Zal Batmanglij returned to Sundance at the start of the year, bringing with him The East. The film marks the writer-director’s sophomore feature, and also sees him reuniting with past collaborator Brit Marling, who makes up one third of a brilliant leading trio.
The first trailer and teaser poster surfaced back in January, following its debut out in Park City. And now BlackBook have debuted The East’s new poster, giving us a look at Marling alongside her leading co-stars, Ellen Page and Alexander Skarsgård.
In THE EAST, Sarah Moss (Marling) is a brilliant operative for an elite private intelligence firm whose top objective is to ruthlessly protect the interests of their A-list corporate clientele. She is assigned to go undercover to infiltrate an anarchist collective known for executing covert attacks upon major corporations. Living amongst them in an effort to get closer to their members, Sarah finds herself unexpectedly torn between two worlds as she starts to fall in love with the group’s charismatic leader, finding her life and her priorities irrevocably changed.
Toby Kebbell, Patricia Clarkson, Julia Ormond, Shiloh Fernandez, and Aldis Hodge complete the cast very nicely, giving us so much to look forward to here.
After working together on Batmanglij’s feature debut, Sound of My Voice, Marling and Batmanglij have once more co-written the script here, from which the latter is directing.
Batmanglij and Marling have both very much been two to watch in recent years, and it’s always nice to see rising filmmakers collaborating with each other on multiple projects. Here’s to hoping we’ll have more coming from the duo in the years to come.
The East is set to be released in the US on 31st May, which is definitely a release date you should commit to memory. Alas, the film isn’t coming to our shores for Sundance London next month. I’m hoping that a UK release date will be announced soon, so fingers crossed until then.
