David Briggs

An interview with Eric Mendelsohn, the Director of 3 Backyards which will premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

3 Backyards Writer/Director Eric Mendelsohn accepts the Directing Award at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

3 Backyards -- Trailer for 3 Backyards

The trailer for 3 Backyards. From writer-director Eric Mendelsohn, the only two-time winner of the Directing Prize at Sundance (first for Judy Berlin, also starring Edie Falco) comes '3 Backyards,' the story of three residents of the same suburban town over the course of one perfect, glittering Autumn day. Mixing the mundane with the mythic, the film peers into the interior lives of its characters as they embark on seemingly tiny journeys that actually take them vast distances from the familiar. A businessman (Elias Koteas) with marital troubles gets 'lost' on a business trip without ever leaving town. A little girl (Rachel Resheff) steals her mother's jewelry in the morning and finds herself faced with frightening, adult decisions by late afternoon. A well-meaning housewife (Edie Falco) offers her celebrity neighbor (Embeth Davidtz) a lift and the trip detours into unsettling territory. Seen through a prism of shifting light and shimmering leaves, the familiar geography of the suburban landscape dissolves by day's end into a dreamscape where identity can be fractured, destroyed or ultimately reclaimed.