Neon Acquires Sundance Award Winner ‘Beach Rats’

Sundance 2017: Eliza HIttman won U.S. Dramatic Directing prize for her cruising drama

Sundance 2017 Beach Rats

Tom Quinn and Tim League’s upstart distribution label Neon has acquired the Sundance hit “Beach Rats.”

The intense cruising drama landed Eliza Hittman the festival’s directing award in the U.S. Dramatic competition at the annual award ceremony held on Saturday.

“Beach Rats” stars British import Harris Dickinson as a lost middle-class youth in Brooklyn with a dying father, a tentative new romance with a young girl and a late-night habit of cruising for hook-ups with older men online. UTA represented the filmmakers in the deal.

The film elicited strong reactions during its screenings and subsequent Q&A’s — even former First Daughter Malia Obama saw it during an under-the-radar trip to the festival.

Neon also scooped up the female hip-hop drama “Roxanne, Roxanne” and the Aubrey Plaza-Elizabeth Olsen film “Ingrid Goes West” at Sundnace — both award winners on Saturday for “Roxanne” star Chante Adams’ breakthrough performance and for Matt Spicer and David Branson Smith’s “Ingrid” screenplay.

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