Maryland Film Festival Blog

RETURN writer/director Liza Johnson will hold a Q & A after the film screening

We are pleased to announce a special, Baltimore-exclusive screening of Liza Johnson‘s film, RETURN, on Friday, March 9th at the MICA Brown Center.

Writer/director Liza Johnson will be present for Q & A after the film.

Screening details:
Friday, March 9th, 7pm
Falvey Hall, MICA Brown Center
1300 W. Mount Royal Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland 21217

Tickets are FREE for current Friends of the Festival and students (must have student ID),$5 for members of the Creative Alliance/Theatre Project, and $10 General public.

RETURN went through the Sundance Labs and was supported in script phase with a Maryland Filmmaker’s Fellowship. It is Johnson’s first feature length film, and received good reviews at its premiere at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival Director’s Fortnight, and was the only American film to be so honored in 2011.

RETURN stars Linda Cardellini (Kelli), Michael Shannon (Mike), John Slattery (Bud), Talia Balsam (Julie), Bonnie Swencionis (Cara Lee), Emma Rayne Lyle (Jackie) and Paul Sparks (Ed).

“I like Johnson’s delicacy and discretion. She trusts Cardellini’s natural, easygoing performance to show us what goes untold. The movie is modest, too, and its small emotional scale works. Without asking for pity or outrage, it’s another movie about the unaccountable, unending drain of war.”
–Wesley Morris, Boston Globe

“RETURN, starring Linda Cardellini, is a haunting new movie that tweaks and twists the familiar of subject of a soldier’s return from war.”
-John Sanchez, Huffington Post

Linda Cardellini stars in Liza Johnson’s RETURN

“A low-key drama that articulates the ennui of a returning servicewoman after a tour in the Middle East, Liza Johnson’s RETURN strikes a delicate balance between familial melodrama and suffering vet pic…it features a striking performance by Linda Cardellini, once the most sly and attractive of the awkward high schoolers on Freaks and Geeks, and now a fully mature screen actress making the most of her copious talents.”
-Brandon Harris, Filmmaker Magazine