Naama Kates Film "Eden" Wins at SXSW

Eden, starring our very own Naama Kates, has just won the SXSW Audience Award! In addition to this, the film also took the top prize (Jury Award) for Best Performance (Jamie Chung), and the Narrative Women Director's Award went to the film's director Megan Griffith. Congrats to Naama, her co-stars and their director for this incredible achievement.

Here is a great review of thew film from Variety:

 A Centripetal Films production. Produced by Colin Harper Plank, Jacob Mosler. Co-producer, Trent Broin. Directed by Megan Griffiths. Screenplay, Richard B. Phillips, Griffiths, from a story by Griffiths, Chong Kim.

With: Jamie Chung, Matt O'Leary, Beau Bridges, Jeanine Monterroza, Naama Kates, Eddie Martinez, Tantoo Cardinal, Tracey Fairaway, Scott Mechlowicz. 

 Scrupulously avoiding salaciousness and overstatement, "Eden" translates a true-life tale of human trafficking into an effectively low-key, arrestingly suspenseful drama. Still, it may prove challenging to convince potential ticketbuyers that this handsomely lensed indie is something more substantial than a Lifetime woman-in-jeopardy telepic with R-rated language. Fest exposure could help -- the pic earned an audience award for narrative feature, along with prizes for helmer Megan Griffiths and lead player Jamie Chung at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival -- but critical buzz may have to be high-decibel to guarantee at least limited theatrical play.

On the other hand, a savvy distrib should be able to generate press coverage outside traditional print and digital entertainment sites by emphasizing the real events that inspired the screenplay co-written by Griffiths and Richard B. Phillips.

In 1994, Korean-American teen Hyun Jae (Chung) enters a New Mexico bar with a fake ID, in search of fun and frolic after another hard day of helping her immigrant parents run a small gift shop. Unfortunately, she leaves the bar with a smooth-talking Mr. Wrong and winds up imprisoned as a sex slave by an outfit operated by Bob Gault (Beau Bridges), a corrupt federal marshal.

"Eden" is at once discreetly elliptical and almost clinically specific in its depiction of Hyun Jae's indoctrination and exploitation in the slave trade. Female nudity is conspicuous by its absence throughout the pic, but Griffiths methodically details how her lead character and other captive girls are imprisoned in a reconverted storage-unit center, routinely drugged by a coolly efficient nurse (Tantoo Cardinal) and intimidated into docility by the marshal's minions.

At first, Hyun Jae, renamed Eden by her captor, rebels against being used for prostitution and porn films. (The pic strains credibility only when she's not killed on the spot after maiming a would-be client and attempting to escape.) As time goes by, however, she dials down her defiance.

Driven by what appear to be equal measures survival instinct and Stockholm syndrome, she becomes a model employee, gaining sufficient trust so that she's allowed to work as driver, telephone receptionist and, for all practical purposes, personal assistant to Vaughan (Matt O'Leary), the marshal's second-in command.

Read the full review here.

- Lena