Featherweight
A touching, disquieting, relentlessly fascinating…an instant classic of a boxing movie.
-- Richard Brody, The New Yorker
The Featherweight
Set in the mid-1960s, The Featherweight presents a gripping chapter in the true-life story of Italian-American boxer Willie Pep—the winningest fighter of all time—who, down and out in his mid-40s and with his personal life in shambles, decides to make a return to the ring, at which point a documentary camera crew enters his life. Painstakingly researched and constructed, the film is a visceral portrait of the discontents of twentieth-century American masculinity, fame and self-perception.
"It’s as nifty as its warts-and-all protagonist, with an inventive verité storytelling style inspired by John Cassavettes that also evokes the era’s filmmaking." ~ Indiewire
"Kolodny has rounded up an extraordinarily committed cast of actors, whose mannerisms and inflections are sharpened and roughened, tuned and inflected to feel like archeological rediscoveries of behaviors past." ~ New Yorker
"The film is beautifully acted all round, and a dazzling feat of stylistic play and period recreation." ~ Screen International
"There are other stories about the post-professional struggles of athletes, but the style of The Featherweight is particularly effective when it is exposed enough to show how mythmaking works — taking something true and building a fiction on top of it." ~ Moveable Fest
"As a feat of cinematic masquerade, it could hardly be pulled off with any more panache: The term “mockumentary” hardly feels appropriate for a film this reverent of its supposed form, and this toughly loving toward its human subject." ~ Variety
"It’s as nifty as its warts-and-all protagonist, with an inventive verité storytelling style inspired by John Cassavettes that also evokes the era’s filmmaking." ~ Indiewire
"Kolodny has rounded up an extraordinarily committed cast of actors, whose mannerisms and inflections are sharpened and roughened, tuned and inflected to feel like archeological rediscoveries of behaviors past." ~ New Yorker
"The film is beautifully acted all round, and a dazzling feat of stylistic play and period recreation." ~ Screen International
"There are other stories about the post-professional struggles of athletes, but the style of The Featherweight is particularly effective when it is exposed enough to show how mythmaking works — taking something true and building a fiction on top of it." ~ Moveable Fest
"As a feat of cinematic masquerade, it could hardly be pulled off with any more panache: The term “mockumentary” hardly feels appropriate for a film this reverent of its supposed form, and this toughly loving toward its human subject." ~ Variety
Genre
Drama,
Boxing
Runtime
99
Language
English
Director
Robert Kolodny
Writer(s)
Steve Loff
Cast
James Madio,
Ruby Wolf,
Ron Livingston,
Stephen Lang,
Lawrence Gilliard Jr,
Keir Gilchrist,
Shari Albert
Awards:
Nominee, Venice Horizons Award ~ Best Film, Venice Film Festival