Anna Daniels
Anytime Shane Carruth lends his name and talents to a project, it’s worth paying attention to. The Primer and Upstream Color director serves as executive producer on The Wanting Mare, a film written and directed by Nicholas Ashe Bateman. Shot almost entirely in a storage unit in New Jersey, the film employs digital backgrounds to create a fantasy world that looks completely real. The tantalizing The Wanting Mare trailer below forgoes a traditional plot-explanation set-up and instead draws you in with mystery.
The Wanting Mare Trailer
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWPKv-FyxOY?feature=oembed&w=740&h=416]
Wow, what the heck is this? I watched The Wanting Mare trailer before I read up on the film, and when I learned after the fact that practically everything here, save for the actors, is created digitally. This isn’t the first time a film has done this, of course, but unlike other digital background films like Sin City or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, everything here looks real – while also seeming slightly dreamy and off. It’s very impressive.
Even more impressive is how vague this trailer is. I know that might seem frustrating to some people, but in my humble opinion, the best trailers are the ones that draw you in and pique your interest while giving next to nothing away. And that’s exactly what’s happening here. But just what is The Wanting Mare about? Let’s take a gander at the synopsis, shall we?
In the world of Anmaere, north of the city of Whithren, wild horses run through the moorlands and up the coast. These horses are the city’s most valuable export, and as a result are hunted, trapped, sold and shipped across the sea once a year. For those in Whithren, this trade passage creates lucrative and exciting possibilities: the chance to escape their constantly sweltering city to head to the Western continent of Levithen, or just to begin again.
Meanwhile in a small house just north of the city, a young woman dies in childbirth. Her last words are an attempt to tell her daughter of the life she’ll have and her inheritance of a recurring dream that must be kept secret; for it contains the memories of another age long before us, one where magic and myth were alive in the world.
That daughter now left behind is Moira. She grows alone in Whithren, without anyone to explain her dream, her unique difference, or her place in the world. As a result, she resolves to leave Whithren at all costs, and employs the help of Lawrence, a wounded young man engaged in the criminal enterprise of stealing tickets.
This begins a series of events that echo over the enxt thirty-five years of their life, the life of a child found screaming on the rocks, and through the alleys and coasts of Whithren; a city hidden in the fog, wanting in hear, now beginning again.
This movie reportedly took five years to make and features “hundreds of visual effects seamlessly blend digital landscapes and physical reality.” The cast includes Jordan Monaghan, Yasmin Keshtkar, Edmond Cofie, Nicholas Ashe Bateman, Josh Clark, and Christine Kellogg-Darrin. There’s no official release date in place yet, but The Wanting Mare will make its world premiere this weekend at the virtual Chattanooga Film Festival.
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