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The tension within Ryan J. Sloan‘s indie directorial debut “Gazer” is almost unparalleled: Of course the IndieWire review pointed to comparisons between Martin Scorsese, David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma, and Christopher Nolan when it came to decoding just how thrilling the feature is.
“Gazer,” which was among our favorite movies at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, premiered during the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. Metrograph Pictures later acquired the North American rights to the neo-noir heist thriller, with Head of Metrograph Pictures David Laub saying in a press statement just how much writer/director Sloan’s vision echoes cinema history.
“‘Gazer’ is a movie born of cinema and those who love it,” Laub said, deeming the feature “a brilliant homage to the unforgettable New York thrillers of the 1970s and 1980s.”
Well, we couldn’t agree more. Sloan, who co-wrote the film with breakout lead star Ariella Mastroianni, filmed “Gazer” over weekends across two years while working as an electrician. Shot on 16mm, “Gazer” was produced by both Sloan and Mastroianni, with Bruce Wemple, Mason Dwinell, Mitchell Cetuk, and Matheus Bastos co-producing. Sean Glass, Emily Korteweg, and Jillian Iscaro executive produced.
The official synopsis reads: “‘Gazer’ follows a young mother (Mastroianni) who, due to a unique condition that progressively affects her perception of time, is trying to save money for her daughter’s future before it’s too late. She takes a risky job from a mysterious woman with a dark past, which leads her to become entangled in a tense web of revenge, deceit, and murder.”
Marcia Debonis, Renee Gagner, Jack Alberts, and Tommy Kang also star.
Sloan and Mastroianni began writing “Gazer” during the pandemic, after Mastroianni was furloughed from her job on the programming team at the Angelika Film Center. Sloan was working as an electrician in a prison.
“It was a dark and uncertain time,” Sloan and Mastroianni told IndieWire. “The paranoia we felt shaped our desire to make a film like this. We started by watching a lot of noir. Revisiting films like Carol Reed’s ‘The Third Man’ and Roman Polanski’s ‘Chinatown’ lit a fire in us.”
“Gazer” started as an ode to “Blow Up,” “The Conversation,” “Vertigo,” “Memento,” “Blow Out,” and “Burning,” as the duo explained. Each feature “explored the fragility of perception and the consequences of unchecked curiosity,” they said, as the narratives for the respective films followed the “spiral structure” of returning to a single event or memory repeatedly.
“We always say this film is a redemption story derailed by a revenge story,” the filmmakers said.
“Gazer” was entirely self-financed and self-produced.
“Most of the actors came from Ariella’s acting classes and the locations came from my clients in the electrical business,” Sloan said. “It was a true community effort. We owe our friends and family and friends of family a lot for their support. We knew no one in the industry was going to give us an invitation, so we didn’t wait for one. I guess we were greenlit by pure recklessness, passion, and naivety.”
Co-writer Mastroianni also was set to star in the feature.
“I wanted a challenge and to give myself the opportunity to play, stretch, and explore,” she said. “[My character] Frankie is so different from me. I’ve never approached a character like this before because there were two distinct parts of the process: discovering her on the page with Ryan and then putting her in my body. It was such an important learning experience because we had done so much work on her character as writers that when we finished writing I felt like I knew everything about her. And then, when I started to develop her physicality and her emotional life in my body, I realized there was still so much to discover.”
And the filmmaking duo had a goal of premiering at the Director’s Fortnight, despite not knowing anyone at Cannes.
“We didn’t have any team, any producing partners, or any financiers,” Sloan said. “We didn’t have a cousin who knew someone who knew someone. We had nobody to vouch for us. The programming team, led by Julien Rejl, watched the film and connected to it. We learned after our selection how much care and attention each of the committee members pays to every film submitted. They watch everything. That was really refreshing to hear. I think we are still processing that experience.”
He continued, “To say that we premiered our first film at Cannes alongside our heroes like Paul Schrader, David Cronenberg, and Francis Ford Coppola, who all had films that premiered this year, is surreal. And to share that experience with our small but mighty crew, our friends, our family, who did so much to support our vision, is the greatest memory.”
“Gazer” premieres in theaters February 21. Check out the trailer below.
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