#Rifkin’s Festival Trailer and New Images Show Wallace Shawn’s Marriage Falling Apart

“#Rifkin’s Festival Trailer and New Images Show Wallace Shawn’s Marriage Falling Apart”

MPI Media Group has just released the official trailer for Woody Allen’s new film starring Wallace Shawn and Gina Gershon, Rifkin’s Festival. When the couple travels to San Sebastian for a film festival, they find the troubles of their marriage bubbling to the surface. Luckily, they have found different partners that provide a shoulder to cry on.

Rifkin’s Festival had its world premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival, apropos for the film as it is set at that idyllic Spanish town by the sea. Probably best known for his role as Vizzini in The Princess Bride, Wallace Shawn has worked with Woody Allen on such iconic movies as Manhattan, Radio Days, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Shadows and Fog, along with his latest film, Rifkin’s Festival.

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Mort Rifkin (Wallace Shawn – Manhattan, My Dinner with Andre), a retired film studies professor, accompanies his publicist wife Sue (Gina Gershon New Amsterdam, Killer Joe) to the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain. He goes not for the films, but because he’s worried that Sue’s fascination with her young buzzed-about film director client, Philippe (Louis Garrel – Little Women, An Officer and a Spy), might be more than professional. In addition, Mort hopes the change of scenery will provide a respite from his struggle to write a first novel that lives up to his impossibly exacting standards.

With Mort’s relentlessly dismissive opinions of Philippe, and Sue’s sharp focus on her career as well as Philippe, their already frayed relationship becomes more strained. Mort’s mood lightens when he meets Jo Rojas (Elena Anaya – The Skin I Live In), a kindred spirit whose marriage to tempestuous painter Paco (Sergi López – Pan’s Labyrinth) is causing her pain as well. While Mort’s personal tastes have sometimes pushed people away, Jo’s intellect and shared sensibility draw them together. While Sue spends her days with Philippe, Mort’s relationship with Jo deepens.

Rifkin’s Festival was breath-takingly shot by the great cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, whose classics include Apocalypse Now, The Last Emperor, Last Tango in Paris and the three previous Woody Allen films. Written and directed by Allen, it stars Elena Anaya, Louis Garrel, Gina Gershon, Sergi López, Wallace Shawn, and Christoph Waltz.

Last month, Shawn reached out via an open letter to his fellow actors to plead his case for working with Allen despite sexual abuse allegations that have darkened Allen’s life and career. Shawn makes the case for why he believes Woody Allen’s multiple denials of sexual abuse against his daughter Dylan Farrow are true. Shawn broke down his own thought process, the case, and comes to the conclusion that Woody Allen had been and continues to be unjustly condemned. The piece was directed at his fellow actors specifically.

Presented by The Mediapro Studio, Gravier Productions & Wildside, Rifkin’s Festival is a Spanish-American-Italian Co-Production with Perdido Productions. Producers on the film include Letty Aronson, p.g.a., Erika Aronson, p.g.a., and Jaume Roures. MPI Media Group today announced it will the upcoming Woody Allen film, Rifkin’s Festival, in theaters and on digital platforms on January 28, 2022.