BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMERS

One of my favorite programs at the Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) each year is the Breakthrough Performers Program, run by Lina Todd, which recognizes a small number of extremely good young actors whose films are showing at HIFF.


Maryam Hassouni Anamaria Marinca & Hannah Herzsprung
Breakthrough Performers / Shooting Stars 2008
With Lina Todd
Photo by Eric Roffman

For the audience it is a chance to meet some actors at an early stage in their career, actors who have a real good shot at becoming huge stars. For the actors it is a chance to meet each other, to be mentored by distinguished talents in the American film industry, and to be introduced to American audiences.

In addition to seeing their breakthrough film (or films, sometimes an actor has more than one film at the Festival), there is the opportunity to speak with them informally at parties (and sometimes formally at interviews). There is also a panel presentation at which they talk about themselves, discuss filmmaking, and answer questions from the audience. Rajendra Roy in 2009
At HIFF to moderate the Breakthrough Performers Panel
Photo by Eric Roffman
The program began as Rising Stars in 2002, when the Festival honored some new young film actors. Beginning in 2008, the program partnered with the European Shooting Stars program and invited several European actors to join the Rising Stars, calling the joint program, Breakthrough Performers. The program is run by Lina Todd. In its early years, the program was championed by Rajendra Roy, the Programmer for the Festival (who is currently Film Curator at the Museum of Modern Art -- MOMA). Rajendra returned last year to the Hamptons for the Festival, and chaired the Breakthrough Performers Panel.

The Festival this year has a very distinguished group of European Shooting Stars and International Rising Stars:

RISING STARS at HIFF 2010:

Frieda Pinto from India (Miral)
Brittany Robertson from the US (The Family Tree, Cherry)
Jessica Chastain from the US (The Debt)

Noomi Rapace, the Swedish Actress who played The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was chosen as a Rising Star, but will not be able to come because of conflicts in her shooting schedule: she's currently working on the Sherlock Holmes sequel and Clean Out with Timothy Dalton.


SHOOTING STARS at HIFF 2010:

Zrinka Cvitesic from Croatia (On The Path)
Anais Demoustier from France (Sweet Evil)
Pihla Viitala from Finland (Bad Family)


MORE ABOUT THE BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMERS at HIFF 2010



Freida Pinto
MIRAL
Frieda Pinto (1984-10-18, 26 next week -- 5'6") was the object of desire in Slumdog Millionaire. She appears at HIFF in Miral by distinguished artist/director Julian Schnabel. She will soon be seen in Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

Britt Robertson
CHERRY
Brittany (or Britt) Robertson (1990-04-18, 20 -- 5'3") is current playing Lux in Life Unexpected on CW. She was earlier seen in Swingtown on TV and, in films, was in Dan in Real Life and will soon be in Wes Craven's Scream 4. At HIFF 2010 she'll be seen in two films, Cherry, and The Family Tree.

Jessica Chastain (1977-03-29, 33 (according to WIKI) -- or 1981-03-29, 29 (IMDB) -- 5'4") has appeared on TV in ER, Law & Order and Veronica Mars. She is soon to be seen in Wilde Salome (as Salome) directed by Al Pacino. She will also be seen in Coriolanus, directed by Ralph Fiennes, and The Tree of Life, directed by Terrence Malick. She also joins an all-star cast in The Help. At HIFF 2010, she'll be seen in John Madden's The Debt as Young Rachel Singer.

The European Shooting Stars are chosen by a complex and super-selective process. 32 European countries are eligible to nominate a young star that has had an important and commercially successful film in the last year; then a jury selects 10 Shooting Stars who are announced at the Berlin Film Festival. The Shooting Stars receive many opportunities throughout the year to promote the films they have done; and they are given a statuette, the Maria. I am told that when Oscar and Maria stand next to each other, they make a nice looking couple!



Zrinka Cvitesic
ON THE PATH

Zrinka Cvitesic (1979-07-18, 31) from Croatia has acted in Theater, TV and Films. She is also a dancer, and won the Croatian version of Dancing With The Stars. She has won Best Actress Awards in her films Man Without A Moustache, and On The Path, the film being shown at HIFF.



Anais Demoustier
SWEET EVIL
Anais Demoustier (1987-09-29, 23) -- from France appeared with Isabelle Huppert in Michael Haneke's The Time of the Wolf. She appears in Sweet Evil at HIFF 2010



Pihla Viitala
BAD FAMILY

Pihla Viitala (1982-09-30, 26 -- 5'7") from Finland appeared in Tears of April, shown at HIFF in 2009, opposite Samuli Vauramo, a 2009 Shooting Star and Breakthrough Performer. She speaks English, Swedish, French and her native Finnish. She will be seen in Bad Family at HIFF 2010.

On The Path, Bad Family, and Sweet Evil are all "edgy" European films that deal in taboos and "politically incorrect" territory.

Over the years, the Rising Stars Program has spotlighted many important actors, including Emmy Rossum, Kate and Rooney Mara, Taylor Kitsch, Emily Blunt, Elizabeth Reaser, and Elizabeth Moss.

Hannah Herzsprung is the one actor distinguished by being selected first as a Rising Star (in 2007) and then returning the next year as a Shooting Star (in 2008).


Here is a list of the participants in the Breakthrough Performers Program at the Hamptons International Film Festival since it began in 2002. (I've tried to get all the years, participants and spellings correct... but do add a comment if you can correct an error in this list!)

In 2002, when the program started, James Coburn was the first Mentor and Rajendra Roy was the HIFF Program Director.

2002 –
Jordan Bridges
Jacqueline Kim
Ryan Locke
Andrea Navedo
Susan May Pratt

2003 –
Dean Wareham
Savannah Haske
Elizabeth Moss
GQ
Mylika Davis

2004 –
Mark Weber
Norman Reedus
Vinessa Shaw
Aaron Stanford
Eugenia Yuan

2005 –
Emily Blunt
Eugene Byrd
Florian Lukas
Jake Muxworthy
Kip Pardue
Elizabeth Reaser

2006 --
Carmen Chaplin
Dagmara Dominczyk
Matt Davis
Mido Hamada
Noah Fleiss

2007 --
Jess Weixler (Teeth)
Hannah Herzsprung (Four Minutes)
Egbert-Jan Weeber (Vivere)
Blake Lively (Elvis and Anabelle)

2008 –
Kate Mara (Stone Of Destiny),
Taylor Kitsch (Gospel Hill), and
Jake Abel (Flash Of Genius) from North America and

Maryam Hassouni (Dunya And Desie),
Anamaria Marinca (Boogie)
Hannah Herzsprung (Werther)

2009 –
Emmy Rossum (Dare)
Rooney Mara (Dare and Tanner Hall)
Zach Gilford and Emma Stone were selected, but were unable to attend

Alba Rohrwacher (Due partite --in English, The Ladies Get Their Say) from Italy
Cyron Melville (Love and Rage) from Denmark.
Samuli Vauramo (Tears of April)


2010 –
Freida Pinto (Miral)
Brittany Robertson (The Family Tree, Cherry)
Jessica Chastain (The Debt)

Zrinka Cvitešić from Croatia (On the Path)
Anaïs Demoustier (Sweet Evil) from France
Pihla Viitala (Bad Family) from Finland

The Shooting Stars program, with a long history, has had many very distinguished members. The actors known to an American audience, though, are primarily from the UK, Germany and France. Shooting Stars is a program of the European Film Promotion Network (EFP), and it can only be hoped that they will succeed in promoting films from all over Europe (the other 29 countries!) in the US.

In addition to those who've come to the US for the Breakthrough Performers Program, who are having terrific starts to their careers, here are some of the most famous participants in the Shooting Stars Program:

Moritz Bleibtreu - Germany - 1999
Sarah Bolger - Ireland - 2009
Daniel Bruhl - Germany - 2003
Daniel Craig - UK - 2000
Cecile de France - France - 2003
Nina Hoss - Germany - 2000
David Kross - Germany - 2009
Carey Mulligan - UK - 2009
Franke Potente - Germany - 1998
Ludivine Sagnier France - 2001
Rachel Weisz - UK - 1998

We should point out, though, that there are many exciting young actors in indie and studio films at HIFF that are not part of the Breakthrough Performers Program.

Some actors to watch that have not been in the Breakthrough Performer Program are:

Ashley Springer
At HIFF with DARE in 2009
Photo by Eric Roffman

Ashley Springer, terrific in 2009's Dare and in 2007's Teeth, both of which had other cast members in the Breakthrough Performers Program, though he was not. He's very intelligent, funny, and good looking, in addition to being an excellent actor, and game: in Teeth he was one of the unfortunate victims of Jess Weixler's "teeth".

Supermodel/Actress Xenia Siamas, smart, beautiful, entrepreneurial and supremely talented. Highly sought after as a model, she is doing more and more films. She played a drug addict in the 2006 Push with Chazz Palminteri. She has a featured role in Casino Jack at HIFF this year, as a stewardess, and is in development and pre-production with several film projects for next year. Watch for her!



Robin Singer
KISSES, CHLOE
Photo by Ramsey Fendall
Lovely Robin Singer has a starring role in the three character drama Kisses, Chloe: a man, a woman, and another woman, alone, together, in a house by the sea in the Hamptons (a perfect film for HIFF)!

Here are some links:

http://www.hamptonsfilmfest.org/

http://www.efp-online.com/


http://www.shooting-stars.eu/

Here are some older stories about participants in the Breakthrough Performers Program:

HIFF 2009 - ROONEY MARA IS THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
(Rooney was one of last year's Breakthrough Performers at HIFF 2009; these are some pix I took there.)
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2010/08/rooney-mara-is-girl-with-dragon-tattoo.html


HIFF 2009 - VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH EMMY ROSSUM FROM DARE
(Emmy Rossum was a Breakthrough Performer at HIFF 2009, and she had a starring role in the film, Dare. This is a video interview I did with her. Emmy is currently taping Shameless, a new TV series for Showtime.)
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2009/11/emmy-rossum-dare.html


HIFF 2009 - PREVIEW -- THE 2009 BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMERS
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2009/10/breakout-performers-at-hiff.html

HIFF 2008 - VIER MINUTEN AND HANNAH HERZSPRUNG
(Hannah Herzsprung, one of the finest and most popular young actresses in German was in the Breakthrough Performers Program in both 2007 and 2008. This story and others about her from the Festival have been enduringly popular. Each time one of her films opens, or she comes into attention, QPORIT gets a huge flood of traffic (largely but not entirely from Germany and Europe) for stories that mention her. Most recently this just happened again a few weeks ago.)
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2008/11/vier-minuten-and-hannah-herzsprung.html

HIFF 2007 - TEETH
(Jess Weixler was one of the 2007 Breakthrough Performers.)
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2008/02/teeth.html

BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMERS AT HIFF

One of my favorite features of the Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) is the series of events centering around the Breakout Performers (BP's). Each year several young and very promising American and foreign actors are honored as Rising Stars (US) and Shooting Stars (EU).

The public events include films with these young actors, panel discussions and parties. (There are also private events for the BP's including "mentoring" with established professionals.)

The last two years and this coming year the honored BP's have been really special. (I'm trying to track down who the earlier -- up thru 2006 -- BP's were.)

Here's a preview of this year's BP's... after we meet the BP's at the festival we'll add more to this story!

The Rising Stars this year are Emmy Rossum, Emma Stone, Rooney Mara, and Zach Gilford.

Emmy Rossum is 23 (9/12/86)and 5'8". She studied at Columbia University.She is a terrific singer, starting in the Metropolitan Opera Children's Chorus as a child, and starring in Phantom of the Opera. She also had roles in Mystic River and The Day After Tomorrow. Her first starring role was in Nola, a film directed by Alan Hruska (who we interviewed after liking his film, The Warrior Class, one of my favorite films at the Tribeca FF a few years ago). Here's a picture of Alan in his office with a picture of Emmy in Nola on the wall.

Emmy Rossum in a poster for NOLAon the wall of director Alan Hruska's office.Photo by Eric Roffman.

This year she'll be seen at HIFF in Dare (along with Zach Gilford and Rooney Mara).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Rossum

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002536/

Emma Stone is 20 (11/6/88) 5' 6". Her first feature was Superbad. She was funny as the host ghostess in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. She was also in The Rocker, The House Bunny, and Zombieland.

She'll be seen at HIFF in Paper Man with Jeff Bridges. She has Easy-A (from the director of Fired Up) now in post production.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Stone
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1297015/

Zach Gilford is 27 (01/14/82). He went to Northwestern. He's a (real life) trip leader for teen adventures... but he's best known for his role as Matt Saracen in Friday Night Lights. (Last year, his teammate Tim Riggins (ie Taylor Kitsch) was a Shooting Star.) Zach is in post production now for The River Why.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zach_Gilford

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1472917/

Rooney Mara (about 24) is part of a famous football owning family, and the sister of Kate Mara who was a Shooting Star last year. She was educated partly at NYU and partly in a traveling program visiting South American countries, and is developing a non-profit organization related to international issues. Rooney is in two movies at HIFF, Dare and Tanner Hall. She has several pictures in post production or getting ready for release.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Mara

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1913734/

The Shooting Stars are Alba Rohrwacher (Due partite -- Now called, in English, The Ladies Get Their Say) from Italy, and Cyron Melville (Love and Rage), from Denmark.

More about the present and former Breakout Performers after the festival.

NOTES: OCT 10 --

1 - HIFF calls them Breakthrough Performers, not Breakout Performers.

2 - Zach Gilford didn't make it because of Friday Night Lights shooting conflicts. Emma Stone did not arrive in time for the Panel.

3 - Samuli Vauramo, from Finland, one of Europe's Shooting Stars, did arrive, flying in from Rome for a day or two before going right back to Rome to continue shooting a film with George Clooney.