2015 Sundance – World Premiere – New Frontier Section – Friday, January 23 @ Noon, Temple Theatre, Park City

A deeply personal cinematic essay set against a contemplative backdrop of urban California landscapes, Jenni Olson’s The Royal Road offers up a primer on the Spanish colonization of California and the Mexican American War alongside intimate reflections on nostalgia, the pursuit of unavailable women, butch identity and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo – also featuring a voiceover cameo by Tony Kushner.

Deceptively simple landscapes serve as the framework for the film’s lyrically written voiceover, which combines rigorous historical research with a stream-of consciousness personal monologue and relates these seemingly disparate stories from an intimate, colloquial perspective to tell a one-of-a-kind California tale.

A fascinating and unlikely reinvention story, The Royal Road simultaneously explores cinematic spiritual channeling, the conquest and colonization of Mexico and the American Southwest, fading historical Californian urban landscapes, and the passions found in butch identity to achieve an achingly beautiful and poetic defence of remembering. Probing roads from El Camino Real, to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, to the road right outside the front door, Olson crafts a deeply intelligent and transcending observation of the human condition that reaches for redemption in the embrace of history, nostalgia, mindfulness, and sheer beauty.

Writer / Director: Jenni Olson
Actor: Jenni Olson, Tony Kushner
Produced By: Jenni Olson, Julie Dor

Additional Sundance Film Festival Screening Times:

Saturday, January 24 @ 4:00PM, Redstone Cinema 2, Park City
Monday, January 26 @ 6:45pm, Broadway Centre Cinema 3, Salt Lake City
Thursday, January 29 @ 7:00PM, Holiday Village Cinema 4, Park City