YOUNG WERTHER
Section: Special Presentations (World Premiere)
Director: José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço
Logline: Alison Pill and Douglas Booth star in this adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 18th-century novella The Sorrows of Young Werther, relocated to modern-day Toronto in the form of a romcom.
Distributor: LevelFILM (Canada)
Panelists: Writer/Dir. – José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço; Actors – Alison Pill, Douglas Booth
Key quotes: “It’s an adaptation of a 250-year-old German tragedy that we have turned into a contemporary romance. A young guy and a young girl fall in love. She’s engaged to an older man, but instead of it being this awkward, terrible thing, it’s this awkward, wonderful thing. I read the book in university and it resonated with me. About 10 years later, when I’d become interested in filmmaking and sold a few scripts, I was looking for that next thing to write. And Young Werther caught my eye, on my bookshelf, and I pulled it down, reread it, and I was like, ‘Why has there not been a major English language adaptation of this novel?’ It’s been adapted so many times in Europe, in other languages. There’s operas, there’s plays, there’s Mangas, there’s so many different ways that the book’s been adapted. There’s something magical, timeless, and true about the characters at the heart of it.” – José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço
Sales Agent: Mr. Smith Entertainment
Click the video above to see the full interview.
Watch on Deadline
The Deadline Studio at TIFF is sponsored by Final Draft.
