Buster's Mal Heart

Spotlight Narrative

New York Premiere

USA | 96 MINUTES | English |

BUSTER'S MAL HEART

Female Director(s), Thriller, Experimental
“I don’t believe it.” A succinct speech given by the title character late in Buster’s Mal Heart neatly summarizes the film. A fugitive hotly pursued by rangers reviews the pathway to his present circumstances and finds conflicting stories. Unsure of what’s real, even as he’s afflicted with troubling dreams, Buster struggles for “traction.”As he sees it, he’s in his his final, desperate stand. Sarah Adina Smith’s sophomore feature is a twisting, mind-bending thriller full of crimes and conspiracies. A picture-book wife and daughter, a dream of self-sufficiency, a maddening job on the graveyard shift at a remote Montana hotel, a late-night visitor: milestones that in Buster’s memory reveal where the road forked and when he forked right along with it. A spellbinding Rami Malek (Mr. Robot) brings his impressive range to the time-spanning part. Variously volcanic and impenetrably stoic, he encapsulates an absorbing narrative in which the typical rules don’t apply, least of all to a man who cannot be certain of anything he’s done.

—Mallory Lance

CAST & CREDITS

Directed by Sarah Adina Smith

Sarah Adina Smith's first feature, the psychodrama The Midnight Swim, won multiple awards including the audience award at AFI Fest. She next wrote and directed Mother's Day, a segment of the horror anthology Holidays (Tribeca 2016). Smith lives and works in Los Angeles.
Director
Sarah Adina Smith
Screenwriter
Sarah Adina Smith
Cinematographer
Shaheen Seth
Editor
Sarah Adina Smith
Composer
Mister Squinter
Executive Producer
Mynette Louie, Julie Parker Benello, Dan Cogan, Geralyn Dreyfous, Wendy Ettinger, Samuel T. Bauer
Producer
Jonako Donley, Travis Stevens
Associate Producer
William Adashek, Kevin Cannon
Co-Producer
Erika Kelton, Regina K. Scully, Lesley Ann Skillen
Sound Design
Paula Fairfield
Art Director
Tessla Hastings
Cast
Rami Malek, DJ Qualls, Kate Lyn Sheil, Sukha Belle Potter, Lin Shaye

CONTACTS

International Sales Contact
Andrew Herwitz
The Film Sales Company
New York, NY 10028
Phone: 212 481 5020
andrew.herwitz@filmsalescorp.com
Print Source
Dylan Marchetti
Well Go USA
Plano, TX 75074
Phone: 972 265 4317
dylan@wellgousa.com
Press Contact
Dixon Knox
Cinetic Marketing
New York, NY 10013
Phone: 212 204 7979
dixon@cineticmedia.com