The Sedona International Film Festival is proud to present the Northern Arizona premiere of the multiple award-winning, critic and audience sensation “Wild” starring Academy Award-winner Reese Witherspoon and Oscar nominee Laura Dern. The film will show March 6-11 at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre.
Witherspoon and Dern both received Academy Award nominations for their roles in “Wild”: Witherspoon for Best Actress in a Leading Role and Dern for Best Supporting Actress.
In “Wild”, director Jean-Marc Vallée (“Dallas Buyers Club”), Reese Witherspoon and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Nick Hornby (“An Education”) bring bestselling author Cheryl Strayed’s extraordinary adventure to the screen.
After years of reckless behavior, a heroin addiction and the destruction of her marriage, Strayed makes a rash decision. Haunted by memories of her mother Bobbi (Laura Dern) and with absolutely no experience, she sets out to hike more than a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail all on her own. “Wild” powerfully reveals her terrors and pleasures — as she forges ahead on a journey that maddens, strengthens, and ultimately heals her.
Thinking she’d lost everything, Cheryl Strayed walked out of her broken-down life and into the deep wilderness on a 1,100-mile solo hike that would take her to the edge. Strayed’s experiences became the beating heart of an inspirational, best-selling memoir that was about more than just an inexperienced hiker’s crazy, grueling experience walking from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific Northwest via the rugged Pacific Crest Trail (PCT).
With its mix of punk spirit and vibrant honesty, it also became something rarely seen: a portrait of a modern, messed-up woman coming-of-age by embracing the call of the wild in her own way. On the trail, Strayed faced down thirst, heat, cold, feral animals and all of her worst fears, but even more so, she faced up to change: pushing through to carve her own path out of grief and a haunted past.
Says Witherspoon, who produced the film with her partner Bruna Papandrea: “ ‘Wild’ is about so many things that touch people. It's about life, love, loss and family. It’s about how a woman who thought she was completely broken, but found a way to reconstitute herself.”
Director Vallée adds: “ ‘Wild’ is the story of a woman who wants to change her life and decides to do it in a very drastic way by going on this hike on the PCT. It becomes quite a journey, a journey of discovering herself and facing life and asking herself all the hard questions. But it’s also a journey of redemption – that’s the thing.”