Sleeping Giant
"Three boys dare each other toward adulthood on a Lake Superior cliff, and the dare becomes the whole friendship."
Curator's Note
Cividino cast first-time actors and let them keep their real speech rhythms, which is why the insults land like they were overheard rather than written; Nick Serino's Nate is the one that stays with you, for how quickly glee curdles into hurt. Watch how the film sets its wide, sunlit exteriors — water, granite, treeline — against cramped cottage interiors where the adults' failures leak through. On a second pass the boys' small provocations read less like horsing around and more like a countdown.
Synopsis
Adam is spending the summer at his family's cottage on Lake Superior when he falls in with Riley and Nate, two local cousins who treat boredom as something to be dared out of. Their days fill up with cliff jumps, stolen beer and escalating tests of nerve, and Adam starts remaking himself to keep up. When one of the boys turns a piece of private knowledge into leverage, the group's easy cruelty stops being a game.
Genre
Drama
Member
Guest