in the Hudson Valley region of New York, primarily around Poughkeepsie. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

• The Tomorrow Man (2019)
• Our Friend (2019)
• The Flourish (2019)
• End of Sentence (2019)
• Our Souls at Night (2017)
• Road of Bygones (2019)
• Marriage Story (2019)
• Little Women (2019)