Sophie Jones, executive produced by alumna Nicole Holofcener '88, is now playing in theaters and on VOD. The trailer can be seen below. The film premiered at the Festival du Cinéma Américain de Deauville in France, and has been an official selection at the Festival de Cinéma de la ville de Québec, Canada, the Heartland Film Festival, the Montana Film Festival, and the Mar del Plata International Film Festival. Additional select screenings can be found here.
In this debut feature by director Jessie Barr, 16-year-old Sophie Jones grapples with the recent death of her mother. Sophie is left to sort out her difficult emotions outside of her therapist’s office on her own, which leads to her feeling isolated. Physical intimacy and eroticism become the antidote to her mother’s death. Sophie begins pushing her personal boundaries by making out with classmate Kevin, who seems to be more considerate of her well-being than she is. Soon after hooking up with Kevin, Sophie chases that momentary high by pursuing the school’s resident sexually experienced “bad boy,” Tony, who is also harboring a crush on her. She tries to keep her relationships strictly for her own empowerment, and as a means of distraction, but finds that she does want more than physical intimacy.
Barr has said of her film, “I was 16 years old when my father died. For sixteen years I never spoke about him or about the experience of losing him...When my younger cousin sent me an early draft of a raw script I was moved by her honesty. The story was inspired by her experiences when she was 16 and grieving her mother’s death. There was a truth I felt vibrating through my entire being. I felt immediately that this was my story too and that I had to tell this story. I had to tell our story.”
Nicole Holofcener, who was born in New York, made her feature film debut with Walking and Talking in 1996. Along with her feature films, she has also directed several TV episodes for shows such as Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls and Six Feet Under. Last August, The New Yorker profiler, Ariel Levy, called Holofcener, “one of the sharpest anatomists of upper-middle-class American life.”
