Cannes Film Festival 2021 – ‘Stillwater’ Starring Matt Damon and Abigail Breslin

Matt Damon (left) stars as "Bill" and Lilou Siauvaud (right) stars as "Maya" in director Tom McCarthy's STILLWATER, a Focus Features release. Credit Jessica Forde / Focus Features.
Matt Damon (left) stars as "Bill" and Lilou Siauvaud (right) stars as "Maya" in director Tom McCarthy's STILLWATER, a Focus Features release. Credit Jessica Forde / Focus Features.
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From Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Tom McCarthy (Spotlight) comes a drama about family, forgiveness and unconditional love.

Bill Baker (Academy Award® winner Matt Damon) is an unemployed oil rig roughneck from Oklahoma who has lived a hard life marred by drug and alcohol abuse. Intent on making up for his past mistakes Bill makes periodic trips to Marseille, France, to visit his estranged daughter Allison (Academy Award® nominee Abigail Breslin), who is serving a nine-year prison sentence for the murder of her girlfriend, Lena, a crime she insists she did not commit.

(L to R) Actor Matt Damon, actor Abigail Breslin and director Tom McCarthy on the set of STILLWATER, a Focus Features release. Credit Jessica Forde / Focus Features.

Allison seizes on a new tip that could exonerate her and presses Bill to engage their lawyer. But when their lawyer rebuffs them, Bill takes matters into his own hands and makes it his personal mission to find the real culprit—a man Allison has identified as Akim. Confronted with language barriers and cultural differences, Bill is outmatched until he strikes up an unlikely friendship 4 with French theater actress Virginie (Camille Cottin) and her young daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvaud).

Matt Damon stars as “Bill” in director Tom McCarthy’s STILLWATER, a Focus Features release. Credit Jessica Forde / Focus Features

As he combs the streets of Marseille searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack, Bill finds himself on an unexpected path, growing ever closer to Virginie and Maya. It’s a journey of selfdiscovery and liberation from a life that long seemed preordained. Yet when his need to prove his daughter’s innocence collides with his commitment to Virginie and Maya, Bill is left with only difficult choices that not only threaten to destroy his new life, but also his last shot at redemption. 

I began working on Stillwater about ten years ago. I set out with the intention to make a thriller set in a European port city. I was inspired by a number of Mediterranean Noir writers like Andrea Camilleri, Massimo Carlotto, and Jean-Claude Izzo, whose brilliant Marseille Trilogy led me to the French city. One visit to Marseille and I knew that I found my port. The layers and textures of the city were undeniably cinematic, and the confluence of cultures and the pace of the seaside metropolis felt like the perfect canvas for the film. Tom McCarthy, Director.

Stillwater will be released in theaters on July 30, 2021. For more information, visit Stillwater.

About Jillian Dale 73 Articles
Film festival coverage and digital content ninja.

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