Following its Jury Prize win at the Bentonville Film Festival (BFF), Geena Davis’ new effort to celebrate the work of women and diverse voices in media, “Jack of the Red Hearts” arrives in theaters nationwide on February 26th, 2016.
BFF is the only festival to guarantee distribution for its winners’ project. “The goal of the festival is not just to showcase women and diversity—it’s to really have a proactive and powerful effect on the industry,” says Davis, BFF co-founder and founder and chair of the nonprofit Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. “We’re intent on being extremely proactive in showing the films that include women and that are very commercial. Our goal is to show that this is the direction in which things are heading and we should get there sooner.”
AnnaSophia Robb portrays “Jack,” a tough teenage runaway on the lam from her parole officer. The conniving street kid brazenly impersonates a trained caregiver and forms a unique bond with an 11 year-old autistic girl named Glory, brilliantly played by newcomer Taylor Richardson. Famke Janssen, as the child’s desperate mother Kay, also bonds with the imposter, as a surrogate daughter she can actually talk to. And the girl’s cute older brother Robert (Israel Broussard) falls in love. When the deception is exposed and the cops descend, loving father Mark (Scott Cohen) struggles to hold his family together as the pieces of this puzzle are reshuffled into a new, satisfying whole.
“Jack of the Red Hearts” is directed by Janet Grillo (writer/director of “Fly Away” and executive producer of Emmy®-winning “Autism: The Musical”) and written by Jennifer Deaton. Both have strong ties to the autism community as Grillo is mother to a child on the autism spectrum and Deaton is aunt to a child on the spectrum. The producers are Stefan Nowicki, Joey Carey, Lucy Mukerjee-Brown, and Morgan White.
The film stars AnnaSophia Robb (“The Carrie Diaries,” “Soul Surfer”), Famke Janssen (“X-Men”), Scott Cohen (“One Life to Live”), Taylor Richardson (“Annie”), Israel Broussard (“The Bling Ring”) and John D’Leo (“Unbroken”).
“Jack of the Red Hearts” opens in AMC theaters in New York, Los Angeles and other select markets on February 26th, 2016.
