Guillermo Arriaga to unveil new horror short at Sundance

Acclaimed Mexican screenwriter, director and producer Guillermo Arriaga’s next project is a short horror film called ‘Broken Night’. The interesting thing about this short is that it has been shot entirely with a Nikon D800, which the movie’s website describes it as giving “the highest possible image quality.”  Not to get too technical, but worth mentioning, “the camera has a 36 megapixel FX- format CMOS sensor; spectacularly low noise and high dynamic range.” The camera is so versatile that the page states “it’s as much at home on a movie set as on a landscape shoot or in a photo studio.” Pay attention film students, your film might just have gotten cheaper to shoot.

‘Broken Night,’ is about a young mother and her four-year-old daughter who are driving across desolated hills on a joyful trip that suddenly becomes a nightmare when they get into a car accident. Arriaga spoke on a video about how it is based on a car accident he had a couple of years ago. He continues on to say that he became involved in the project because he wants to play with horror, which he describes as an unexpected event such as a car crash.

He worked on this short horror film with Janusz Kamiński, one of the preeminent cinematographers in Hollywood who won the Oscar for ‘Schindler’s List’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan’. He was also nominated for ‘Amistad’, ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’ and ‘War Horse,’ also beautiful looking movies. 

Arriaga got Hollywood’s attention with ‘Amores Perros’ a story that is certainly known as one of Mexican cinema’s best films. Soon after he was asked to write ’21 Grams’ a crime thriller, which started Naomi Watts, Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn; the aforementioned actors won an Oscar for their performances. He went on to write ‘Babel’ another acclaimed film, which was nominated for an Oscar and starred Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael García Bernal. To bring my point home, he wrote and directed ‘The Burning Plain’ with Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lawrence and José María Yazpik and went on to win an award at the Venice Film Festival. 

This man has an impressive resume and is certainly one of the best storytellers of our time, whether he’s putting his stories down on paper or getting behind the camera.

It’s been announced that ‘Broken Night’ will be part of Sundance’s 2013 Short Film program, which will take place from Jan 17-27 and it’s under the “U.S. Narrative Short films” category. Out of the 65 films in this list, this is definitely a film many are keeping their eyes on.

For more info check out the movie website http://brokennightmovie.com