Project Detail

The New Man

Synopsis

What started as a home movie became a committed project when Josh and Devorah found themselves unable to conceive. An endearing if ironic journey gets serious when life-threatening complications emerge. Their relationship is tested to the brink as they confront birth, death, love and loss all at once. A creative documentary about becoming a parent... and how to reconceive yourself.
Fiction director Josh Appignanesi turns the camera on himself and his wife as they undergo the ordeal of becoming parents in the era of man-children and assisted reproduction. Faced with fatherhood, Josh spirals comically into an envious career funk. But life-threatening complications emerge - the couple are tested to the brink, confronting shattering losses.
A portrait of our generation going through a revolution in reproduction - forced to find new ways to think about ourselves as creative beings. With contributions from writers, filmmakers and thinkers including Slavoj Zizek, John Berger, Darian Leader, Zadie Smith and Sophie Fiennes.
Universal yet still taboo, a film for everyone who has children, wants them, or still feels like a child themselves.

Details

Year: 2016
Type of project: Features
Running time: 75 mins
Director: Josh Appignanesi, Devorah Baum
Producer: Josh Appignanesi, Devorah Baum, Mia Bays
Executive Producer: David Baddiel
Editor: Josh Appignanesi
Screenwriter: Josh Appignanesi, Devorah Baum
Director of Photography: Josh Appignanesi

Genre

Comedy Drama

Production Status

Complete

Production Company

Mercenary Films

Josh Appignanesi

josh@mercenaryfilms.co.uk

Missing in Action Films

40 Langham Street
London
W1W 7AS

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British writer Devorah Baum has to go tour America with her first book – a guide to guilt, paranoia, self-hatred, envy, and all the other feelings currently tearing our world apart. With two small kids in tow, she is stressed out. Surely her husband, Josh, can help? But the feelings laid bare in the book soon get played out between them, revealing how much remains stubbornly unreconstructed in our supposedly modern relationships. A searingly honest marriage comedy on the cusp between autofiction and documentary, it's a love letter to New York, literary life, and, er, Zadie Smith.

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