Lessner Talks About His Edgy, Ambitious Debut Feature ‘The Woods’

Sundance is now officially underway, and with Hollywood decamping to the hills of Park City, many up-and-coming filmmakers will be unspooling their films hoping to get they break they came looking for. And one of those folks is director Matthew Lessner, who will be premiering his debut feature, “The Woods.” For the indie minded folk out there, you might have Lessner’s work if you managed to catch a look at his 2005 short film “Darling Darling” with Michael Cera, or one of the handful of music videos he’s directed for such bands as The Raveonettes, Dirty Projectors and Le Loup.

“I took an internship at Democracy Now and I started following current events a little bit closer and reading a few books and just getting interested in this idea of collapse. And just playing with this idea of dropping everything, moving to the woods and starting over. And this idea of being aware of all these crazy problems that are going in the world and not really knowing how to react to those problems and that really became more of the motivating force [behind the film],” Lessner said.

However, for his debut feature, Lessner had something very specific in mind, an absurdist commentary on contemporary culture filtered through a group of young people who take to the woods, bringing their technology and comforts of home with them. And it took an eye-opening job placement to get the idea for the film rolling.

Soundtrack Features Songs From Dirty Projectors, Indian Jewelery, Ananda Shankar & More.

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Lessner’s film will be arriving at the Sundance Film Festival with a story no one else will be able to claim - it’s the first film to play the festival with partial funding provided through the micro-funding site Kickstarter.com.