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DVD Release Date: April 30, 2013

Price: DVD $24.98

Studio: IFC Films

Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette follows up his 2003 documentary Tarnation with another movie about him and his mentally ill mother, Walk Away Renee.

In the earlier film, Caouette culled together snapshots, Super-8 footage, answering machine messages, video diaries and early short films to document his growing up with a schizophrenic mother. In Walk Away Renee, Caouette films his road trip to move his mother from Texas to New York, which both tightens and tests their bond.

Along the way, they tackle roadblocks including Renee’s mood-stabilizing medications and get glimpses of moments from their past. As Renee fights to maintain a grip on reality, Caouette is faced with deciding between sanity and mortality, familial devotion and personal survival.

Again, Caouette mixes film types, using candid home movies, split-screen verite musical montage, hallucinatory psychedelia and both real and imagined dramas.

Screened in a brief run in theaters,...

 

It's my birthday today, which means naturally I'm looking at movie listings for tonight and tomorrow. Should I finally see Argo, convince my husband to watch Cloud Atlas with me or give Wreck-It Ralph a chance? After reading Chale's Austin Polish Film Festival previews (parts one and two), I'm tempted to spend the weekend at The Marchesa. Otherwise, tonight's an unusually poor night for special screenings unless I want to go to a Dumb and Dumber quote-along, and considering I walked out of that movie when I saw it in a theater I'll pass. Besides, my husband keeps promising he's taking me to a fancy dinner at McDonald's.

On Saturday and Sunday, Alamo Ritz brings back its 70mm series with Cleopatra, that gorgeous flop with Elizabeth Taylor in the title role. And while I'm not a big cocktail girl, I do dearly love A Fish Called Wanda, which Alamo is...

Title: Walk Away Renee Director: Jonathan Caouette In 2004 Jonathan Caouette made a film, “Tarnation,” about his tumultuous upbringing with his maternal grandparents and fractured, on-and-off-again relationship with his disturbed mother, Renee LeBlanc, who suffered from psychosis after undergoing shock treatments in her adolescence following a period of time being paralyzed. The movie, which screened at Sundance and Cannes, became something of a media sensation for being edited on free iMovie software on a Mac and having a budget of only a couple hundred dollars (though subsequently brushed up sonically prior to a theatrical release), but it was no parlor trick. An intense and unsettling autobiographical bricolage, the movie had important things [ Read More ]...

"Walk Away Renee," which debuted at Cannes 2011, is Jonathan Caouette's follow-up to his much-lauded 2003 documentary "Tarnation." The film is playing at Los Angeles' Outfest on Saturday, July 21 and is already available on SundanceNow. Our exclusive clip and trailers are below. The filmmaker's mother, Renee Leblanc, is front and center in both of his video memoirs. As a child, she was given electroshock therapy and as an adult, lives with acute bipolar and schizoaffective disorder. In "Walk Away Renee," the latest psychiatric facility is not working out and Caouette decides to drive his mother cross country from Houston to New York. She loses her medication and the relationship between mother and son veers in both touching and tragic directions, with both souls exposed through footage Caouette creatively weaves together with metaphysical overtones. The film itself it quite a ride, immersive and boldly personal. The exclusive clip we...

One title starting to build a bit of buzz ahead of its July 26th premiere at Fantasia is Jason Banker's is-it-horror, is-it-drama feature Toad Road. Previously known primarily for his documentary work (Dp on Teenage Paparazzo and Walk Away Renee and director of My Name is Faith, amongst other), this is Banker's dramatic directorial debut. A few words on the film from Simon Laperrière and the Fantasia site: The impressive second full-length feature by the talented Jason Banker, the unclassifiable Toad Road is at a crossroads of sorts. On the one hand, it's an intimate meditation on lost youth that evokes the films of Gus Van Sant. Depicted with disconcerting realism, Banker's narrative paints a nuanced portrait of a nihilistic generation, and with the...

"Teenage Paparazzo" and "Walk Away Renee" cinematographer Jason Banker's first narrative feature "Toad Road," world premieres later this month in Montreal at the 16th annual Fantasia International Film Festival. Indiewire has the exclusive trailer and poster for the dark thriller. "Toad Road," which was also written and shot by Banker, is a disturbing portrait of contemporary youth culture where the lines between perception and reality are blurred with often frightening results. The trailer is appropriately creepy as hell. The Fantasia Film Festival runs from July 19 to August 7. Traction Media will be responsible for domestic sales for the film at the festival. For more information on the festival and "Toad Road," go Here.  ...

Jonathan Caouette made a name for himself some years back with his debut feature "Tarnation," a manic, prodding look into his family, created on the cheap using home videos and the trusty iMovie program. His stock blew up, and a successful screening at the Sundance Film Festival eventually lead to him helming the "All Tomorrow's Parties" documentary and a personal horror short "All Flowers In Time."

But the story about Caouette and his mother Renee Leblanc wasn't over, and the director revisited this for "Walk Away Renee," a documentary that serves as a sequel/proper-ending to his astonishingly affecting first film. You can check out "Walk Away Renee" right now online at SundanceNow, and in preparation for its release we spoke to Jonathan about its germination, the difficulty of making a work so intimate, and what he's up to for his next project.

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I’ve been struggling to find a metaphor for the very special, not to mention most unusual, connection between director Jonathan Caouette and Renee Leblanc, his mentally ill and frequently institutionalized mother and the subject of his most recent film, Walk Away Renee. The closest I could come is really a parallel, and it lies within Caouette’s body of work. In his 2010 surreal short All Flowers in Time, a beautiful young woman, played by Chloe Sevigny, has an indefinable relationship with an adolescent boy. In a bizarre world where young people’s eyes can turn glowing red, the two seem to be close, in what way we do not know. At certain points, they look at each other with their neon-looking eyes, make faces, and giggle, but, above all, a supernormal affection emanates from this experimental narrative.

Asked to explain his and his mother’s amazing rapport, Caouette, now 39, responds,...

Walk Away Renee, Jonathan Caouette’s follow-up/sequel to Tarnation, is having its big day today, with both the “real-world” premiere of the new cut of the film playing at BAMcinemaFest tonight, and also its simultaneous online premiere through SundanceNOW’s Doc Club.

Howard Feinstein had an excellent, long chat with Caouette which just went live on the Filmmaker site, and we’re also very pleased to have an exclusive clip from Walk Away Renee which captures one of the more experimental moments from Caouette’s portrait of the relationship between himself and his mentally ill mother, Renee LeBlanc.

… Read the rest...

Born out of a truck load of home videos, answering machine recordings, and photographs, Jonathan Caouette's 2003 autobiographical "Tarnation" was a dearly personal and often frightening no-holds-barred look into a family torn apart by a tortured past. Cobbled together with iMovie before YouTube was even a twinkle in a vlogger's eye, the film bleeds honesty and its fearless look at the subjects (including the director himself) can be downright terrifying at times. But it wasn't just a family arguing or bitterly digging into old wounds -- Caouette had a manic, assaulting editing style and a penchant for some truly disturbing experimental sequences, an aesthetic that exhibited their emotional states in a fresh, genuinely perturbing way. A hit at the Sundance Film Festival, the movie went on to gather a number of ecstatic supporters and thrust the director into the spotlight. We're now in 2012, and after helming documentary "All Tomorrow's Parties...

Back in 2003, Jonathan Caouette dug through years of home video and answering machine recordings to assemble his debut feature film, the incredibly intimate documentary “Tarnation.” Focusing on his childhood and relationship with a schizophrenic mother (suffering from such disorders due to shock therapy), the movie was an intense punch to the gut, a frenetic autobiography that exposed a rather frightening and ugly side of family. After dabbling in other projects (including music festival doc "All Tomorrow's Parties" and the short film "All Flowers In Time" with Chloë Sevigny), Caouette has returned to the well with “Walk Away Renee,” a sequel which follows the director and his mother as they road trip to her new home in a New York-based assisted-living facility. Things are complicated after the duo discovers that most of the Renee’s medication has been lost and the prescriptions cannot be replenished until they reach her new home.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects and its digital sister, SundanceNOW and Thom Powers, curator for SundanceNOW.s Doc Club, announced on Thursday that director Jonathan Caouette.s documentary Walk Away Renee will have its North American premiere as part of the website.s new Svod (Subscriber Video-on-Demand) program Doc Club. The film, which premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and is the follow-up to Caouette.s 2004 groundbreaking hit Tarnation, will be released simultaneous with its North American Premiere on Wednesday, June 27th at BAMcinemaFest 2012. Doc Club subscribers will be able to download or stream the film as part of the June offerings entitled Up Close And Personal or the film can be rented on SundanceNOW for $6.99.

In Walk Away Renee, Caouette embarks on a road trip to move his mentally ill motherRenee across the country. As they encounter roadblocks in the present, we begin to flash back to moments from the past,...

When discussing the lineup at the upcoming BAMcinemaFEST a while back, I noted that a new cut of Walk Away Renee, Jonathan Caouette’s long-awaited follow-up to Tarnation, would be playing as part of the festival on June 27. While that’s exciting news on its own, now comes word of a very savvy move by IFC to capitalize on the interest in the film by giving the film a simultaneous online premiere on SundanceNOW’s Doc Club, the Svod (Subscriber Video-on-Demand) series curated by documentary maven Thom Powers.

“Walk Away Renee makes a perfect headliner for the June [Doc Club] theme of ‘Up Close and Personal,’” said Powers. “Jonathan Caouette directs with such intimacy that viewers feel like a member of his family. I was blown away by this film at Cannes last year and look forward to sharing it with a greater audience.”

“Walk Away Renee was developed from equal parts love,...

BAMcinemaFest, which in its fourth year has already gained a reputation for hosting the New York premieres of the year's strongest indie fare, has released a list of eleven titles that will premiere at this year's festival.  The list of eleven films includes hits from Sundance, Cannes, SXSW, Slamdance and more.  Included among the screenings is the Us premiere of Jonathan Caouette's ("Tarnation") second feature, "Walk Away Renee," which got picked up by IFC after its Cannes debut and, like "Tarnation" before it, took a few months to be recut after premiering. Films from So Yong Kim, Ry Russo-Young, Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady are amongst the first films to be announced. The festival, which is part of the Brooklyn film mainstay Bam, will run from June 20-July 1, 2012. The announced films, with descriptions provided by Bam, are below: The narrative slate will include: The Comedy (Rick Alverson) NY...

In recent years France has been among the front-runners in pushing the boundaries of modern horror. With such offerings as Frontier(s), Inside and High Tension, French filmmakers have been making us seriously squirm. It is with this reminder of the quality of their filmmaking that we at Dread Central bring you an announcement of the film list from the 17th Annual L'Etrange Festival, France's biggest horror film festival.

With over 70 films being screened and more than 17,000 attendees expected to descend on Paris, Le'Etrange Festival

Below we have the Complete listing of the festival's events:

From the Press Release

L’Étrange Festival – a unique event bringing filmgoers a fascinating roster of provocative and eye-opening films – is thrilled to announce the line-up for its 17th edition, September 2 – 11, 2011 in Paris, France.

The 2011 line-up continues the tradition of highlighting emerging talent, paying homage to independent-minded filmmakers and featuring a truly diverse program that includes cutting-edge works,...

Three more indies to add to your fall dance card, plus: Does the Sarah Palin doc deserve special treatment? And our trailer of the weeks showcases Midwestern teens on the final night of summer.    New Distribution Deals A dark comedy about a woman's search for her late husband's biological son, Natural Selection won multiple awards at SXSW this year, and has now been picked up for distribution by Cinema Guild, according to indieWIRE. The film stars Rachael Harris (The Hangover) as a "dutiful Texas housewife" and Matt O'Leary as the son, "a mullet-headed, foul-mouthed ex-con." Cinema Guild plans a theatrical release this fall.  Walk Away Renee is Jonathan Caouette's follow-up to his 2004 documentary Tarnation, which was...

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Three more indies to add to your fall dance card, plus: Does the Sarah Palin doc deserve special treatment? And our trailer of the weeks showcases Midwestern teens on the final night of summer.    New Distribution Deals A dark comedy about a woman's search for her late husband's biological son, Natural Selection won multiple awards at SXSW this year, and has now been picked up for distribution by Cinema Guild, according to indieWIRE. The film stars Rachael Harris (The Hangover) as a "dutiful Texas housewife" and Matt O'Leary as the son, "a mullet-headed, foul-mouthed ex-con." Cinema Guild plans a theatrical release this fall.  Walk Away Renee is Jonathan Caouette's follow-up to his 2004 documentary Tarnation, which was...

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I'm not sure what Wellspring Media paid for Tarnation, the 218 dollar film which most definitely was their most profitable title with half a million dollar take at the box office, but if they were up and running today, you'd be sure that they would be among the more interested parties in getting the distribution rights for Jonathan Caouette's second docu-outing. IFC Films' Sundance Selects label have picked up Jonathan Caouette's Walk Away Renee -- just fresh from its world premiere screening at Critic's Week during the Cannes Film Festival. Gist: Not a sequel, but a road-trip follow up uses the same exploratory cinematic language that Caouette employed in Tarnation. THR's review says that it "yields far less consistent rewards", but I think this is somewhat expected. Worth Noting: Just prior to the feature film, Caouette directed Chloë Sevigny in the 2010 short, Nyff, Sundance and Rotterdam-selected All Flowers in Time.

Jonathan Caouette's documentary "Walk Away Renee" has been acquired for North American release by Sundance Selects, it was announced today. The film - which premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival's Critics Week - continues the story Caouette began with his award winning documentary "Tarnation" by following the director and his mentally ill mother on a road trip across the country. Caouette is currently spending the summer finishing the film, ...

When Filmmaker polled our editors and came up with the 10 Best Films of the ’00s, on our list was Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation. Ahead of its time in its iMovie-edited home brew of diaristic lo-fi doc footage, Tarnation vividly depicted the relationship of the filmmaker to his memorably unstable mother. At Cannes this year, Caouette is back with his not-a-sequel, Walk Away Renee (pictured), dipping into the same footage trove but augmenting it with new material. This new footage consists of Caouette traveling cross-country to check his mom into assisted living, and sci-fi scripted sequences positing an alternate reality version of these same events.

The film is produced, in part, by Agnes B.’s Love Streams Productions, and Caouette said at today’s Documentary Brunch at the Hotel Majestic that it is an ongoing project to be remixed in different ways. “My experience this year is exponentially different than when...

Richard Linklater may not be there this year to scare European journalists with his "demonic gestures" (aka the "Hook 'em" sign) but Cannes Film Festival is going to have some excellent Texas and even Austin representation in May. I mentioned one short film last week but I keep hearing more and better news.

Here's what I have so far -- feel free to comment if I missed anything. I have no clue yet whether any of the local filmmakers/writers mentioned below will actually travel to France for the festival ... I just hope the movies come back here so I can see them (if I haven't already).

The most obvious Central Texas movie at Cannes will be The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick's latest film, which we will hopefully see in Austin starting on June 4. The Tree of Life is one of the features in the main Cannes competition,...

The 50th edition of the Cannes Critics Week announced its lineup on Monday. War is declared by French director Valerie Donzelli will be the opening film of the Critics Week. Why are you crying? by Katia Lewcowicz will be the closing film of the selection.

The Special Session will include screening of Walk Away Renee by Jonathan Caouette (Etats-Unis/France/Belgique) and My Little Princess by Eva Ionesco (France).

Founded in 1962 by the Union of French Film Critics, the Critics Week is the oldest of the Cannes festival sidebars. Each year, a panel of international critics selects around a dozen shorts and features from first and second-time filmmakers to compete in this section.

This year, the event will take place from May12-20, 2011.

The complete lineup:

Feature films

Las Acacias by Giorgelli Pablo (Argentina / Spain)

Hail by Konstantin Bojanov (Bulgaria / France)

17 girls by Delphine Coulin, Coulin Muriel (France)

Sauna on...