REVERSE Director Johan Stahl Twists Heads In Newport Beach Film Festival Trailer

When a young boy's active imagination has real-life consequences... 

Adweek recently featured The Newport Beach Film Festival trailer "Play: The Power of Ideas," created by The Garage / Team Mazda & directed by Johan Stahl of REVERSE, whose short films and documentaries have garnered Sundance and Robert Awards (the Danish Oscars).

The production team also featured an all-star cast that included award-winning feature director of photography Shelly Johnson, ASC (“Captain America: The First Avenger,” “Jurassic Park III”). Much thought was put into finding the right balance juxtaposing traditional dramatic cinema techniques with elements of the gore genre. 

“By grounding the story in an easily relatable reality -- a classic divorce scenario with familiar tropes and gender roles -- it sets the viewer up to quickly see the disparity between the parents’ world and the boy's world, and ultimately, express central themes around imagination, cinematic storytelling, and the theme of this year's Newport Beach Film Festival: ‘The Power of Ideas,’” says Stahl.