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Sundance is an amazing place to world premiere a movie. Not only because it’s an incredible festival filled with people that genuinely love film, but also you can show offbeat and touching stories about people without having to show an explosion every five minutes. The fact is, Hollywood has moved away from smaller, more personal stories and it’s left to the indie world to pick up the slack, like writer-director Matt Ross’ family drama Captain Fantastic, which premiered at Sundance and was also shown at Cannes.

Led by a great performance from Viggo Mortensen, the film is about a family living off the grid in the forest of the Pacific Northwest. Mortensen plays the father of six kids and he’s dedicated his life to transforming his six young children into extraordinary adults. But when a tragedy strikes, the family begins a journey into the outside world that challenges Mortensen’s idea of what it means to be a parent and brings into question everything he’s taught them. Captain Fantastic also stars Frank Langella, George MacKay, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Zahn, Ann Dowd, Samantha Isler, Annalise Basso, Nicholas Hamilton, Shree Crooks, Erin Moriarty and Missi Pyle.

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With the film opening this weekend, I recently say down with Viggo Mortensen and Matt Ross for an exclusive video interview. Since Mortensen is extremely selective when picking movies, we started off talking about how Ross got him into the film and why Mortensen wanted to play this role. He talked about loving the script (calling it one of the best he’s ever read) and the challenges of playing the character. They also both talked about memorable moments from filming and being amazed at what the young kids were willing to do while hanging off a mountain. Check out what they had to say in the video above.

Finally, I really enjoyed this movie and recommend checking it out. It’s a nice chance from the noise of summer movies.

 

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