INDIEWIRE: IFC Films has released the first official trailer for “Wildife,” and it’s not hard to see why Paul Dano’s feature filmmaking debut is one of the most talked about films of the year. The 33-year-old actor, best known for masterful performances in films such as “There Will Be Blood,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” and “Prisoners,” has evidently learned a lot observing many of cinema’s greatest living auteurs. The family drama premiered to much acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and also screened as the opening night film in La Semaine de la Critique at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Written by Dano and Zoe Kazan, “Wildlife” is adapted from Richard Ford’s novel of the same name. Carey Mulligan stars as Jeanette, a complicated woman living in rural Montana in the 1960s with her husband Joe (Jake Gyllenhaal) and 14-year-old son (newcomer Ed Oxenbould). As forest fires rage just at the Canadian border, a directionless Joe volunteers to help, leaving his family to fend for themselves. MORE
RELATED: Families are built upon two things: blood and belief. They can get by on the strength of one or the other (to have both is something of a luxury), but when the latter starts to wither, the former can only do so much to save it. This strange alchemy — the science responsible for so many American lives — percolates inside every frame of Paul Dano’s remarkable “Wildlife,” a tender, gorgeous, and exquisitely understated drama about a family that loses its faith in itself. MORE