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ANNA GUTTO's feature debut PARADISE HIGHWAY with Juliette Binoche and Morgan Freeman premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2022.
ANNA GUTTO wrote and directed PARADISE HIGHWAY which premiered to a sold-out Piazza Grande of 8000 seats at Locarno Film Festival in August 2022, hailed by ++Variety++ as “a singularly promising debut for a first-time feature filmmaker.”
The film stars Academy Award-winning actors Juliette Binoche and Morgan Freeman, as well as Frank Grillo, Cameron Monaghan and breakout talent Hala Finley. Paradise Highway marks her feature film debut, for which script she won the prestigious Zaki Gordon Memorial Award for Excellence in Screenwriting. The film is distributed by Lionsgate.
Anna comes from a successful career in the theater, first in Europe, then in New York, mounting ten plays in ten years, garnering critical acclaim from, among others, ++The New York Times++, which described the work as “…universally excellent.”
Ms Gutto co-directed the first season of the Netflix success HOME FOR CHRISTMAS, and her short films have won numerous festival awards, among them Best Director and Best Ensemble Cast. Her short comedy MOMMY HEIST was purchased by France Televisions' channel FR3 as part of the Libre Court program. A LUCKY MAN (SAY NOTHING) is an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award recipient and is in the screening catalogue of the Museum of Moving Images in New York. Anna graduated with Honors from Columbia University with an MFA in Film Directing and relocated from New York to Los Angeles shortly thereafter. During her years in The Big Apple, she also produced several piano concerts at Carnegie Hall and was a consultant for Boardwalk Empire. Anna is a dual US and Norwegian citizen.
Anna is attracted to stories about underexposed characters and situations, such as the female trucker of PARADISE HIGHWAY, the unexpected fate of the college boy in A LUCKY MAN (SAY NOTHING), or the unusual adventure of three moms and a baby in MOMMY HEIST. Anna sees the same world as the rest of us – she just notices details that may pass others by as insignificant. This allows her to have a joyfully fresh take on everything she does. As ++Variety++ put it: “writer-director ++Anna Gutto++’s solid and satisfying thriller, a shrewdly constructed melodrama that does not transcend cliches and conventions so much as show how useful and effective they can be in the right hands.”
Working in a variety of genres, for Anna, storytelling is ultimately about one thing: Connection - characters connecting with each other, and stories connecting with an audience.
Anna Gutto is represented by WME and Grandview in the US and Albatros Agency in Scandinavia. You can reach Anna directly at [email protected]