drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
film co-directed by Lori Silverbush and Michael Skolnik. The film chronicles the lives of three young women in a
Jersey City
Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark. One girl is a 17-year-old drug dealer, another is a teenage drug addict with a child, and one is a teenager dealing with pregnancy. The film is based on actual
case studies
A case study is an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case (or cases) within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on an individual patient or ailment; case studies in business might cover a particular fi ...
2004 Toronto International Film Festival
The 29th Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 9 through September 18. The festival screened 328 films of which 253 were features and 75 were shorts (148 of the films screened were in a language other than English).
Awards
No fi ...
and was later screened in
limited release
__FORCETOC__
Limited theatrical release is a film distribution strategy of releasing a new film in a few theaters across a country, typically art house theaters in major metropolitan markets. Since 1994, a limited theatrical release in the Unite ...
on July 13, 2005. It won the Jury Special Prize at the
Deauville Film Festival
The Deauville American Film Festival (french: Festival du cinéma américain de Deauville, link=no) is a yearly film festival devoted to American cinema, which has taken place since 1975 in Deauville, France.
It was established by Lionel Cho ...
and the Grand Jury Prize at the
Slamdance Film Festival
The Slamdance Film Festival is an annual film festival focused on emerging artists. The annual week-long festival takes place in Park City, Utah, in late January and is the main event organized by the year-round Slamdance organization, which als ...
.
Cast
*
Judy Marte
Judy Marte is an American actress who can be seen in films such as ''Raising Victor Vargas'' and ''On the Outs. ''She is best known for her roles as rookie officer Tonya Sanchez in the short lived ''CBS'' drama ''NYC 22'' and Wanda in Netflix or ...
as Oz
*Anny Mariano as Suzette Williams
*
Paola Mendoza
Paola Mendoza is a film director, activist, author, and artist. In 2017, she co-founded and served as the artistic director for the 2017 Women's March.
Early life
Mendoza was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. She came to the United States ...
as Marisol Pagan
*Dominic Colón as Chuy
*Flaco Navaja as Jimmy Ortiz
*Danny Rivera as J Stutter
*Gloria Zelaya as Rosa
Production
The stories of the central characters are directly based on interviews that Silverbush and Skolnik conducted with young women at the Hudson County Juvenile Detention Center in
Secaucus
Secaucus ( ) is a town in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States census, the town's population was 16,264, Silverbush, Skolnik, and Paola Mendoza spent 4 months at the facility working with the young women and developing the characters. Originally, the film was going be to be about one girl, with Mendoza playing the part as she had personal experiences with gang activity in her youth. Silverbush said, "Once we started working with the girls in the jail, we realized there was no way we could limit ourselves to one character and do justice to the huge range of experiences that make up the lives of
inner-city
The term ''inner city'' has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city centre area. Sociologists sometim ...
kids." The production decided to focus the film’s story on three characters: Oz, Suzette, and Marisol.
The film was shot in November 2003 in
Jersey City
Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark. The crew welcomed members of the local community, including gang members and drug dealers, to help out or appear in the film.
Release
The film premiered at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival. It went on to screen at festivals like Slamdance,
Berlinale
The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festi ...
, and
GenArt Gen Art is an arts and entertainment organization that showcases emerging fashion designers, filmmakers, musicians and visual artists. It has produced over 100 events annually, which included fashion shows, film premieres and screenings, live music ...
, among others. The film was largely self-distributed, with Fader Films assisting with marketing. On May 9, 2006,
Polychrome Pictures
Polychrome Pictures, LLC, now defunct, was headquartered in Sherman Oaks, California, as a distributor of independent motion pictures on DVD, video on demand, and through digital distribution.
Polychrome's independent film business in North Ameri ...
released the film on DVD.
Critical reception
''On the Outs'' has a 93% approval rating based on 31 reviews on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
. The site’s critics consensus reads, "With powerful lead performances, this gritty docudrama about the desperate lives of three young women in Jersey City packs an emotional wallop."
Stephen Holden
Stephen Holden (born July 18, 1941) is an American writer, poet, and music and film critic.
Biography
Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963. He worked as a photo editor, staff writer, and eventually be ...
of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' said ''On the Outs'' "is certainly not the first film to show how a crushing urban environment can make a sensible-sounding antidrug slogan like '
just say no
"Just Say No" was an advertising campaign prevalent during the 1980s and early 1990s as a part of the U.S.-led war on drugs, aiming to discourage children from engaging in illegal recreational drug use by offering various ways of saying ''no' ...
' seem like so much nonsense, but it's one of the strongest." He added, "It isn't the tics of the plot but the raw human texture beneath that really matters." Writing for ''
The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the crea ...
'', Laura Sinagra commented "the environment feels real: the accents, the snaps, the working moms and warehouse crack nooks, every dilapidated stairwell, every bodega and lovingly appointed teenage bedroom sanctuary. Even frequent panning toward the Emerald City of Manhattan and the stark commentary of Lady Liberty throwing shade at Ocean Avenue blight don't seem excessive." The acting was universally praised, with Tasha Robinson of ''
The A.V. Club
''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...
'' calling the cast's performances "fearless" and "evocative", writing "When Marte howls in cornered anguish, or Mendoza weeps after a visitation with her baby, their honest, raw pain communicates more about the dead-end misery of poverty than a dozen neatly manufactured conclusions ever could."
Joe Leydon
Joseph Patrick Michael Leydon (born August 22, 1952) is an American film critic and historian. A critic and correspondent for ''Variety'' since 1990, he is the author of ''Joe Leydon's Guide to Essential Movies You Must See'' (Michael Wiese Prod ...
of ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' said the film is an "attention-grabbing showcase for three promising actresses in sharply drawn lead roles." Jan Stuart of the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' remarked "directors Lori Silverbush and Michael Skolnik manage to pack an amazing amount of emotion and environmental detail into the film’s 1 hour and 23 minutes...If the film teeters on sentimentality in brief patches (Oz’s relationship with her mentally challenged brother), it overrides that impulse with a vise-like grip on the way things really are." Nick Schager of ''
Slant
Slant can refer to:
Bias
*Bias or other non-objectivity in journalism, politics, academia or other fields
Technical
* Slant range, in telecommunications, the line-of-sight distance between two points which are not at the same level
* Slant d ...
'' wrote, "Documentarians by trade, the directors use rough DV cinematography and no score to amplify their tale’s sense of lived-in reality, and though their staging can be stilted (such as a third-act scuffle that leads to unexpected tragedy), there’s a hardened emotional honesty that permeates even the most schematic moments. Much of this is due to ''On the Outs''’ hands-off approach to moral judgment—its protagonists’ often-misguided, sometimes reprehensible actions are, for better or worse, simply allowed to speak for themselves."
Honors
Deauville Film Festival
The Deauville American Film Festival (french: Festival du cinéma américain de Deauville, link=no) is a yearly film festival devoted to American cinema, which has taken place since 1975 in Deauville, France.
It was established by Lionel Cho ...
*Winner of the Jury Special Prize
*Nominated for the Grand Special Prize
Gotham Awards
The Gotham Awards () are American film awards, presented annually to the makers of independent films at a ceremony in New York City, the city first nicknamed "Gotham" by native son Washington Irving, in an issue of ''Salmagundi'', published on ...
Independent Spirit Awards
The Independent Spirit Awards (abbreviated Spirit Awards and originally known as the FINDIE or Friends of Independents Awards), founded in 1984, are awards dedicated to independent filmmakers. Winners were typically presented with Poly(methyl m ...
John Cassavetes Award The Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award is presented to the creative team of a film budgeted at less than $500,000 by the Film Independent, a non-profit organization dedicated to independent film and independent filmmakers. It is named after ac ...
- Lori Silverbush and Michael Skolnik
Slamdance Film Festival
The Slamdance Film Festival is an annual film festival focused on emerging artists. The annual week-long festival takes place in Park City, Utah, in late January and is the main event organized by the year-round Slamdance organization, which als ...