Sundance Buzz: Filmmaker Mark Webber’s ‘The End of Love’

Actor, director Mark Webber
Actor, director Mark Webber

The 2012 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah kicked off this week and one filmmaker is already making waves. Mark Webber’s achingly poignant drama “The End of Love” headlines Michael Cera and Amanda Seyfried opposite Webber himself, who also serves as writer and director. It’s about a single father wrestling with tragedy as he struggles to raise a toddler.

He told IndieWire the film is meant to “blur the lines between reality and fiction.” The child in the film is Webber’s real-life son. “I wanted to impart a raw truth,” he says.
I wanted to play with the limits of real time while maintaining a heightened cinematic feel.”

Mark Webber in "End of Love"
Mark Webber in "End of Love"

The film picks up one year after the death of the child’s mother. “What we see throughout the film is [my character] slowly unraveling, losing control and the ability to be a parent and to be present for his child,” says Webber in a video interview posted to the Sundance website.

The filmmaking process was particularly fraught with emotional pitfalls. “I was like, ‘How can I make a movie that is basically capturing my real life and just live in character around my child?’ And what was really interesting is that my son is by far the best actor in the film because he doesn’t have the ability to be false,” Webber observes. “So working with the other actors, it was a challenge to maintain that same state of being [in the moment] with one another.”

He acknowledges that financing an independent film is a hurdle that often proves impossible to surmount. However, it was merely a trip to an ice cream store that jump-started “End of Love.” The owner recognized Webber, who pitched the project and was flabbergasted when he found himself with enough financing to get started.

Webber tells IndieWire knew acting was his calling “as soon as I found out Superman wasn’t real, which was when I was five. I’ve been acting in films now for over ten years and the desire to direct came out of having such incredible experiences with all the directors I’ve worked with. I love to inspire and be inspired. Film is such a perfect medium.”

“The End of Love” is contending for Sundance honors in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. At post time, the film hadn’t yet landed a distribution deal.

CLICK HERE for the IndieWire article.

CLICK HERE for the Sundance interview.

Sundance Film Festival 2012, official site: http://www.sundance.org/festival/

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