[press release from Icon Film]
MARY AND MAX, the debut feature film from Adam Elliot, Academy Award winning Director of short Harvie Crumpet, has been selected to screen in the Generation 14plus section at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival.
MARY AND MAX will be in competition amongst 27 features from 25 countries selected in total for Generation 14plus section. The Generation 14plus programme will open on February 6, 2009.
Last year, Australian film The Black Balloon premiered in the Generation 14 strand at the Berlin Film Festival and went on to be the Australian box-office hit of the year.
This announcement comes on the eve of the world premiere of MARY AND MAX which will take place at the opening of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the largest independent cinema festival in the U.S on January 15.
MARY AND MAX stars the voice of Academy Award winner Philip Seymour Hoffman who is joined by Australian talent, Academy Award Nominee Toni Collette (Little Miss Sunshine, In Her Shoes), Eric Bana (Romulus My Father, Chopper) and Barry Humphries.
MARY AND MAX is a simple tale of pen-friendship between two very different people; Mary Dinkle, a chubby lonely eight year old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max Horovitz, a 44 year old, severely obese, Jewish man with Asperger’s Syndrome living in the chaos of New York.
Spanning 20 years and 2 continents, Mary and Max’s friendship survives much more than the average diet of life’s ups and downs. Like Harvie Krumpet, Mary and Max is innocent but not naive, as it takes us on a journey that explores friendship, autism, taxidermy, psychiatry, alcoholism, where babies come from, obesity, kleptomania, sexual difference, trust, copulating dogs, religious difference, agoraphobia and much much more
MARY AND MAX will release across Australia on April 9, 2009.
For more on the film please check out http://www.maryandmax.com