Most of the attention going A24’s way right now is due to Moonlight, the festival darling primed to top many critics’ best-of lists at the end of this year. But the ever-impressive independent film distributor has another promising title in the pipeline for 2016 that has yet to premiere: Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women, a cinematic ode to “the people who raise us and the times that shape us.”
A heartfelt comedy-drama in the vein of Mills’ last film, Beginners, 20th Century Women stars Annette Bening as a single mom striving to teach her son (Lucas Jade Zumann) the right ideas about love, connection, and freedom. The film tracks her efforts as she comes into contact with Julie (Elle Fanning), a friend of her son’s, and Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a young photographer—all while adjusting to life with the hunky slacker (played by Billy Crudup) renting out the bungalow behind her house.
The film is set in 1979 Santa Barbara, at the twilight of the Jimmy Carter era. This first trailer opens with a pointed acknowledgment of its time period, introducing its characters against the audio of Carter’s infamously controversial “malaise” speech. In its language and its tone, the speech illustrates the big, complicated ideas to be tackled by 20th Century Women: the hope for a better future, the perils of animosity, and the longing for meaning.
20th Century Women will premiere Oct. 8 as the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival before a Christmas Day theatrical release.
