The Grand Illusion

THE SWEET EAST is a picaresque journey through the cities and woods of the Eastern seaboard of the United States. Lillian (Talia Ryder), a high school senior from South Carolina, gets her first glimpse of the wider world on a class trip to Washington, D.C. Separated from her schoolmates, she embarks on a fractured road trip in search of America. Along the way, she falls in with a variety of strange factions, each living out their own alternative realities in our present day. The film is the directorial debut of internationally renowned US cinematographer Sean Price Williams (GOOD TIME) whom The New Yorker described as “the cinematographer for many of the best and most significant independent films of the past decade.”

“The Sweet East is a film salad. Textures entirely grown from diets of movie theater experiences. The organic imperfections that give the greatest nourishments appear as mistakes when captured digitally. Natural beauty of the human face and subtle sensations of temperature are more immediately experienced, captured and presented on the living organism that is cellulose triacetate. There is no good reason to ask an audience to experience a film any other way.” director/cinematographer Sean Price Williams

“Shot in urgent, careening close-ups and distinguished by Price Williams’ eye for grotty detail, The Sweet East is energized by the veteran cinematographer’s scuzzy 16mm grain… Here, Price Williams asserts film grain as the equivalent of Roddy Piper’s sunglasses from They Live!, his smudged frames exposing the heightened vulgarity of American tribalism as experienced through Lillian’s increasingly cynical, glazed-over gaze.” Isaac Feldberg, RogerEbert.com