Cold Souls

Filmmaker: Sophie Barthes

USA/France / 2009 / 101 mins / English

Opening Weekend Date: 13 November 2009

Cinemas screening the film: Curzon Soho, Greenwich Picturehouse, Cineworld Shaftesbury Avenue, Shepherds Bush Vue & Key Cities

In the midst of an existential crisis, a famous American actor stumbles upon a "Soul Storage," a private lab offering New Yorkers a relief from the burden of their souls.

In response to shiny, bigger, better American consumerism comes Cold Souls, a surreal comedy in which souls can be extracted and traded as commodities. Balancing on a tightrope between deadpan humour and pathos, and reality and fantasy, the film presents Paul Giamatti as himself, agonizing over his interpretation of Uncle Vanya. Paralyzed by anxiety, he stumbles upon a solution via a New Yorker article about a high-tech company promising to alleviate suffering by extracting souls. Giamatti enlists their service only to discover that his soul is the shape and size of a chickpea. His intention is to reinstate it once he survives the performance but complications ensue when a mysterious, soul-trafficking "mule" borrows Giamatti's stored soul for an ambitious, but unfortunately talentless, Russian soap-opera actress.

About the director: Sophie Barthes

Born in France, Sophie Barthes grew up in the Middle East and South America. A Columbia University graduate, Barthes co-directed the short film Snowblink with life partner and cinematographer Andrij Parekh, and directed a Unicef documentary in Yemen on women's literacy programs. Her short film Happiness played at Sundance 2007 and more than seventy other film festivals. Both Happiness and Cold Souls won the NYSCA Individual Artists Grants and the Showtime Tony Cox Award for Best Screenplay at the Nantucket Film Festival. Barthes completed her residency at the Nantucket Screenwriters Colony and the 2007 Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Lab. She was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film" and is a recipient of the Annenberg Foundation Film Fellowship.

"Marks Barthes as a filmmaker to watch"
Empire