Bob and the Trees
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''Bob and the Trees'' is a 2015 American fictional
vérité Kelsey Regina Byrne (born May 6, 1990), known professionally as Vérité (stylized as VÉRITÉ), is an American singer and songwriter based in Brooklyn, New York City. Her first single "Strange Enough" was self-released in July 2014, reaching n ...
drama film that won the
Crystal Globe A Crystal Globe is a trophy given to the winners of various international competitions: In media * Crystal Globe (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival), for films * Globe de Cristal Awards, for art and culture In sport Given to the season st ...
at the
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival ( cs, Mezinárodní filmový festival Karlovy Vary) is a film festival held annually in July in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. The Karlovy Vary Festival is one of the oldest in the world and has become ...
. Shot in
The Berkshires The Berkshires () are a highland geologic region located in the western parts of Massachusetts and northwest Connecticut. The term "Berkshires" is normally used by locals in reference to the portion of the Vermont-based Green Mountains that ex ...
, ''Bob and the Trees'' follows farmer and logger Bob Tarasuk (played by himself), his son and business partner Matt (Matthew Gallagher), and Bob's wife Polly (Polly MacIntyre) as they work to earn money during winter. The film, Diego Ongaro's feature-length directorial debut, premiered in the noncompetitive ''Next'' section of the
2015 Sundance Film Festival The 2015 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 22 to February 1, 2015. ''What Happened, Miss Simone?'', a biographical documentary film about American singer Nina Simone, opened the festival. Comedy-drama film ''Grandma'', directed by Pa ...
in January 2015, where it was met with positive reviews.


Background

Director Diego Ongaro moved from Paris to Brooklyn, New York to
Sandisfield, Massachusetts Sandisfield is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 989 at the 2020 census. History Sandisfield was first settled in 1750 as Hou ...
, where he befriended Bob Tarasuk, a farmer and logger. Tarasuk and Matthew Gallagher, Tarasuk's son-in-law and business partner, took Ongaro to their work, where he "saw the conditions these guys lived under and how hard it is and the knowledge required", and, after he saw "how charismatic a character Bob was", Ongaro "felt ehad a story". Originally a short released in 2011, the film was expanded to feature-length with fifteen days of shooting in November 2014.


Release

The feature-length ''Bob and the Trees'' debuted at the noncompetitive ''Next'' section of the
Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
on January 27, 2015, where it was met with warm critical reception. '' The Hollywood Reporter'' Justin Lowe stated that the film "mines a rich vein of humanism shot through with characteristically dry New England humor", with Ongaro's "unsentimental empathy" a tone "too often missing from outsider perspectives". In a review for Indiewire, Katie Walsh described Tarasuk as "wonderfully natural, open, and unstudied", though also wrote that the "story of the making of ''Bob and the Trees'' is probably the most interesting thing about the film itself", and that it "could stand to lose about 10 minutes in nedit". Ben Kenigsberg of '' Variety'' drew comparison between the film's visuals and woodland work by
Kelly Reichardt Kelly Reichardt (; born March 3, 1964) is an American film director and screenwriter. She is known for her minimalist films closely associated with slow cinema, many of which deal with working-class characters in small, rural communities. Reich ...
, and praised Tarasuk's "introverted performance". Kenigsberg called the film's resolution "at once pleasingly down-to-earth", but also "a little easy". At the
50th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival The 50th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival took place from 3 to 11 July 2015. The Crystal Globe was won by '' Bob and the Trees'', an American fictional vérité drama film directed by Diego Ongaro. The second prize, the Special Jury Priz ...
, the film won the
Crystal Globe A Crystal Globe is a trophy given to the winners of various international competitions: In media * Crystal Globe (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival), for films * Globe de Cristal Awards, for art and culture In sport Given to the season st ...
, the festival's main award, which included a cash prize of USD$25,000 (EUR€22,400). It showed at the Durban International Film Festival on July 21, 2015, at the Woods Hole Film Festival in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on July 28 and August 1, 2015 and at the Molodist festival in Kyiv in October 2015.


References


External links

* * * {{Crystal Globe, state=collapsed 2015 films 2015 drama films American drama films Crystal Globe winners Films shot in Massachusetts 2010s English-language films 2010s American films English-language drama films