Sundance

Festival Screenings

Public Screening #2: Monday, January 25, 11:45AM (Egyptian Theatre)
P&I Screening #1: Wednesday, January 27, 12:00PM (Holiday Village Cinema 2)
Public Screening #3: Wednesday, January 27, 9:00PM (Yarrow Hotel Theatre)
Public Screening #4: Friday, January 29, 3:30PM (Redstone Cinema 1)
Public Screening #5: Saturday, January 30, 3:00PM (Sundance Resort Screening Room)

Tomboy boxer Toni (newcomer Royalty Hightower) lands a spot on an after school dance team in the West End community of Cincinnati. Enamored by the power and confidence of the team, Toni eagerly absorbs routines, masters drills, and even pierces her own ears to fit in. As she discovers the joys of dance and of female camaraderie, she grapples with her individual identity amid her newly defined social sphere. 

Shortly after Toni joins the team, the captain faints during practice. By the end of the week, most of the girls on the team suffer from episodes of fainting, swooning, moaning, and shaking in a seemingly uncontrollable catharsis. Triggered by her own insecurities, Toni questions the cause of "the fits." Soon, however, the girls on the team embrace these mystical spasms, transforming them into a rite of passage. Toni fears experiencing the fits, but also fears losing her new friendships as a result of remaining left out of the transcendental experience. She has to decide how far she needs to go to maintain her niche on the team.

Filmmaker Anna Rose Holmer, in her feature debut, puts forth a striking and distinctive vision — a meditation on movement, the body, adolescence, and identity that eludes categorization. Working from real stories of mass hysteria, Holmer creates a subtle visual grammar to convey a coming-of-age story. Her atmospheric aesthetic, vivid acoustic landscape, and dissonant score establish an ambiguous psychological space through which Toni moves, as if her journey through THE FITS is, itself, a dance.

Country: USA/Italy

Language: English

Premiere: North American

Category: NEXT

Sales: Mongrel Media

Writer/Director: Anna Rose Holmer

Cast: Royalty Hightower, Makyla Burnam, Inayah Rodgers

 Producers: Anna Rose Holmer + Lisa Kjerulff