The Hawk Is Dying

Colour, 35 mm
USA, 2005, 112 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

Lonely George Gatling (the excellent Paul Giamatti) is still looking for himself and his place in the world. He owns a car upholstery shop, is a rather unsuccessful amateur falconer and lives with his divorced sister, Precious, and her twenty-year-old autistic son Fred. George’s life changes the moment he catches a rare hawk. Fred is instinctively fascinated by the ancient art of falconry too, but for George it is a chance to feel free in the midst of the absurdity of the civilised world. Both develop an obsession with the hawk... When tragedy strikes, George desperately retreats into his new pastime and stops communicating with an outside world that he finds too rational and superficial. Only the psychology student Betty shows any understanding for him, while the others regard him as a lunatic. Inspired by the novel by the contemporary Southern US writer Harry Crews, the story offers a potent “natural” metaphor of our anchorless existence in modern reality. It was successfully screened in competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes IFF.

About the director

Julian Goldberger studied acting and directing at Florida State University’s School of Theatre and the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, subsequently taking New York University’s Intensive Film Program and The American Film Institute’s Directing Program. A screenplay entitled In the Wake won him first prize in the screenwriting competition at the Breckenridge Film Festival in 1998. In the same year he made his feature film debut with Trans, based on his own screenplay. The story of a juvenile delinquent on the run, it was screened at a series of national and international film festivals including Karlovy Vary IFF in 1999 (Forum of Independents).