Arkansas Cinema Society will host a special screening of To The Stars as part of the Arkansas Filmmaker Spotlight Series at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, April 1st at Thaden School, located at 800 SE C Street in Bentonville. Northwest Arkansas-based producer Kristin Mann will be on-hand for a Q+A after the film. Admission is free to the public.

“At ACS, we believe that one of the best ways to inspire future filmmakers is to let them see the work of Arkansans successfully working in the industry,” said ACS Executive Director Kathryn Tucker. “Arkansas native Kristin Mann has spent the last decade working to bring stories to life as a producer. We look forward to featuring her as the first in our Arkansas Filmmaker Spotlight Series of 2022.”

The Arkansas Filmmaker Spotlight is designed to highlight and connect working Arkansas filmmakers in the state and host in-depth conversations about their films. Whether an independently-made local film or a special screening of a nationally-released movie by an Arkansan, the Arkansas Filmmaker Spotlight showcases films and filmmakers with in person Q+A sessions after the film. Mann is the first featured filmmaker in this series for 2022.

Mann produced the coming of age 1960s drama To The Stars, which had its well-received world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Dramatic Competition and international premiere as the only U.S. film in competition at the prestigious Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic. The film was released by Samuel Goldwyn Films in 2020. The Hollywood Reporter said the film “has an undeniable emotional pull.” 

‍To the Stars was directed by Martha Stephens, written by Shannon Bradley-Colleary and co-executive produced by Rockhill Studios, of Fayetteville. It stars Kara Hayward (Moonrise Kingdom), Liana Liberato (The Best of Me) Tony Hale (VEEP), Malin Akerman (Billions), Lucas Zumann (Anne with an E), Jordana Spiro (Ozark) and Shea Whigham (Mission Impossible).

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About To The Stars

In a god-fearing small town in 1960s Oklahoma, bespectacled and reclusive teen Iris endures the booze-induced antics of her mother and daily doses of bullying from her classmates. She finds solace in Maggie, the charismatic and enigmatic new girl at school, who hones in on Iris’s untapped potential and coaxes her out of her shell. When Maggie’s mysterious past can no longer be suppressed, the tiny community is thrown into a state of panic, leaving Maggie to take potentially drastic measures and inciting Iris to stand up for her friend and herself. 

Sundance Institute said, “Martha Stephens directs this period piece with flair, utilizing classic black-and-white landscape cinematography to create an aesthetic feast. On one level, this is Iris’s coming-of-age tale, a story about finding power and comfort in one’s own skin. Yet Stephens also infuses the film with elements of the western genre to tell a deeper story, about women as outsiders in a time and place of repression and intolerance.”

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About Kristin Mann‍

Kristin Mann was born and raised in central Arkansas before working as an Associate Producer and facilitating production of critically-acclaimed films such as MUD, Midnight Special, Knight of Cups, Song to Song, After the Fall, and Malick’s decades-in-the-making documentary, Voyage of Time. Mann then went solo to produce the guerilla-style, desert-town independent feature Poor Boy, which premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and opened theatrically in summer 2018. 

Her dramatic thriller, The Quarry, starring Michael Shannon (their fourth film together) and Shea Whigham, was set to have its world premiere at SXSW in 2020 (were it not for the Covid-19 pandemic) and was released by Lionsgate the same year. She was also recently the line producer for the Margaret Brown-directed documentary film Descendant, which just had its world premiere at Sundance in January 2022 where it won the Special Jury award. It was acquired by Netflix, where it will debut later 2022 and be co-presented by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground. Next up, Mann is producing a romantic comedy feature that will shoot in Bentonville as well as another film that will shoot in Hot Springs. Mann is in development on a slate of feature films and a TV series not yet announced.

In addition to her film work, she has produced music videos for Sony and various commercial spots, and has recently joined Arkansas-based Waymack and Crew for commercials and online video production for both local and national brands. She is a member of the Producer’s Guild and has recently relocated from Austin, TX to Bentonville.

ACS plans to host more screenings for the Arkansas Filmmaker Spotlight and other film series throughout the year at Thaden School and other locations around the state.

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