So the trailer for Stephen Daldry’s “Trash” is out there. Set in Brazil, it chronicles impoverished street kids who find themselves involved in a political scandal when they make a discovery in a garbage dump. Soon the trio are running from the cops and trying to right a terrible wrong. It stars Rooney Mara and Martin Sheen as an NGO worker and priest, respectively, and highlights a triad of young Brazilian boys played by Rickson Teves, Eduardo Luis and Gabriel Weinstein. And yes, these non-actor discoveries are actually the leads with the Americans providing the support (Brazilians Wagner Moura and Selton Mello also co-star).
“The three lead actors in the film have never acted in a film before, they’ve never been to a cinema before,” Daldry said in a recent interview with Screen Daily. "The reason I made this film is because it’s about the underbelly, the difficult side of Rio, the underexposed side of Rio.”
Always an Oscar favorite, Daldry had been nominated as a Best Director for every film he had ever made up until 2011’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” (which still scored a nomination for Best Picture). With a pedigree like that, Daldry’s bound to end up on the fall film festival circuit, right? Yes, but not at the usual suspect places. Screen Daily says Daldry’s “Trash” will make its world premiere at the Rio Film Festival in October. This means TIFF, NYFF, Venice are out and likely Telluride too (unless they sneak it by without announcing it as a premiere, but given the festival wars of late, that seems unlikely).
Perhaps that means it could turn up later this year in North America at the AFI Festival in November—though it could depend on how it’s received in Brazil. So is this an Academy Awards contender that we’ll see on the official slate in 2014? Universal already has their hands full with Angelina Jolie’s “Unbroken” in December and my guess is that they’ll just focus on the one film, and worry about “Trash” in 2015, but I guess we’ll see. And the studio tends to be selective when it comes to pushing for Oscar gold—they went strong with "Les Miserables" in 2012, but when "Rush" was met with a muted response last year, they adjusted any plans they might’ve had accordingly.
"Trash" will hit theaters in Brazil on October 9th. Watch the recent trailer below in case you missed it. 08.19.14 update. A new poster has arrived via HeyUGuys.
