One of the most desired destinations for a filmmaker on the rise is The Sundance Film Festival in Utah. It’s a festival that has launched the career of so many filmmakers who are now considered household names. This year’s festival welcomed one of our very own, Producing graduate Janek Ambros. Janek came to the New York Film Academy in 2011 to gain a better understanding of how to produce a film — with the eventual hope of producing his own films.
“My experience with NYFA was very useful,” said Ambros. “Professors like Lydia Cedrone, Jaime Burke, and Adam Finder educated me on the importance of digging for good content to be a part of, investor relations, and a general knowledge of the craft of producing.”
This past Friday at Sundance, Janek’s film Ten Thousand Saints, which he was a co-producer along with Celine Rettray (The Kids Are All Right), premiered at the Eccles. Janek initially got on board with the project by raising equity for the film and its producers.
Based on the acclaimed novel, Ten Thousand Saints follows three lost kids and their equally lost parents as they come of age in New York’s East Village in the era of CBGB, yuppies, and the tinderbox of gentrification that exploded into the Tompkins Square Park Riot of 1988. The cast includes three time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke, Asa Butterfield, Emily Mortimer, Julianne Nicholson, Academy Award nominee Hailee Steinfeld, and former NYFA guest speaker Emile Hirsch.
The film is in the process of finding the right distributors, and Janek believes the film will get the most attention during next year’s award season.
For now, Janek is focusing on selling a documentary he directed that was executive produced by Academy Award nominee James Cromwell. The documentary is looking at a 2015 release and is about the War on Terror and the importance of Civil Liberties.