“When I try to trace my way back to other first films that provide the kind of thrilling and unbridled cinematics that define The Childhood of a Leader, I keep slamming into an American debut film from the 40s, directed by a then 25-year-old fledgling filmmaker named Welles. There, I said it.” (Jonathan Demme)
“No guts, no glory. Actor Brady Corbet flings himself off the cliff of his directorial debut with a defiant disregard for safety or convention that is startling, admirable and exceptionally unusual to see from a neophyte filmmaker.” (Indiewire)
Appropriating its title from a 1939 short story by John Paul Sartre and loosely based on John Fowles’ novel, The Magus, as well as the early childhood experiences of many of the great dictators of the 20th Century, The Childhood of a Leader is an ominous portrait of emerging evil. Winner of the Best Director award in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival and the presitigious “Luigi de Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film, Childhood is a mind-blowing directorial debut and “[l]ike nothing you’ve quite seen before[.]” (Screendaily)
