#Winston Duke Guides Lost Souls – /Film

What if Pixar’s Soul was an existential arthouse drama? That sounds like the premise for Nine Days, the Sundance darling by first-time director Edson Oda which won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award in the Dramatic section at the Park City film festival. Winston Duke stars in Nine Days as a guide for unborn souls before they make their way into the human world. Watch the Nine Days trailer below.

Nine Days Trailer

Winston Duke leads a stacked cast which includes  Zazie Beetz, Bill Skarsgård, Benedict Wong, Tony Hale, David Rysdahl, and Arianna Ortiz in Nine Days, an existential fantasy which follows unborn souls as they are tested on whether they are ready to join humanity, or else face oblivion.
Dreamily shot by Japanese-Brazilian filmmaker Oda, who also writes the film, Nine Days dazzled at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it earned rave reviews and won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. It’s astonishing that this is Oda’s feature film debut, after carving out a career in short films and music videos prior to Nine Days.

Nine Days looks incredible, with shades of Terrence Malick and Pixar’s upcoming Soul great reviews from Cannes reviewers(garnering ), which plays with similar themes of the afterlife, purgatory, and the nature of the soul. The film is next set to screen at the AFI Fest, though a wide release date has not yet been set by Sony apart from “2021.”

Here is the synopsis for Nine Days:

Will (Winston Duke) spends his days in a remote outpost watching the live Point of View (POV) on TV’s of people going about their lives, until one subject perishes, leaving a vacancy for a new life on earth. Soon, several candidates — unborn souls — arrive at Will’s to undergo tests determining their fitness, facing oblivion when they are deemed unsuitable. But Will soon faces his own existential challenge in the form of free-spirited Emma (Zazie Beetz), a candidate who is not like the others, forcing him to turn within and reckon with his own tumultuous past. Fueled by unexpected power, he discovers a bold new path forward in his own life. Making his feature-film debut after a series of highly acclaimed and award-winning short films and music videos, Japanese Brazilian director Edson Oda delivers a heartfelt and meditative vision of human souls in limbo, aching to be born against unimaginable odds, yet hindered by forces beyond their will…

Sony Pictures Classics is set to release Nine Days sometime in 2021.

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